The Humble Beginning....

It all started when an ambitious and educated home maker in the Southern city of India, decided she wanted to do more than make home! She got together some of her cronies and over 'shoodana filter coffee' and 'medhu vadai' decided to form a Ladies Club. The other women, under the influence of caffeine, nodded in agreement - lo and behold! The Nungambakkam Ladies Recreation Association was formed. This was in the year 1967 (I forget the right year - if anybody out there belongs to the first ever class to graduate, let me know!). Soon they wanted to do more than just recreation - appalled by the education that their kids were getting in school, these women decided to try their hand at educating their children. They conned their husbands into 'donating' some of their hard earned savings towards this effort (guess that was when the 'donation' trend was established)and started a 'school' in a thatched shed in, of course, Nungambakkam! IT was christened Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan in honor of the deceased wife of a lawyer who helped in the cause. This guy 'donated' his wife's name to the cause. The woman who started it all seemed to be pretty darned good at this and soon was making a name for herself in the field of education. Inspite of repeated efforts by a chauvinistic government to nip this effort in the bud, this gutsy woman kept going on, undaunted. The new school began churning out top students for the Central Boards Examinations and for a while, was the envy of most other institutions around the country.

The Metamorphosis

This tradition of toppers in inthe CBSE exams soon turned from a habit to an obsession. Ambitious students from other schools were weaned away with promises of stardom, IIT seats and what not! Beleive me, it was much like the NFL or the NBA draft picks. Suddenly, this school was now a machine trying to churn out top notch students who made it to the IITs, the IIMs and the MMCs! For 10 full seasons, PSBBians ruled the roost in the National Examinations and was a model institution. Everybody wanted to send their kids there since this school was one of the few that promised academic excellence and a cultural experience that was not available elsewhere. A new branch was opened in KK Nagar and it was being nurtured and groomed for the future. In the early eighties, a new dimension was added to the school's personality - the students outshone their competition in the numerous inter-school cultural festivals and sports. Trophies adorned the principals office and each batch of students proclaimed that they were the best the school had ever seen. And that is a tradition still.....

Today...

The branch at KK Nagar has come of age. It educates about 5000 students, while the branches at TP Road and Nungambakkam together account for a little over 3000 students. Students from these schools get into BITS, Pilani, College of Engineering, Guindy, AC Tech., IITs, IIMs, MMC, Stanley, KMC, you name it and they have some body from this school there. Yours truly had the distinguished honor of representing the school as far north as Srinagar, Kashmir, for a period of 2 years, when he was at the Regional Engineering College there. And closer to where we are, some of the top researchers at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, MIT, Urbana, Stanford, Texas-Austin and not to mention the other hallowed places, are ex-PSBBians! Phew! That is impressive for a school with such humble beginnings, eh? Inspite of the fact that most students swear they will never ever send their kids to this school, the fact remains, most do, whenever possible!

Some of the unforgettable people from this school

Mrs. Y.G.Parthasarathy - the woman who did this all and more
Mrs. Bhagyalakshmi Kailasam, who is today the Vice Principal
Mrs. Hema Srinivasan, who is no more with the school.
Mrs. Hamsa Ramadas, who is now prinicpal at KK Nagar
Mrs. Chandra Ramani, who is still teaching Sanskrit 
Mr. Ramachandran, fondly known as Ramudu, retired in 1990 as Academic Supe
Mr. Williams, good 'ol Willi boy, who continues to threaten to resign
Mrs. Vatsala Pasupathy, who sadly, is deceased.

The Alumni Database