When I had spoken to Udit previously, I had foolishly cast him as one of those people who talks incessantly about and promotes as the best the country of their recent ancestors just because of their ancestral relation to it—regardless of their actual knowledge of the country. In Udit’s case, the country was India, for he is Indian, talks a lot about India in my experience and expresses fondness for Indian music and Bollywood. 

On Friday 17^th, twenty-four pupils and two teachers from school went to Millfield International Chess Tournament. From my year group, three others went: Duncan, Udit and John. For all of my yearmates and myself, it was our third time going.

It is a point of some amusement to me that it is not uncommon for those who (amongst other things) go to Millfield to be called ‘neeks’, despite our school being described as a ‘neek school’. While Chess Club may indeed be archetypically neeky (neekish?) and only enjoyable for ‘Chess Neeks’, Millfield is so much more than that.

We departed during the lunchtime of that Friday, setting of on the six-odd-hour journey to the village of Cheddar, where our youth hostel awaited us. Having prepared by depriving myself of much sleep, I slept for most of that journey. I do recall hearing somebody on the radio in the minibus lamenting the demise of silent films, asking John his thoughts on the topic on the spot as a light-hearted test and then eloquently explaining my own intellectual response. His reaction to my own answer was not one of anti-intellectualism, but one of amusement. This reaction reinforced my view of him as different from most of my peers in an interesting way—a view which had been formed due to his uncommon traits of gentlemateness and sometimes-amusing sarcastic and mocking humour and of course many other unnoticed clues I undoubtedly picked up on.

Either on that Friday night or the Saturday night, I managed to start a discussion between Duncan—an atheist and then an agnostic—John—a Christian--and, to a lesser extent, myself on subjects pertaining to God. I was pleased to note that despite his intelligence, which is probably greater than my own, Duncan seems to be not (yet) on my level in terms of argumentation.

Udit had interested me at the previous or previous previous year’s Millfield by talking to me on financial matters—notably the profit margins of a successful scheme of his in which he purchased phones via eBay and then sold them.

As I learned this Millfield, my casting was a grossly inaccurate one. Not only has Udit not expressed that India is the best country, but he went and goes there often and knows much more about it than I gave him credit for.

On the minibus heading back to school on Sunday night, Udit at least touched upon economics, Indian racism, buying a Japanese PSP and then managing to trade it for another PSP over here and other topics that have faded from memory that have made me recast him as an interesting person.

Between his talk of lucrative schemes, profit margins, deals offered to his father, a comment I’ve heard lamenting proportional tax and other snippets of information, I would guess that his father fought for a comfortable position for himself and his family in England and that this has led him to impart to Udit an uncommon interest in finance and economics.

Even up until fairly recently, I had been resigned to not coming across anybody interesting at school, barring new arrivals. However, I have come across several people this year who have piqued my curiosity.

There’s Olly W. in Year 12 or 13, the appropriately well-versed organiser of Philosophy Club. There’s Siddhu in Year 13 from Philosophy Club, who gets involved at Millfield. There’s Ben from Philosophy Club, who has climbed mountains, runs, runs a small business, dresses sharp and can apparently converse in dry wit and eloquence. There’s Mr. Piper, who is one of those few teachers who appreciates life as an adolescent male schoolchild and is not above laughing at ‘schoolboy humour’ or a sense of humour in general. He is not afraid to cut down bullshit like bigoted and crass comments and breach subjects that most (other teachers) would shy away from. He is more abreast of that which one should be abreast of than most and encourages the more intellectual discussions that start, even if they take time from what he has scheduled. He doesn’t set inane homework. He professes a love of film and has mentioned continually getting beaten at chess down the pub.

I wonder where these people will end up in life.