Ms. Matusoff-with-two-Os and her kind

My mother texted me this morning.

3^rd grade. 4^th grade. Her captions read.

Old report cards, she said.

And then there was another.

“Yash shows interest and curiosity in all areas of her learning. She is organised. Yash works and plays cooperatively with others. She shows leadership and helps others. Next steps for Yash is to continue reading and writing stories to explore her imagination.”

Below this document, about 18 years old

Was a signature

In that classic North American crawl

M Matusoff

My mother said she wanted to email this

M Matusoff

I told her she did not know

M Matusoff

‘s first name.

M Matusoff

A Ms prefixed to her name

At an age where

Ms/Mz/Miss

Were all the same

M Matusoff

Who didn’t teach me

A-B-C or

1-2-3

But walked into class that first day

To a host of little

People

On a carpet, blue

With a flip board, white checkered paper

And a marker, black I think

And told us this

My name is

Ms. Matusoff

It has three small words in it.

Can anyone tell me what?

Mat-us-off,

she got us to chorus

But the ‘us’ is pronounced

With a double-o

Like ‘moo’

Or ‘coo’

Now who knows what

‘coo’ means?

Or why ‘pronouce’ is

Such a difficult word to

Pronounce?

Ms. Matusoff tried to

pronounce my name as well.

Yaash-aas-weenee will take the attendance today, she’d say.

Until I told her I was not

Yaash-aas-wee-nee but

Yashasvini.

Like they say in India, I told her.

She decided Yash was good enough.

It rhymed with rash.

Ms Matusoff told us stories.

I remember one from

One of those last days.

There was a lady with a cookie tray

1-2-3-4 cookies in a row

1-2-3 rows

Ms Matusoff told us this was

A big word

No, not cookies, she said.

Multiplication.

4 cookies times 3 rows.

Count them all, she said.

1-2-3-4-5-6

7-8-9-10-11-12

12 we chorused

All us little people.

And I learnt three times four was?

Twelve.

(Not three fours are, mind you. Or three into four is.

But three times four.)

Ms Matusoff got us to do

Projects

(with a capital P, like all big words ought)

Mine was on volcanoes.

I used plasticine like a

Big girl!

She invited the principal

(I don’t know her name)

And they all clapped for me.

I remember I looked at

Ms Matusoff

To see if she was proud

And she nodded at me.

Ms Matusoff gave me a

big fat blue book.

Advanced Math, she told me.

(Not Maths, just Math.)

And when she taught everyone

three times four

all over again

I sat on a desk

on a blue plastic chair

and worked through this

Big Fat Blue Book

until she told my Amma

I was good at my work.

Ms Matusoff

didn’t teach me

A-B-C or

1-2-3 though

That was Mrs. Shade.

Mrs. Shade

with her

old wrinkled skin

her soft touch

her sandboxes and

stencilled letters.

Mrs. Shade who

taught us to make

sandcastles and

Halloween masks and

Mother’s Day soap.

Mrs. Shade who

asked me why I

never told her

you got a baby brother!

Who whispered to my

Amma to make sure I was

really okay.

Mrs. Shade who

taught me to

roll up your mat,

set your own table,

always take a napkin when you serve food.

Mrs. Shade who

asked me if I would like

to use purple or blue

food colouring for

Father’s Day?

Mrs. Shade who

was so everything-we-needed

that we never for once

wondered

who was Mr. Shade?

Mrs. Shade who

fell sick one day

and needed an ambulance

so that every time

for years after

when that scary siren swung by

I would tell my Amma

maybe Mrs. Shade is inside?

The next year

there were two of them.

Ms. Miller, she was

A big lady, she was

who taught us

‘hug’ before ‘fat’

who never let us

leave the school

without sitting in the corridor

to wrap us up tight

Like a present, she’d say

Who told us her name

Robin, like the bird

and then taught us

five-year-olds

all about robins.

Ms. Miller who

I imagine in

Black pants, black shirt,

her long black hair always

worn down, like a curtain.

With her was

Ms. Camilla Fourino-Vierra.

I still don’t know

if I spell that right

but I can hear her voice,

the words tumbling off

her tongue as

she told us her story.

From Mexico, I think?

Not from here, she said.

I remember her in browns -

a beige dress that

didn’t quite hit her ankles

with brown flowers

and brown eyes

and brown hair

and a soft, lilting voice

talking to a group of

my own mini-United Nations kids

she told us,

long before we knew

UNICEF from UNESCO.

I think Ms. Vierra

fell sick too

I am not that sure

but I do know

how she treated

that Chinese boy

who did not know

English, to speak

You must help him

You must teach him

If you teach well, he will learn well.

That day, I must have been sitting next to

Hyra, from Pakistan

or Naureen or Shazma or Pritita

or maybe Jackie, of Malaysian blood

I don’t remember.

And we all nodded.

Yes, Ms. Vierra.

I do remember what

Ms. Vierra said though

of work ethik and res-pon-si-bi-li-ti

at an age when

only phonetics made sense

I do remember what

Ms. Miller taught though

of body positivity and acceptance

at an age when

her hugs spoke the language of

recess and cold winter afternoons

and space for allllll of you.

I do remember what

Mrs. Shade showed us though

How to roll mats and

how to serve cake and

how to make presents from scratch.

Effort is love is effort

at an age when

I never realised

My Amma never used the

bath salts I gave her

(She saved them

In cupboards out of my reach.)

My mother is still texting me.

This morning is filled with

the language of adults -

nostalgia, she says,

upbringing and growth.

But for me

this morning is all about

the Small Brown Girl

who sat in classrooms

far away -

a confused desi-NRI cross

(before coconuts became fashionable)

who didn’t realise

the lessons coming her way

in the spaces in between.

For me -

the not-so-Small Brown Girl -

this morning is all about

Mrs. Shade and

Ms. Miller and

Ms. Vierra and

Ms. Matusoff with two o’s.

Stories of Grassroots Education in India

In a desperate attempt to keep all my writing in one place (ish, kind of), here is something that came out today. I like to think of it as a consolidation of all the thinking and talking in very many classrooms these past few years. In other words, here is a long-ish piece on what the classrooms can teach you even if you are not the student.

Thank you, Off Campus Class, for the space and the prodding. :)

https://offcampusclass.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/stories-of-grassroots-education-in-india/

Travels. Travelled. Travelling.

They say memory wilts around the edges with time.

March 2011. He wore a khaki blazer and faded blue jeans, the quintessential wardrobe of a seasoned traveller. I don’t remember what I wore, probably my Superman t-shirt, slightly dulled with age, the blues and reds not as bright as they once used to be. His bald-by-choice head glistened in the mid-morning sun (mere creative license for airport tubelights) and his eyes were kind. He asked if I needed help and gently pointed me in the direction of the right gate. I was at Rome International Airport, and the air tasted of steely, sterilised air-conditioning.

May 2012. I see her in a white tunic, I am not sure why. I see all of them in white, almost like the children from The Sound of Music leaning against the bed, and that just cannot be right. The room had dull, moss green walls, and the wallpaper was a floral print. The roof sloped down above us, outlining the shape of a once-Russian-spa-turned-convention-centre in the middle of the hills. She told us about ‘bride-stealing,’ a practice in the awkward limbo between tradition and discomfort. Her audience spanned a colour spectrum, from the creaminess of the Philippines to the earthiness of Egypt and India, all the way through the chocolatey textures of Liberia. I was in Bavaria, and the air tasted of embraced diversity and the chilly nip of a late spring.

May 2013. He had blue eyes and brown hair speckled with the dust and dryness of the mountains. I feel like he was dressed in a black-turned-grey t-shirt but it could barely be seen under the sand-coloured sweater punctuated by stray thread, unravelling with experience and age. He seemed perpetually bewildered, trying to make sense of this phenomenon before him, a single girl travelling thousands of kilometres from home. Yet even the confusion couldn’t dull the instinctive hospitality and the well-intentioned attention. You must come to Kashmir, he told me. That is where the real beauty is, of lakes and carpets and shawls. I was in Ladakh, and the air tasted of strangeness and unusual amounts of salted chai.

July 2014. Her starched cotton sari was adamant in its solidity. It just would not move. I see it in pastels, either a pale blue or a soft green, maybe with a hint of pink. She stood by the door of a crumbling classroom that posed a picture of contradiction. Strewn about the cracked tiles and hung atop the peeling walls were ‘learning resources’ from a different era, a newer time, and there she stood representing all that was the Indian Classroom. She told us about her experience, a career that had spanned longer than my life at the time, and we pretended to live up to our image of authority, our conversation punctuated by the occasional cry for attention from the toddlers who made up our audience. I was in rural Tamil Nadu, and the air tasted of adjustment, experience, and the government Mid-Day Meal.

June 2015. She wore an apron, the kind that belongs in a cafeteria, and stood behind the billing counter. The name tag on her chest has pixelated in my mind. Was it a Violet? Or a Viola? Or perhaps there was no V at all. The boy ahead of me in line swiped his student card and traipsed out with a couple of bananas and what looked like noodle soup. I handed over a lemon poppyseed muffin. She paused the checkout to look me up and down. Is this your lunch, girl? I muttered an apologetic acceptance, my mind already back in my cabin and the afternoon’s tasklist. For Viola, for that is what we shall call her, there were other more important things. She told me I ought to eat more, take care of myself more, not neglect my health so far from home. She reminded me of my grandmother, many miles away. I was in small town Canada, and the air tasted of random acts of kindness and French Vanilla.

September 2016. The car was maroon, an Alto I think, and the man wore a blue t-shirt. We flagged him down to ask for directions, and he offered us a ride. Six of us tumbled into his car, a confusing knot of limbs and voices as we tripped over our sentences to introduce ourselves. You have the entire country in your car, we told him, almost a little pompous of this bubble of diversity. We asked to go to the taxi stand, he took us to town. We asked if there was an ATM, he made calls to local bank officials. We asked him if he was from the village, he told us its history. I was in rural Arunachal Pradesh, and the air tasted of the mustiness of showers not had and whiskey offered straight from the bottle.

They say memory fades over time.

-

Travelling is a shape-shifter. Commuting is a clean box; the expected scanning of airport displays and the impatient tapping in security lines. It is the feigned nonchalance that rattles off the next month’s itinerary, the glazed nothing-surprises-me-anymore look as cities blend into one another.  Family vacations are a knotted tangle. It is the carefully orchestrated dance of I-love-spending-time-together against the rhythm of give-me-my-own-space. It is a choreographed coexistence slightly rusty yet oiled by the emotional guilt that accompanies avoidance. It is a rigmarole of commitment, expectation, and obligation. But true pleasure? True pleasure lies in the solo. Real excitement is built in the evolution from grey, many-times-mended, inappropriately unwieldy suitcases to the just-as-grey but comfortably old, super-convenient rucksacks. It is hidden in the growth from packing a grossly unsuitable and overly large wardrobe to chuckling at anything more than two pairs of jeans and un-wrinkle-able t-shirts in dark colours that don’t show dirt. It lies in the quiet moments, atop side upper berths on the Indian Railways when I look around me and no one looks back, when I am a Nobody and I couldn’t be happier. Travelling is a shape-shifter, but the traveller, it would seem, is shapeless.

But don’t for a minute think shapelessness is easy. It is complex, complicated, sometimes confusing. Time and space, those deep philosophical categories that pose such layered challenges to the academic, become disposable on the road. When you wake to the sun and eat when you are hungry, when you walk a path just simply because it appeared before you or choose a destination only because it is so far away, what is space and time but mere romanticised words to throw out in travelogues and personal essays? Yet even amidst this romanticism, this willingness to move past categories and boundaries, there is the lurking need to acknowledge the very same containers we are so quick to dismiss. I wake to the sun and eat when I am hungry, yet I do not lurk after dark or take a midnight stroll. I choose a path because it appeared and set out to a destination far away, yet I look behind my shoulder to make sure no one else made the same decisions. I tell the world I will be unavailable, that the only-too-familiar speech bubble notification will not reach me, that I will not be refreshing my Gmail page. Then I call my emergency numbers and tell them I will be unavailable except if… There is always an ‘except’, a ‘Conditions Apply’ clause to my disappearing act, an asterisk to this suspension of time and space.

-

Of all my travelling memories, my worst is always walking out; of airports, railway stations, even just hotel rooms, towards someone waiting some feet away. Walking in smells of expectation and adventure mixed with the artificial steeliness of air-conditioning. Staying in feels like long waits and carpeted floors, each one taken refuge in till the automated voice announces final boarding calls. But walking out? Walking out has an awkward stance, an uncomfortable glance to it. It feels self-conscious, acutely observed. Walking out reeks of a person on the other end, standing, while you shuffle out of the automatic doors, trolley first, towards them. They wait, you feel weird. You shuffle. Even today, I breathe a sigh of relief when, in the odd chance that someone picks me up, they call to say they are late. Even today, I avert my gaze, pretending not to see them as they walk towards me to save them the awkwardness, the acute observation.

Walking in smells of happenings. Waiting smells of happenings. Walking out? It stinks of finality.

-

Travels, that quintessential Indian English word, denotes transportation; late night buses with reclining seats, and if you are lucky, an old 1990s movie. Travelling is an exercise in grammar, present continuous suggesting movement, a line segment that stretches between the start and the end. To me, though, the true form lies elsewhere. Travelled, in past, hinting at a certain finitude, a completion. When you travel, you always end. When you start, you always stop.

Yet every time I travelled, it is hardly a straight line. There is neither a home nor a destination. Instead it is a snaking path through foreign geographies and unchartered conversations, exploring personal boundaries and shared memory.

hitchhiking in a lorry

in Ladakh

drinking in bamboo

glasses

in Arunachal

moving

closerto (elusive)

fluency in Tamizh

                hoarding

                collecting

                storing

                stories

                                people and places and…

                                mine all

                                if only in narration

                                                                                a tangle of

                                                                                experiencesimpressionsopinions

                                                                                newly minted

Every time I travelled, it is defined in plural all at once, hardly a straight line. Perhaps it is a maze. Better still, perhaps it is not travelled at all.

Travelled is a verb, in past, complete. Journey is different. Journey speaks of a serendipitous stumbling coloured in the hues of promise. Journey is a noun, timeless, spaceless, always present.

I do not travelled. I journey.

#KochiBiennale: The art, artist, art-ed

This past weekend, I gifted myself a little getaway, running off to Kochi (blessedly only four hours by train from Coimbatore) for the Kochi Muziris Biennale. Every few exhibits, every few hundred metres, every few minutes, I'd find myself perched on a parapet, a footpath, a rock of some sort. 

This past weekend, I wrote my way through the Biennale. I scrawled in a notebook that was falling apart, in handwriting that was near impossible to decipher, trying to make sure my hands kept up with my head. What lies below is an excerpt of these notes, cleaned up and spruced up for readability. 

I climbed ladders today, in a skirt, to get into a huge kaleidoscope, a swirling mass of colourful pieces of glass. I waded through water today, in a skirt, all the while reading rhythmic free verse memorializing a dead Syrian bo(d)y. I walked till my legs were numb today, in a skirt, in and out, in and out, in and out.

A man lying down, lighting up through infrared heat sensors. Another man, also lying down, gold beads popping out of his bellow button, critiquing the ability to create and earn from thin air. A wall covered with picture from an iPhone – ephemeral, useless except in the moment, except now memorialised for eternity. Another wall covered with layers of butter paper, fluttering in the wind as the artist adds layer after layer, commenting on complexity, transparency, multiplicity. A third covered in a ten-metre digital picture juxtaposing groups of giggling girls taking selfies against a medieval trading Chinese scene (was it medieval trading? It was Chinese for sure…), talking of the contrast with history and how far we’ve strayed from our roots.

Walls and walls and walls, pictures and paintings and posters. Wherever you turn, there are walls, there are paintings, there is creation. Wherever you turn, there is art. 

A slightly longer version of these assortment of thoughts can be found here.

Dear Man who followed me,

Dear LoverBoy who followed me,

When you brushed by me on a busy main road yesterday, I instinctively thought it was an accident. You walked by me, moving in the opposite direction. I was walking towards home and you, maybe you were heading to catch a bus? I felt your hand on my thigh, felt it through the layers of my sari, and I turned around. You did not look back, and I walked on, merely chalking it up as yet another experience of the streets. I had been thinking about something else, a sweet New Year’s message a boss had sent me, allowing myself two seconds of distraction when on a public road. For affording that luxury, I apologise.

I turned into a marginally quieter lane, using you as a convenient continuation to a conversation I was having. Some dude just brushed up against me, I texted, in the same indifferent tone as I would use to describe the car that just drove past or the movie poster that was blaring out at me. But of course, the reply came, and we went on to speak of more interesting things. For thinking that was the end of it, I apologise.

Halfway down that road, I heard your voice behind me, just that then I did not know it was yours. Stupidly enough, I thought it was one someone talking to another someone on the street. It was New Year after all, and everyone seemed to have somewhere to go and someone to talk to. I focused on not tripping over my sari in an effort to get home. Vathakozhambu and carrot curry were my only thoughts just then. After all, it was my penultimate dinner at home. Of course that had to be more important, right? Right? For not giving you any importance, I apologise.

And then you spoke. Hello madam, you said, and I turned around on instinct, checking for a stranger who was too close. You couldn’t have been talking to me, I thought. You were a stranger. Turns out that does not matter. My legs decided they had a mind of their own, and I found myself moving forward faster. I stepped across deflated tyres on the street, around autos parked in the middle of the road, all the while wondering whether it was better to walk into oncoming traffic and risk getting run over or towards the darker shadows on the side of the street. Would you follow me there? Or would you get bored and walk away? For not accounting for your persistence, I apologise.

Hello Madam. Wait, Madam. Give me five minutes, Madam. I want to talk to you, Madam. I just want your time, Madam. Why are you walking away, Madam. Just five minutes, Madam. You kept talking, I kept walking. You kept pursuing, I kept planning. What if you reached out and grabbed my sari? What if persistence gave way to frustration? Would that fuel aggression? Was I better off ducking into my neighbourhood departmental store? But what if I got caught in an empty aisle with you, a stack of pickle bottles behind me and just you in front? Was the street safer than that? What if I followed the rules of a self-assured confident woman and caused you pain? What if instead of reeling in shock after that, you decided to retaliate? For not having any of the answers, I apologise.

You were barely a step behind me. I couldn’t cross the road without walking in to you. I couldn’t stop walking without you bumping in to me. I couldn’t do anything but keep going. Reflexively, I picked up the phone. Did I make the call to ward you off or to calm me down? I don’t know. Lady Luck decided to take a nap just then and my first two attempts weren’t answered. Finally, when the phone was answered, I spoke a little too cheerily, trying to hide how much my hands were shaking just then. So, I am being followed, I said. The response was measured to the point of being scary. Oh ok, I heard, what are you going to do? For expecting a reaction more violent, I apologise.

You were still behind me, asking me to stop. In a last ditch effort to ward you off, I did. Enne thaan venum, I asked. What do you want from me? Pesanum, you said. I want to talk to you. Ungale pudichirukku. I like you. So what, I shot off. Ungalukku pudichirukku nna naan nikkanuma? Why should I stop just because you like me? I stormed off again, you followed again. I paused to avoid traffic. You spoke again. Nillange, you said. Stop. Do we know each other, I growled, and even as the words slipped off my tongue, I knew the words I would hear in response. Therinjikalaame, you said, in what I am sure you thought was a smooth comeback. We can get to know each other. I rolled my eyes, told myself off for not pre-empting that, and kept walking. For giving in to those few lines of conversation, I apologise.

You see, that entire conversation was at 7:30 in the evening, at a junction so busy that we used to crib about traffic jams in an otherwise quiet neighbourhood. I was aggressive in stance, angry in tone, and standing in the middle of the street. Why didn’t you call attention to yourself, people asked me later in the evening. Because of the half a dozen people who made eye contact with me in those few minutes, no one as much as paused. Diverted glances, awkward eye contact. For not having the confidence that I would be helped, I apologise.

And then you gave up. You threw a few choice words at my retreating back, and took the other turn at the junction. You cursed at me for rejecting you, yelled at the illogical prospect of my ignoring your advances, and swore at any possible relationships, present and future. I didn’t stop walking at a frenzied pace till I got home. All the choice words I could have thrown back at you just propelled my feet farther and farther away from that junction. For not opening my mouth, I apologise.

A friend called me back on that last stretch home. I couldn’t take the call ma, I am sorry, he apologised. It was fine, I told him. What’s up, he asked, and for the next few minutes he was assailed with a rather intense response to a safe opening question. But I am fine, I breezed, just walking into the house. And then it hit me. The minute I latched the door behind me and breathed in the confidence of being in a safe space, it hit me. For underestimating how much you could get under my skin, for believing I was numbed to the experience, I apologise.

Dear Stranger on the Street in your grey graphic t shirt and blue jeans, I remember your face much too clearly. I remember the swagger with which you walked next to me as I tried so hard to get away. I remember the casual confidence with which your hand brushed my thigh as you walked by near the busy-as-hell bus depot on New Year Day. I remember the entitlement in your tone as you told me off, your vocabulary choice describing various characteristics of me and my body. Your scruffy beard, the black thread around your neck, the red string around your wrist, the belt with the too-big buckle on your jeans, they have all been stored away as the latest addition to the Vermin file in my head. And for even having that file, as I am sure most other girls do, I do not apologise. That one is not on me.

You see, Stranger, I have the theory to back this up. I could rationalise this plenty, tell myself how you probably saw every Tamil movie on the face of the planet where the hero stalks the heroine into submission, and they love happily ever after (no, not a typo). I could explain it away as something you’ve deeply internalised, the laws of patriarchy and gender norms dictating that you chase, I refuse, you chase some more, I refuse slightly less vociferously, you keep chasing and I swoon. It isn’t your fault, is it? I could explain it away in big words with multiple syllables that roll off my tongue with an ease only born from habit. But I refuse to give you that leeway, and for that I do not apologise.

When I finally let it all hit me, lying on my bed just before heading to a shower, I was shaken, frustrated at myself. No, I did not ask for it and what I was wearing was immaterial to the moment. No, it was not my fault and I knew enough to discount anyone who suggested it. Why must it be a luxury to feel safe, I fumed, a righteous anger threatening to overwhelm me. Yet even that I understood. What I did not get was the speckles of thankfulness. Thank God you didn’t touch me, I found myself thinking. Thank God your idea of wooing did not involve reaching out and tugging at my sari. Thank God you did not decide to show me how much you loved. Thank God you didn’t follow me home. Thank God all the ‘it could have been’ horror stories remained just that. And in that moment, I felt a deep sense of disgust, at the world for teaching us to expect this on the streets, at you for blindly buying into these tropes, but mostly at myself. For having it in me to say thank you for how this panned out.

Dear Stranger, I will apologise for a couple of things from yesterday. For allowing myself a moment of distraction. For not slapping you or yelling or creating a scene at a busy junction on a Sunday evening. For not being able to control the quiver in my hands and the shiver in my knees the closer you came. But you, in the kilometre and a half that you walked with me, behind me, you showed me how much I had internalised. You made me ask myself difficult questions. So maybe next time this happens, for there will most definitely be a next time, I will be better prepared. Maybe next time, I will not automatically dial a guy’s number, as if the only source of strength in that situation can be male. And maybe the next girl you stop on the streets because you know, pudichirukku, would have fought these battles already.

Happy New Year from the girl in the white sari.