One of the only two Gujarati schools in the State, Sri Gujarati Vidyalaya at Mattancherry is celebrating 100 years of its formation. The celebrations to mark the event, under the aegis of the Sri Cochin Gujarati Mahajan, began on January 31. Gujarat Minister Vasanbhai Ahir inaugurated the day’s events.

“The school gave me everything that a Gujarati who was staying away from home would need,” says Deepak Shah, Kochi-based homoeopathic doctor who completed his entire schooling in the Vidyalaya from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s.

“Those were the best days of my life,” says 58-year-old Dhansukh Sejpal, an alumnus who runs a wholesale textile shop in the city.