Xavier's by Proxy

I am writing this from a marble island counter-top, in a sunny kitchen in South Orange, New Jersey. This is a home filled with love and laughter in the face of many difficulties – a home to family-friends that has been a beacon of warmth and care for me since I began visiting New York in 2005. This home has been my happy place – my emotional release valve – since I moved from India to the US in 2015. The man of the house attended St. Xavier’s College in Bombay with my parents in the 80s and they form part of a jolly friend group that has stayed together, multiplied and evolved over the last 40 years. There are five or so other families in this family-friend cluster that I consider to be more family than friends. Recently I thought about what has held their friendship together and why I feel so at peace with myself when I’m around them. I realized that wherever in the world I’ve lived, the aspects of my Indian identity that I feel most connected to are reflected in the values that the Xavier’s gang lives by. The Xavier’s gang of 50-somethings hang out with their Xavier’s friends’ kids – just as their own kids do! Strangely, it is in the company of these middle-aged moms and dads that I can be my authentic self. They make it so easy to be yourself. What on earth did that college teach them?

For the uninitiated, Xavier’s was founded by Jesuit priests in 1869 in South Bombay. I have not spent that much time on campus but I remember the beautiful architecture and the greenery and sense of space that surrounds it – a certain lightness and airiness that I felt so rarely in the rest of the city. I think two things happened that brought this Xavier’s gang together. The first was that the boys all grew up  in relatively educated, suburban middle-class households. They did not grow up poor but they were not South Bombay elite in mindset or pocketbook either. It seems there was a drive among them to learn about and explore the world, rather than simply continue a family business and/or accumulate wealth. So there was a self-selection into Xavier’s even before the Indo-Gothic halls could whisper their magical hymns.

From what I’ve learned about Xavier’s, the ethos of the institution is about critical thinking, social activism, tolerance, diversity and inclusion rather than simply academic or sporting excellence, for example. This is the second part of the Xavier’s experience that I think turned the Xavier’s gang into the progressive, kind, liberal bunch of wise-cracking air-guitarists they are today. In many ways, it seems Xavier’s was ahead of its time since those are the same buzzwords that schools, colleges and workplaces around the world seek to tattoo on their foreheads today.

Perhaps calling Xavier’s a ‘liberal arts school’ is going too far, but from what I have gathered from smitten alumni, it was a university that attracted well-rounded candidates and sought to round and ground them further in its core values. When my parents and the Xavier’s gang recount college stories, they’re always tales of music festivals, sports tournaments, rainy treks… not so much about the classes or their career office. Somehow, while the rest of the city (the country?) was striving for academic perfection, these brave Jesuits were trying to fill young Indians with empathy. My parents talk about the university staff – ‘Father’ this and ‘Brother’ that – more as mentors and confidantes than professors or teachers and have maintained astonishingly close bonds to those kindly old men to this day. I could name on one hand the professors I remember from my undergrad in the UK. And while I’m connected to my high school and undergrad friends, it’s not like we meet every year (or our kids live in each other’s homes) the way the Xavier’s mob operates.

When my sister and I were young and our parents would introduce us to members of The Gang, all they had to say was that these were “Xavier’s friends” and no further explanation was necessary. That name and the friends who carried it hold certain inalienable values that I’ve only recently been able to put my finger on. They exhibit the form of secularism and tolerance that makes me proud to be Indian. They live the Indian values that I most closely identify with.

Look at this extract from the charter of the Xavierites of Bangalore alumni group:

“We cherish values such as pluralism, liberalism, social responsibility and freedom of thought that we have imbibed from St. Xaviers, and which in turn, we wish to propagate. We also desire to champion worthy causes which reflect the values we cherish.

We, the Alumni accept that there are a number of worthy causes which might meet the desired criteria. We accept that the first such initiatives might be modest in scope. We accept that more than the need to achieve width or scale of coverage, is the need to make a beginning.”

I was astonished when I read the charter. It felt like someone had distilled my entire world-view and raison d'être – something I’d been trying to crystallize for years – into a 1-page word document.

It seems I trace a large part of my Indian identity to… my parents’ college? This is weird, right? I’m not saying everyone at Xavier’s is like this, but I do think The Gang is the way they are because of Xavier’s. They have even picked up friends over the years who never went to Xavier’s but in our minds they are all part of the Xavier’s Gang because they share the same values.

Some in the squad are more religious than others and those who practice, do so privately and in a way that even this staunch atheist can accept and cherish. When I heard them talk about social issues as a kid, they were always quick to criticize religious bigotry or gender-based discrimination. (Jokes about their wives do not count.) They hate politicians for being corrupt, not because of what party they were from. They love India enough to call out its flaws; those who live abroad pepper their homes with the country’s essence (plurality, debate, etc… as well as a rogue Ganesh figurine here and there). They love Indian music as well as Western music – they loved music because it was good, not because of who sang it. While all of them have done well for themselves and their families, they never ever ever ever talked about money obnoxiously or flaunted their wealth; conversations around material possessions are always tempered by Bandra-convent-school humility. It is so different to the energy in other well-to-do Indian living rooms where people become experts at talking about themselves, their newly acquired toys or the job their kid got with Goldman Stanley and Googazon or Bainkinsey.

When I look at my closest friends today – people in the late 20s or early 30s just starting to get married and have kids – I wonder if we will make the effort to travel and see each other, to stay as connected, to use our friendship as a foundation to build meaningful lives on. I hope so. Some of my closest friends are moving away from New York because of Covid. I am sad that I won’t get to be in the same city as them when their kids are born. I guess we have to trust that the bedrock of our connection is solid enough that it will endure the stresses of life on this curious planet. What work and sacrifice must have gone into keeping the Xavier’s ties strong? Or was it effortless? I wonder how the internet will impact my generation’s ability to cultivate family-friend groups. My sense is that we’ll remain connected to a lot more people, but not as closely as the Xavier’s mafia has stayed connected to itself.

What a gift their friendship has been to my life. How grateful I am that my parents went to a liberal, open-minded institution and built friendships with humble humans who work across such different professions. How thankful I am that my folks did not go to IIT/IIM – not that there is anything wrong with those great institutions or the sacred friend circles they must have bellowed out over the years. I’m just glad we’re Xavier’s kids who are as happy listening to Lucky Ali with an uncle and aunty in Washington DC as we are listening to Dire Straits with an aunty and uncle in Bangalore. Somewhere along the way the air-guitarists all learned to play off the same hymn sheet.