Dear Akka (on a bad day)

Once again, inspired by the specifics of today (more of which should find mention on my work blog here soon), but this is note-to-self-and-other for whenever we need it. Every last one of these kids and these stories come from my classroom, the good, the not-so-good, and the downright ugly. Everyone needs something to spice up their day, right?

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Dear Akka (on a bad day),

Remember.

Remember the child who walked up to you in the middle of an intense class on homophones to say she had something to give you. What, you asked, in part disgruntled by the interruption but also for most part curious about what could have brought it about. Here, she smiles, pulling out a slightly squished rose. It looks like it travelled in an almost-safe place this morning, a plastic bag next to a water bottle perhaps, or atop a stack of books, surviving just enough pressure to come out with only a few petals ruffled and squashed. You smile. Thank you, you manage, as you try and compose yourself and the class to come back to homophones. Now, what is the difference between ‘bare’ and ‘bear,’ you ask.

Remember the child who you were afraid of, the one who was sent back from the remedial classes to “reintegrate” so to speak. How will I manage, you wondered, sometimes aloud but much more to yourself. Can I handle the twenty others in the class as I give him the attention he needs? And what if I can’t? Am I giving him what he is due? Splashed across a page of a notebook buried inside a bag, there is a question that will haunt you. Have YOU given them wholesome education today? Have you?

But also remember the same child, two months into the classroom, bending over a worksheet judiciously trying to keep pace with the class. You walk up to him and ask if everything is alright. He asks you for permission to speak in his mother tongue, casting away the alienness of what you are trying to impose in favour of the known, the familiar, the safe. Sure, you allow. Is this what I ought to do, he clarifies, and you nod in reassurance, patting him on the back as you walk by, hoping that half the encouragement you intend finds its way to him. The next day, he comes up to you and tells you he has finished the first worksheet and could you help him through the second in class? You rejoice. You hadn’t expected to even see the end of the first, forget hand over the second. Of course, you nod, meet me tomorrow and we will get it done.

Remember the girl who called you her guru, her role model. You felt your heart flutter in that minute, and you still don’t know if it is because of fear or gratitude. Could you live up to the job? What had you done to receive such high praise? What could you say to the sudden glow in her face as she talks to you about feeling inspired, motivated, driven to do better, do more? You tell her about your own story. You tell her you see that she can do it too. You tell her that you will be right there, one step behind her, as she feels her way around the world, gripping at the crevices that stop her from slipping. You race through the compartments in your mind, wondering who to talk to and where to look to give her that one more opportunity. Who knows what could tip the scale?

But also.

Remember the child who, early on a Wednesday morning, told you you were wasting his time. Why do we bother with this, Akka, he groaned almost to the tune your bruised ego was singing just then. Tell me more, you ask, unsure of whether you want to know the answer or you are just trying to do the adult thing of keeping a cool head. What is the point, he wants to know. And you set off into a spiel on stepping into another’s shoes, hurrying on before he cracks a bad joke and demands the shoe size. You tell them how a time-tested way to learn is to teach, and how by that logic, to answer questions you must make them. He seems only half mollified. You lean back into the wall, trying to blend into the background.

Remember the child who rebuked you for not doing enough. We have only done two stories in English, Akka, he complained, inadvertently pitting you against the colleagues who you laughed with at lunch. What did he know that one of those two was Marquez, something that all and sundry gaped at when you said you were reaching high? It didn’t matter that he had done four different worksheets, each reinforcing a different skill with the second, a story from the very-foreign Ghana, as he understood the difference between folktales and fact. To him, it was two sheets of paper versus many more, and in that moment, two just didn’t seem good enough. And he told you. And it stung.

Remember the one who just does not seem to care, and no amount of cajoling and begging and enticing would change that. The birds outside the window, the dogs at the door, the dust at the corner of the bench; it was all always more interesting than…well, you. You bring music and dance into the classroom, and whip out that magic weapon of a sponge ball. You animate your stories and coerce your voice into performing a roller coaster. All of it to no avail. You are still not interesting enough. So you pull through the class and breathe a sigh of relief at the end of it, only to have the memory wash over you the next time you tentatively set foot into a classroom and spy the one disinterested face amongst the bright sea of ‘good morning Akka!’s.

The next time you sit to plan a lesson, the next time you get handed a flower in class, the next time a student doesn’t seem to care for a word that you say, remember. Remember the Flower Girl, the Hardworker, the Starry-eyed One. But also, or more so, remember the Disgruntled One, the Disappointed One, the Bored Out of His Mind One. Remember what each brings to the table, to the classroom, to the discussion, even if you cannot hear the words out loud. Remember how each of them made you feel, what each of them made you think, why each of them matter. Remember what you owe each of them, a chance to find themselves in your classroom, whether aloud or not, on the page or not. Remember that your job is not to smile through flowers or cry through critique, but to level the playing field the best you can and watch from the sidelines. Remember.

Remember to ask yourself. Have you given them a wholesome education today?

Love,

Akka (on a good day)

Reflections in the receding waters - Part 2

Up until 2015, power cuts conjured up images of a heavy wooden oonjal (swing) in a century-old house buried deep in a town known more in association with a Robin Hood-esque sandalwood smuggler than any image that colours my memories. For the first few years, that oonjal hung against the backdrop of a blown-up picture from the era where every frame was planned, choreographed, and executed to perfection so as to not “waste the roll.” The girl stands on what looks like a bridge, clad in a red pattu-pavadai and blue blouse, forehead adorned with a pottu whose size betrays the wearer’s age – too young. The child’s hair is in the quintessential ‘fountain kudumi’, that rite of passage that every girl passes through in the growth from mushroom cut to the more social acceptable “long hair.” There were a few other pictures on that wall, all from eras bygone, the creams and peaches of their tones blending right in to the peeling, crumbling walls of the house itself.

On that oonjal sits a lady, her feet folded up (sometimes both, occasionally one), revealing a certain ease that hangs easily about her. She seems comfortable with where she is, what she is, who she is. Every few minutes, if the air got too still or the room too quiet, she’d drop a foot down and give the oonjal a little nudge to set the creaking chains in motion as they strained against the engraved wooden plank above. On either side of this woman sit two girls, each clad in appropriately demure clothing – pavadais, frocks, skirts that touch the knees, every passing summer marked by the increasing length of their identical double braids that frame their faces. They almost always lean into the older woman, either snaking an arm through hers or resting an elbow on her lap, or better yet, stretching out on either side, amicably splitting her lap right down the middle. Every once in a while, the woman’s place would be taken over by a much older man, comforting in a veshti (dhoti) softened by age and a sleeved banian greyed by wear. His lap was even better; thicker, broader, more present. With every power cut, the two girls crawled their way to habit. The same oonjal. The same positions. To listen to stories of ancestors and local kings, mythologies and the heroics of the Gods, and occasionally, folklore from farther away. In the security of the darkness, they played word games and stumbled through the labyrinth that is English vocabulary. They learnt music and poetry, and learnt to identify the stars and the stories that go with each one of them. They laughed till their stomachs hurt. All on an oonjal in a house without power.

Until 2015, power cuts conjured up images of a heavy wooden oonjal and two pigtailed girls. It told the stories of the summer of my childhood visiting my maternal grandparents, swatting away insects as my grandfather told us tales from the pages of history, our own and other.

Up until 2015, power cuts were the slightly painful relationship you could never entirely come to hate, the one-too-many-eth piece of chocolate cake on a non-cheat day of a diet. There was mystery to it, an in that mystery lay an aura, a charm. Up until 2015, power cuts were cozy.

And then it was 2015.

I still talk of it as “just now,” the evening when a friend of mine and I sat huddled in a third girl’s hostel room in complete darkness. We had lost power a couple of days ago and news was trickling in that the city had it bad, that the downpour was in no hurry to stop, and we may not be able to deal with its consequences. We heard that a radio station had swung into action, that they had stopped broadcasting entertainment in favour of playing messenger between Those Who Could and Those Who Couldn’t. I remember how time hung heavy and low in the room that day, how every second seemed pregnant with the exhausted roller-coaster between dread and relief as our minds scanned through a mental checklist of all the neighbourhoods we cared about. Safe. Safe. Safe. Not so much. Oh damn. Safe.

Our lives for the last couple of days had been something out of a dream that was not quite right. We would wake up whenever the sun intruded into our rooms and head out to eat whenever our stomachs grew louder than the voices in the corridor outside. We could yell out to each other without having to battle with blaring speakers and music that usually kept us company. We read physical books that weren’t course material, played board games, and sat and chatted about everything under the sun. And then, that one night, we huddled in a friend’s room and decided we’d use the precious little phone battery we had left amongst us to hear of the world outside.

In the year since, I have written about my flood experiences plenty, enough for me to not have to revisit it. Yet, despite it all, despite the rather privileged experience I had of the Chennai floods (my home and everyone in it were fine, to begin with), something happened these last two days that shook my very being. One year later, I live in Anaikatti, a village on the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, a small settlement where nothing much actually ever happens. As I stepped into my room after spending Diwali weekend at home with a phone that was already dead with all the travel usage, I thought I had a hot shower and a plug point waiting for me before I ran to answer the cries of ‘Yashasvini Akka vandhutaange’ ('Yashasvini Akka has come!') that greeted my arrival. I walked in, casually flicked on the switches…and nothing happened. I called out to a colleague in the kitchenette next door. Has it been gone long, I asked, expecting her to say perhaps a couple of hours. Yes, since 6 PM last evening, she replied. That was fourteen hours and counting. I told myself it would be fine, dunked a bucket of ice-cold water on me in the claims of a shower, and ran off to class.

At 10:30 AM, as we drank our morning coffee, there was no power.

At 12:45 PM, as we sat down to lunch, there was no power.

At 3:30 PM, as we drank our afternoon tea, there was no power.

At 6:00 PM, when Grade 10 wrapped up their extra class, there was no power.

And at 6:00 PM, just as Grade 10 traipsed out of the school, it started getting dark. And the discomfort, the restlessness, the nervousness that had threatened to rear up within me all day was getting too loud to ignore. An Akka from housekeeping walked up to me and said ‘idhu ungalukku,’ gesturing that she expected me to take something from her. In the semi-darkness, it took me a minute to realise what it was. She handed me two candles and a matchbox in an action that reminded me with an uncanny force of another Akka in another building who had done the same thing for me just about a year ago. Adhiseshamma with pink candles and Tiger matches. Pali Akka with white candles and Cats matches. Apart from the minor detail of human names and animal species, what really was the difference?

I hid my discomfort behind a mask of jest. This is just like the floods, I chuckled. We barely know what the outside world is upto. Yet inside me, that same sentence took on a different tone – one of anxiety, of uncertainty. It came with images that haven’t gotten blurred by Time - of the Paati who berated me for giving her only one biscuit packet because veetle rendu pasange irukkange ma (there are two boys at home, ma), of the Anna who ridiculed me for handing out a few millilitres of Dettol because idhu vechuttu veeteya kazhuva mudiyum (can I really clean out my house with this?), of the Akka who asked me surreptitiously for pads because en prachanai unakku thaan puriyum ma (only you will understand my problems, ma) and ippo indhe time le ezhundukave mudiyale (I can't even get up at this time). Of the army jawan who asked me to go ahead and distribute the measly dozen food packets I had, of the mob that appeared from I-don’t-know-where at the sight of a jute bag in my hand, of the crowd that decided they couldn’t be bothered with me once it ran out, of the hand that caught the small of my back when they pushed me backwards into oncoming traffic on a busy main road. Yesterday, as I sat in a sari, my head tucked into my knees on a granite bench at a school far away, I could almost see water marks on the walls in front of me.

Today, from this corner of my world, I hope that Anna and Akka and Paati are okay. I hope that Anna’s baby and wife survived having a snake to keep them company in the stagnant water of their home, that they got the Dettol they needed to wash away the stench of a disaster. I hope that Akka was able to afford a new set of utensils inside of rubbing them thin to rid them of the filth. I hope the Paati’s grandsons play in the rain today, setting paper boats made of newsprint down the muddy streams that are Chennai’s gullies. I hope they don’t think of rain and think of a Parle G biscuit packet split in two. And I hope their Paati watches them and thinks of childhood and innocence, not of a helpless young girl who just didn’t have enough to give.

One year later, amidst a different rain and a different power cut in a different place, this is what I know. Up until 2015, power cuts were cozy. Today, it is all just a little scary.

You. Are. Doing. Just. Fine.

A few weeks ago, I was asked to write an advice column to my 15-year-old high school self. What would I say? What do I wish I knew? How could I be better equipped? Hugely complicated/influenced by the fact that I now teach 15-year-olds as a full-time job, I set out to do what justice I could to the task. And anyway, we could use a reminder every once in a while, right?

This letter is as much a response to the brief as is it a celebration of Headstart - the confidence it gave me to chase my dreams, the safety it gave me to stumble and fall, and the support it has given me ever since ever time I chose my path. From being the 6th grade kid who walked into a bedroom-turned-classroom to an alum beaming at the red brick buildings, this is the story of the last almost-decade.

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Dear 15-year-old me,

I remember high school. I remember there were some good days and other bad days. I remember feeling like those IGCSE exams were the bane of all student existence and the pressure to do well, first batch and all. I remember being the first batch to graduate, and looking at Facebook pictures of makeshift graduation caps for this year’s batch, I remember our small little celebration in a classroom where junior students ripped pages of their notebook to write ‘I will miss you’ notes. I remember the group of us, four kids in total, who made that class, and having class pictures with more teachers than students. I remember Culture Class and science lab and doing the Wizard of Oz as a musical in that last year at school. I remember splashes of colour and the odd sound, weaving a tapestry that makes my memories of high school.

You know what I don’t remember though? I don’t remember what that big fight was about. I don’t remember the words inside the colourful mind map that we discussed in Geography class, my teacher and I, one on one. I don’t remember the days and the months and the years that were meant to go beside the doodled map of Europe we created, an F-shaped France and bits and bobbles all around it making up an entire continent aeons away. I don’t remember what the essay was on; just my teacher reminding me for the gazillionth time that ‘no one’ was two different words no matter what I thought. I don’t remember much of my Economics, only the sheaf of papers that accompanied Anna as he walked in, showing us what real preparation looked like. I don’t for the life of me remember the details of those classes; the dates and definitions, formulae and figures. But the dictum of being prepared? Oh yes, that one I do remember.

You see, I know high school can be tough. It is that uncomfortable mix of feeling settled because you grew up in that building and feeling restless because, well, you are fifteen. It is feeling like the unfairness of the world is summed up in the five alphabets of I-G-C-S-E, topped with the cherry of being the first batch. No pressure, hon. It is the joy of small classrooms – getting to know each other so well, learning to work together, blurring the lines between school-friends-family. It is also the nightmare of small classrooms – what happens if you fight with the one other girl in your class? I get it. I was there too, remember?

So here it is, my (and by that measure, future-your) sage words of wisdom. Put this up on that pin-up board of yours, wedged between Math formulae and Biology diagrams. You are doing fine.

You. Are. Doing. Just. Fine.

I could sit here and write tomes of all the things I wish you knew now, or the lessons I am praying you will learn. Except, when the time is right, I know you will. You will learn to accept yourself, be comfortable in your skin, make the most of every situation placed before you. You will grow into forming opinions and standing up for them, engaging in debate and holding your ground. You will get over the fear of walking into a room of strangers and come to embrace it, get past the terror of a stage and grow to feel comfortable with a mike. You will stop seeing ‘studious’ as an uncomfortable label attached to the back of an already too-long name and accept it as the person you are, even swapping it for ‘muggu’ in later years, laughing it off as just another descriptor of a complex character. You will figure out how to make your choices and live with their consequences. You will discern the path less taken and agonize over whether you want to be the one heading down that way, and then go ahead anyway. And through it all, you will be okay.

But I am getting a rather long way ahead of myself, jumping the gun almost a decade. For now, just know that you are doing okay. High school will come and go. Grade sheets will be celebrated and forgotten. Friends will be made and lost and then settle into the comfortable distance of occasional Facebook pings and the silent knowledge of support. Teachers will last, through one school and the next, through college, your first job and beyond, always the reassuring green dot on your Gmail chat list, a text away from help and hope. And every time someone asks you after a speech or an article or a presentation or just coffee where the seeds for everything after were sown, you will smile and talk about that school you once went to, a once-minimalist building where you painted on the walls and decorated the classrooms, where you shivered through your first speech and stumbled through your first performance. Always a Headstarter, you will say, and you will mean it, long after you are gone. Then as much as now, remember. You are doing okay. And when you feel like you aren’t doing okay, think back to a line of advice that will stay with you for years to come from a teacher in those high school classrooms. You aren’t Atlas. And you are doing okay.

Love,

23-year-old you

The Stories of Ziro

These last ten days have been the story of stories; a string of persons and peoples and stories, each vastly different from the other.

First there was the couple behind me in line at Chennai airport, deep in the middle of a domestic argument, unperturbed by being entertainment for all in earshot. Ask your brother to behave, she said. He is my brother. Who are you to demand, he retorted, and they went on and on, back and forth, voices rising and dipping as we all inched our way forward towards the almost-elusive red-topped desks of SpiceJet. Everyone made eye contact with everyone else, smiling sheepishly, almost apologizing for eavesdropping, seeming to say ‘you know, I’m not usually this badly behaved, but well…'

Then came the story of the air hostess. I forget her name, but in my head, she looks like a Reshma. Or a Snehaa. Not Sneha, mind you. The extra A adds character. But coming back to the story of Reshma-Snehaa from Chandigarh. Sitting as I was at the emergency exit seat, she was right next to me for take-off and landing, overly worried about my jacket not being in the overhead compartment. It might fall on me, she reasoned. A jacket. It seemed odd, the insistence. She sat in front of me, uncomfortably crossing her legs at the knees, her black panty-hose seeming like it had seen many, many thousands of feet above the sea day and again. Her foundation was a little too thick and something about her posture made me pose a question – not the usual small talk about how beautiful the clouds looked but an actual question. Do you like your job, I asked. She seemed startled. Had no one asked? Had it been so long since her conversations had gone beyond ‘Welcome onboard’? I like partying with the girls, she said. We have to fly six schedules at a stretch. I got home only at 7 AM this morning and here I am now. Somehow in that moment, the foundation got explained. We have a layover at The Park tonight, she went on. Interesting, I remember thinking, how our layovers are in airports and hers in hotels. Perspective. Take care, she wished me as I left the flight, veering away from the script of ‘Thank you for choosing SpiceJet.’ You have fun tonight, I smiled, all the while aware of fellow passengers wondering where this familiarity came from. I had an inside secret with Reshma-Snehaa.

The Guwahati flight story was one of a malfunctioning Compaq ThinkPad. It played music, it played music, and it played music. The slightly shaken man across the aisle from me tried everything in the amateur handbook for misbehaving computers. Esc. Ctrl+Alt+Del. Force Suspend. Mute. Nothing. Finally amidst many half-muffled sniggers, he exasperatedly force-shut-down the whole thing and pretended to be deeply engrossed in the inflight food menu. I wonder if he knew he couldn’t buy anything on the forty minute flight anyway.

Get out of Guwahati airport – defense airport, by the way. You are greeted by ominous announcements that photography is prohibited. I had been told that a certain Sujata had been waiting at the airport for the last few hours, and figured I would wait with her. I noticed a girl sitting with her rucksack for company and very confidently approached her. You must be Sujata, I announced. Umm no, I am Supriya, she replied. Still worked though. It turned out we were going to the same place, she with a friend and me alone. How did your parents let you, she wanted to know. Not the first time I had faced that question.

The state of the "good" roads.

And then for the next few hours, it was an influx of stories. The corporate lawyer who took two solo trips a year and incidentally was a mother of a three-year-old. The uber-cool nurse who later revealed she was in the army. The travel writer who wrote with more desks than I could keep track of. The textile businessman from Punjab. The IT guys from Bangalore and Bombay. The girl who topped all the rankings there were to land a fancy job just to quit because what better time than now? In that bus at the parking lot of Guwahati airport, there were so many stories lying just beneath the layer of frustration (six hour delay in leaving) and anticipation (four day music fest in Arunachal!) The best part? No one needed to scratch it. We just let it lie. No history, no baggage, hell no last names even. We were just a motley set of solo travelers heading out to arguably the country’s most far flung music fest. And that, there, was a story in itself.

And then there were the others. The Coast Guard guy. The Swiggy guy. The girls in the tent next door with a dreamcatcher down the middle. The guy with the awesome pants. Names became immaterial, a redundant detail. In the temporariness of Ziro, there lay the magic of freedom.

The view from the campsite
Courtesy: Mehr Paintal

Music apart (and that everyone will write about), Ziro is a wondrous place. We’ll get a Sumo from Naharlagun, they told us, and somehow that translated to ‘cannot be too far away’ in my head. Six hours on non-existent roads proved me wrong. The closest “city” was Hapoli, our go-to for everything from Lays chips to ATMs. We made two round trips to Hapoli and each was a story to tell. The first time round, we were an eight-person bunch in need of localizing. Used to flip-flops and the luxury of swiping a card at our convenience, this was a trip in an effort to adapt. Gumboots and hard cash had us set out to “find our way” to Hapoli. After walking resolutely in the opposite direction for fifteen minutes (we were told there was a taxi stand there), we stopped a local in a smallish car. He had four seats free. We were eight of us. Could he drop us to the taxi stand, we ventured. Sure, he agreed, and we tumbled in, a rather tangled mess of limbs. It was he, Chada, who told us the story of Ziro. Ziro was a tribe, and a bad one at that – one who practiced head-hunting. They spread violence and hatred amongst the people and so, they were soon chased out by the tribe that remain the local population – the Apatanis. The Ziro people were gone, but somehow the name stayed, and the Apatani women began practicing a form of facial tattoos to scare outsider men away. Chada then asked us where we were from, and we joked that he had the country crammed into his car – Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, all of it. He drove us to Hapoli, overheard us cribbing about the state of the ATMs (not working/too crowded) and made phone calls on our behalf. Jugaad tho ho hi jayega, he announced. A few minutes later, he apologised, saying if it was an Arunachal Pradesh account, he would’ve helped. Instead, he offered to wait until we finished our errands to drop us back to the campsite. We convinced him we would be okay and set out in search of our candy-coloured gumboots. On the way back, we found our way to the taxi stand where we met two business partners from Jaipur and rode back up to the camp. How did you figure we were headed to the same place, we asked. Shiny new gumboots.

The next Hapoli trip was just as much of a story, if not more. Living in a campsite has its definite wins but personal hygiene is not one of them and running water fast becomes things of lore. We decided we needed atleast one shower to ride us through four days and invited ourselves to a friend’s room. On the hierarchy of Ziro festival-ers, he was the divine incarnate, with hot water on tap, plug points 24x7, and a mattress to boot. So us three girls set out to find our way in search of cleanliness. When we saw an army van pass us by, we stopped it out of habit, just to try our luck. Havaldar Saab not only stopped and dropped by 200m away from our destination but also called us in fifteen minutes to make sure we had reached. Showered and clean, many hours later, the three of us and our host set back out for the fest only to be greeted by abandoned roads and no transport options in sight. Hartal. So we waited. And ate street food while we were at it. But primarily waited. And then we saw a car. A five seater with four people in it. We were four more people standing on the street. Yet something possessed us to ask. One of the people sitting in the back plus one of our own proceeded to open up the boot and sit on luggage while the other six squeezed into the car. From Hapoli to Ziro. We definitely made heads turn. And that is how we got back to Ziro.

The festival at the day stage.
Courtesy: Mehr Paintal

The trip back to Guwahati was essentially the same in reverse, adjusted for the wear and tear of four days of tent existence. At 6 AM one fine morning (no idea what day it was) we found ourselves in front of Guwahati airport, our official pick up/drop point. I was the first one left in the group slated to leave and my train was at 12:30 PM. We sat around like homeless people, scattered on luggage trolleys and pavements, too sleepy to figure out what to do, invited raised eyebrows and even the one-off question of ‘where did you guys come from?’ Eventually some heads swung into action. Oyo and Uber saw ten of us rent one room. Express purpose? Bathroom, bed and a place to throw luggage. No sooner had we all trooped into the room much to the amazement/amusement of the management did seven of us find a way to squeeze ourselves onto a double bed. I do not know how or for how long. It was 11 AM when I woke up. I bade my goodbyes and made my way to Guwahati junction, with the Brahmaputra to my left for company most of the way.

The train brought with it more stories. A 74-year-old man who wanted to know the exact itinerary of my travel – where was I going, which was my next train, what route did it take, how long would it take me? A couple of matronly looking women who only said they were travelling to Kolkata for “work”. An older woman who proceeded to give us her family history – a sister in Guwahati, a brother somewhere in Maharastra, and she was a Jain who was on her way back from visiting her guru. A 30-something-year-old man on the side lower berth below me who called me ‘madam’ once and then went to sleep for the next sixteen hours.

The story of Kolkata was equal part familiarity and strangeness. The familiarity smelt of soap, shampoo, and a lived-in house. It was the yellow of a borrowed t-shirt, the warmth of a friend who knew you in a previous avatar. In Kolkata, familiarity was Salt Lake. And then came the strangeness – of taxi guys who spoke in things only deceptively sounding like Hindi to the Madrasi ear, of the mad traffic intense in quality not quantity, the ample availability of literature and music and HS in the air. In Kolkata, strangeness was College Street, and sitting on a disintegrating stool while someone ran helter-skelter trying to source Darlymple at your say so. It is being approached by a wide-eyed girl who says the words ‘Presidency’ and ‘play’ before disappearing into the crowd again. Actually, the real strangeness is running into Presidency Girl again just as you finish your street shopping loot, and in one second, deciding to follow her to this event, Bengali flyer in hand. The joy of travelling alone is the joy of split second decisions that end with invitations to camp at Presidency on the next visit to Kolkata. Street plays in Kolkata as the evening sun faded out to give way to spot lights and phone flash lights. Just because. Like I said in conversation with Ms-UG2 Sociology, serendipity works in magical ways. Much too soon, it was time to get on the next train. Howrah-Chennai Central, or so I thought.

The posters at Presidency College.

Perched as I am atop B1 24 Coromandel Express, my company has grown on me. There is the trilingual uncle (Bangla-Hindi-English) and his supremely well put together wife who hasn’t spoken a word in the last thirty-five hours. I have never seen someone so well coordinated for a long-distance train journey – pale gold crepe sari with gold embroidery, attached blouse, chappal with gold work on them…She fell sick a few hours ago and is now lying down with the help of Avomin. And then the family of three – uncle who took my help to get the sim out of his phone and very determinedly offered me dates, aunty who insists on talking to me only in Bangla and looks like she brought the kitchen with her for company (they are carrying a cardboard carton of water bottles amongst other pots and pans), and the girl who looks a couple of years older than me and deeply disapproving of everything I do and incredulous that I don’t understand Bangla. Oh, Madrasi, she later explained away. Trilingual uncle greeted me this morning with “brush nahin kar rahi ho, beta?” and guilt-tripped me into it before it was 9:30 AM. The other lone traveler in our midst is a man speaking muffled Tamil and clearer Hindi, wearing khaki shorts and a blue t-shirt stamped with the words ‘US AIR FORCE,’ and sporting a crepe bandage over what looks like accident injuries on his leg. We make a rather amusing group. In the next bay are a bunch of kids for whom every station since Odisha has been Chennai, and whose lifetime amusement lies in imitating the vendors who walk by. Paani, mango, cool drinks! Anda biryani, extra meals!

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That is where I stopped writing this piece. A couple of hours later, we pulled into Egmore instead of Central (since Central only takes arrivals till 11 PM apparently) and long story short, I managed to get home in one piece.

There is a much, much longer travelogue for anyone who is interested. Please feel free to comment/email/text/reach out, and I would be happy to email it to you.

Feminist.

A friend just asked me to send her one line on what feminism is and what it is not. Obviously writing all of that in just one line turned out to be quite the impossible exercise and I ended up sending in a rather mediocre sentence. But what did happen is that it got me thinking. What is feminism? Or as is probably the right way to phrase that question, what is feminism to me?

In my head, feminism wears a crop top and malli poo. Because she can. She sports a nose ring, and chuckles at anyone who asks for the logic of piercing one side over the other. She is quiet but assertive, self-assured but not aggressive, not because aggression is wrong but because it just isn’t her. She is the cheekiness that says in response to a blessing of “finding a good man and having many children” that the two are rather disconnected, don’t you think? She asks one too many uncomfortable questions, has no problems whatsoever discussing the gory details of her period and what a pain in every sense it could be, and silently tracks The Ladies Finger posts on social media. She chooses her battles, picks her fights, and yet, makes sure she stands her ground where it matters (to her, of course). Yes, she will most definitely keep her maiden name. No, nothing will happen to the pickle if you touch it, and no matter what a genius move that campaign was, Whisper will be frowned upon as long as it shows blue ink and white shorts.

Feminism is you and me, yesterday and tomorrow, on good days and bad. It is us with our hair in a messy bun, loafing around in a boyfriend’s old grey t-shirt looking at PhD applications knowing we will be touching thirty when we see it through. It is us in silk saris and decked up in jewellery at a cousin’s cousin’s cousin’s wedding, pointedly telling the neighbour uncle’s father that sure, the euphemistic next meal might be at your house, but he may end up starving a while. It is us through all the gritting and grinning, through conversations with strangers (“no, my father didn’t ‘allow’ me to study”) and siblings (“no, you can wipe the table clean this time). It is every day.

The thing is, feminism is fast becoming the new F-word in town. As adolescents get more and more numbed to the traditionally censored, this is quickly taking its place. We all know enough, seen enough, hopefully read enough to know that feminism isn’t about man-hating, bra-burning and yelling till the cows go home. Sure, there is some amount of it that has happened, but like most other social movements, feminism has a history, a trajectory, a moment in time that gives all these things one particular characteristic that we so often sorely miss out. Context. But this is the thing, this isn’t a history lesson on the different waves of the feminist movement. I am not here to write about the suffragette movement and The Declaration of the Rights of the Woman and the Female Citizen. As I was replying to my friend’s text, I found myself pulled towards making personal statements. What was it to me? What was it not? Who was I to commit to universals?

Back in the second year of college, a professor (who then went on to mould so many of us in so many different ways) asked which of us identify as a feminist. It felt like a trick question that none of us knew the “right” answer to. I remember a few people tentatively raising their hands while the rest of us tried to understand what she asked, what it meant, and what it made us. And three years later, many of us are still on that path. But coming back to me.

Feminism for me lies in the small steps, in the everyday, in the formation of new habits. I became a feminist when, after years of being told I was too big and fat for shorts, I walked out to my mess hall in a denim pair that made me feel great. I became a feminist when I decided I wouldn’t change my last name whenever I got married, because I had spent an awful lot of time building up this identity. I became a feminist when I consciously stopped equating unwaxed underarms with tardiness, though I never crossed that line myself. I became a feminist when we all finally said the words out loud, accepting what we were all thinking anyway – what a pain wearing a bra is! I became a feminist when I called out my parents every time they inadvertently made sexist remarks; ability to describe men, physicality to describe women. I became a feminist when car conversations slowly transformed. I became a feminist when I reminded myself to use gender-neutral adjectives when writing my articles, replacing ‘super-cool Mr. X and gorgeous Ms. Y’ with ‘super-cool Mr. X and amazing Ms.Y,’ both just as much a stranger to me as the other. I became a feminist when I reminded myself to dream after a conversation with one of my thesis interviewees who mentioned how subconsciously we teach girls not to dream in the long run because who knows what lies on the other side of marriage? I became a feminist when, so many times through the course of a meal, the waiter would ask Sir for the order, check with Sir about the food, and hand Sir the bill, even if the Sir in question was my brother five years younger than me and broke. I became a feminist when I watched my mother, a woman who didn’t have the academic vocabulary but still taught me that my periods shouldn’t stop me from anything at all, that God doesn’t care that I am bleeding, and that my conscience is my judge.  I became a feminist when a girl in my classroom, faced with a tough essay, retorted that she would just get married after 10^th grade and I promised myself it wouldn’t be for a lack of choice.

But I also became a feminist when I chose not to apply for a PhD. I also became a feminist when I decided that the day I get married, I will not protest the kanya dhaanam, no matter how archaic and patriarchal it may be, because the romanticism of that moment is too dear. I am as much a feminist when I open a door as when I walk through it first. I am as much a feminist when I pay the bill as when someone else does, independent of their gender identity. I am a feminist because I choose my stances, pick my battles, make my peace with where I stand on this spectrum. I am a feminist because *I* make those decisions.

I became a feminist through the days where I lived next door to girls who were on the same journey as I was, charting their own path through the wilderness. When I got the words to describe the gnawing inside me, the strength to rock the boat a little, and the confidence to survive the storm, I became a feminist.  

Fresh graduate-ing

In definitely more personal writing than I usually put up online, a piece as the ink on my newly minted degree certificate metaphorically dries.

If this was Instagram, #instigram, and for the first time, a college post tagged #throwback. :/

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Dear IITM,

I miss you.

It has barely been three days since you officially closed your doors behind me and yet, already, I miss you.

I miss that corner in 409 that was witness to so many conversations; heartbreak and euphoria in equal measure, that space where we could sit in our t-shirts or kurtis and forget about the social norms of appropriate dressing in favour of just being.

I miss the view from my hostel room floor, the right edge of the clothes line blocking the otherwise uninterrupted view of the Chennai evening sky with just a few windows to remind me of where I am. I miss the ability to look up from typing away at my thesis till my fingers are sore, and notice with every paragraph the changing hues as the sun set and slipped away late into the midnight sky.

I miss knowing that no matter where the sun was and what tattered state those paragraphs were in, Ramu would have the best double chai on campus and anywhere between two doors to two floors away, I would have company to propel me through those few hundred metres, all the while our vocabularies getting ready to comment at how Himalaya was such a gendered space, how the female body was still a spectacle and how the adrak-waali chai was gold.

I miss Sharav, the building that was home for four years, stage to the complaints against monkeys and men in equal measure. The walls that surrounded me for those years bore the scars of generations past me, each Room Mother/Sister leaving a bit of her behind in that dingy, ten by ten space, before moving on, never quite just as complete. For years, I looked at a door forever scarred by green marker reminding me to take some mechanics textbook (and medicines) and I often wondered if to-do lists and memos were meant to last quite that long. Just beneath the switchboard was the rather detailed sketch of the female anatomy, and so many of us have wondered what the conversation was that put that there.

I miss the stretch outside Sharav, the one always spotted with deer and couples, each having their own fun unmindful of the others. I miss walking on the “sidewalk” to mess, cribbing about just how many times we had to subject ourselves to being fingerprinted as IIT Madras tried to embrace the biometric bug. I miss hopping over to Sarayu, barely decently dressed in short shorts and an overlarge grey t-shirt, to drop off readings. “Saaptutu varom, Anna,” we used to say.

I miss the department, and how it taught every last one of us to identify Warli art. We may not know Gond from Madhubani from Chikankaari but DoHSS produced batch after batch of a motley set of students who went out into the world armed with the ability to identify traditionally white paint on earthen backgrounds.

I miss the corridors. The stretch outside DCF where you may trip over a Dead Poets’ Society meeting if you aren’t careful, or the one outside the office where we squatted for our first All Coordinators Meeting when I was Secretary, more preoccupied with whether the man in a kurta was a professor or not (and where was that kurta from, anyway?) Oh, and the professors’ corridor, and all the times we have been at our tippy-toed best, trying to sneak past those we didn’t want to catch, hiding amongst the shadows of the collective. Or the monkey corridor, starting at 356 and stretching all the way to (Prof) Suresh Babu’s room, the site of much yelping and screaming, and during thesis writing, pacing. Standing at the MML door looking at the other end at 5 PM, you would see a rather dark tunnel with evening light silhouetting the other end, and so many Instagram feeds are peppered with that view.

I miss CLT, and the door on the stage left that always creaked at the uncanniest times. I miss the high of being side-stage minutes before a LitSoc drams performance, and the comfort of settling down into the blue chairs to listen as WM/LM solo filled the air. I remember the adrenaline of a two-minute costume change, and a play that saw saris falling off and hairstyling being improv-ed into the act. I remember the anxiety of events, hoping the seats fill up, briefing photographers to shoot at flattering angles, and the unfettered celebration when people stood in the aisles for an HSS department event. I miss being a freshie, cheering a classmate on while she sang, and being a senior, waltzing into the auditorium only to hear our favourites.

I miss the shortcuts – the OAT route to Guru, the dirt path leading up to CLT, and feeling like each of us discovered a step of it. My eyes are still not used to that monstrosity of a new department next door to CLT (Chem?) and its multi-coloured fountain. Instead, my eyes will forever be trained on the massive banyan tree that acted as our parking canopy, our photoshoot backdrop, our shade for late night conversing and confiding. And all this while, I will chuckle at the memory of someone asking me if insti had a banyan tree, and my response barely hiding my amusement. “We have a Banyan Avenue,” I explained.

I miss the rooftops, and the times that were spent on it, whether we were supposed to be there or not. From a freshie who climbed up Jam Tank in a sari to a senior who vegetated on ESB, I will carry pictures of that clear, starry sky even as my hands swatted at pestering mosquitoes. I will always belong to that generation who complained (against the dictats of conscientious citizenship, sure) about the newly installed solar panels on top of HSB. Where would we host department events now, we cribbed.

I miss the perpetual hunt for first phone signal, and then WiFi. Sometimes I imagine voices behind me asking “Airport Three or LAN5?” and for a second, I am back in that dingy, unhealthy, artificially recycled air of MML. Even today as I scroll down my phone, I see Wlan of varying numbers and each tells a different story – some classes survived thanks to class groups, some semesters when we’d know each other’s timetables based on Whatsapp activity, some classrooms better loved than others (freshie classroom, please!) And on days that I feel particularly lonely, I miss hosting WiFi networks, being asked whether it is my “usual” password and creating a map of our hours, each network name speaking of the trials and triumphs that dotted that night, that paper, that presentation.

Sometimes I even miss SAC, and the journey it represents. From meeting a girl in red tights and a white kurta at Orientation to treating her home as my own, from entering a lost freshie with no idea of what lay ahead to dancing my heart out for the first time at Sunburn, from getting lost on my way from Sharav to sitting for hours in a horrendous yet momentous graduating gown, what that hall has not seen.

I could go on about how much the classroom has taught me and what the professors gave me. I could write pages on how much we have grown and found the hints of our adult selves in that place. I could speak about getting a degree and everything else that we lost or gained. But I think I will stop here.

I miss the jungle and so, I write. Sitting hundreds of kilometres away, I create a map of memories that weave together half a decade, creating a dotted path through the jungle that this MA in Development Studies has been.

In what may be the first in a rather long series, this is just to say I miss it all.

À Montréal, with love

Inspired by an old poem of mine recently getting published here, and reeling from a wave of nostalgia (this day, last year - Montreal Jazz Festival), here is my next attempt at poetry. Quite excited about this one. For those of you who are pro-French, pliss to write off faults as rustiness. First non-school post in a while!

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Excusez-moi, mais…

Où est ce magasin?

Ou où est le cinema?

Oh la la! Où cette magnifique basilique!

Où est la?

Where is this shop?

The cinema?

Oh my! Or that phenomenal basilica!

Where is that?

Excusez-moi, mais…

Changez un numero

Du six à cinq

Ca devienra 2015

Change a number

From six to five

It becomes 2015

Cette jour, mais pas cet année

This day, but not this year,

Un monde different

Un monde dans l’autre

Avec une language inconnue

Les aliments unheard of

A world different

A world in another

With a langue unknown

The food pas entendu

Montreal, Juillet 2015

Aujord’hui (ou ajh)

Today (or tdy)

J’habite, je travail, je reste

Je mange et bois et dors

I live, I work, I stay

I eat and drink and sleep

Trop loin de cet été

L’année previous

Very far from that summer

The year dernière

  

Ajh

Tdy

De Montreal à Anaikatti

La seule chose qui reste

The only thing that stays

Est le francais mal

Et la confusion de le/la

Ou du/de la?

La grammaire.

La logique.

Le fragrance de la langue dans l’air.

Is the French bad

And the incertitude of le/la

Or du/de la?

The grammar.

The logic.

The parfum of the language in l’air.

La seule chose qui

Reste avec moi

De cet summer

Est une phrase

“Ca me manque”

The only thing that

Stays with me

Of that été

Is a phrase

“That me misses.”

I miss it.

Manque. C’est tout.

Miss. That is all.

Dear Kid, Oops.

Quite enjoying writing these 'letters'. This next one has been in the pipeline for a bit now, inspired by daily run-ins and awkward situations.

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Dear kid who waited for me at the door,

I am sorry.

While you were busy waiting for my permission to walk in, I was busy coming to terms with being Teacher. There you stood, hand outstretched, desperately trying to catch my eye while your classmates did not know how to bring my attention to what was happening without being awkward or disrespectful. I promise I wasn’t punishing you, even though it seemed that way.

You see, no one has called me Teacher before. I was always Volunteer at best. I would sing songs and teach rhymes and we would all dance around in circles. And here you stand, waiting for me to ask you to sit, and it is my job to teach you how to spell grammar and then use it, how to pronounce pronunciation and then everything else, what vocabulary means and all the words that fall under it. While you stood at the door, I was trying to build a bridge between Volunteer and Teacher.

Dear kid who asked me for permission to drink water,

I am sorry.

While you were fervently clutching on to your blue plastic bottle and its precious mouthful of water, hoping that I wouldn’t ask you to wait till the end of class, I was hoping my muscle-memory spelling of ‘persuasion,’ was correct. There you sat, with your arm in the air, calling out to me, while my mind ran riot with the endless possibilities of how your life would change thanks to a wrong spelling in your middle school English class. What if the line between make and break lay exactly at the spelling of ‘persuasion’ and it would be my fault? After all, I backspaced twice even when I was typing this. While you sat with your arm in the air, I was standing with my back to you, thinking of synonyms.

Dear kid who wished me good morning from across the hall,

I am sorry.

While you were looking at me and smiling, all ashine with early morning enthusiasm, I was trying to pre-empt all the different questions I would be facing in the classroom. I was trying to form politically correct examples to teach the importance of capitals and the power of punctuation. Of course, I went off on a tangent from there to alliterations and prepositions…There you stood, looking hopefully for recognition and fiercely proud of how well-mannered you were being, while I was chalking out my armour for the rest of the day. While you watched me expectantly, I was looking over my shoulder, absentmindedly wondering who you were talking to.

Dear kid who kept standing in class,

I forgot to ask you to sit. Oops.

There are some moments you catch me off guard, minutes where that ‘English-kaari Akka’ is just staring into thin air plotting and planning in the safety of my head. But then, I promise you this - inside your classroom, I might not realise you are asking me for water or to walk in or sit down, but I do know the difference between my prepositions and conjunctions, between rhetoric and metaphor. And by the end of the year, hopefully so will you.

To my English teachers

Dear Rajam Ma’am, Vanaja Ma’am, Sheila Davis Ma’am, Sudha Aunty, Rajitha Aunty, Vimala Aunty, Lakshmi Aunty and Yasmeen Ma’am,

How did you do it? Please teach me, one more time.

Were you never afraid or unsure? Did you really know all your grammar rules by heart and did all the spellings always roll off your tongue? Did you ever sneak a peek at your phone’s autocorrect, or a dictionary, or a newspaper, or pretty much anything else to remind yourself of the difference between ‘stationery’ and ‘stationary’? Or did you, like we all believed, just know?

You see, as students we always feel like our teachers are invincible, all-knowing, unshakable. You walked into class with those notes in your hand and that look in your eyes, and every inch seemed to scream of confidence and assurance. We believed you. And all of a sudden, I am the teacher now, and I don’t know if my kids look at me the way I looked at you. What I do know is that I do take sneak peeks, that my lesson planning is more madness than method just now, and for every question I get asked, I send a silent prayer up that I know the answer, or at the very least, know where to find it.

Did our questions ever stump you? I don’t remember, but maybe I have forgotten. Did you ever tell us you will have to get back to us or was everything always on your fingertips? When you did ‘The Jabberwocky’ with us in class and introduced us to the brilliance of nonsense verse, did any of us ask you how it can be called nonsense once we read it with a key? If it makes sense all of a sudden, does it remain nonsense? Oh, how many questions there are that could be asked!

You see, when I enter the classroom, I am such a terrible mess of excitement and caution all at the same time. I can’t wait to open some more doors, read some more texts, and get them to write their own. The other day, when a girl told me she’d like to read horror in class and another boy mentioned his pick was adventure while the third wanted mystery, I told them the best way to answer those needs was to head to the library. And then I told them another great way to fill the void was to just go ahead and write their own. And my God, did they take that seriously. Just today, I read about imaginary tropical penguins that made the best birthday presents, and quests for iPhones in Ooty. I had pages that spoke of elephants trampling on farm produce, and road accidents. There were birthdays and suicides, hide-and-seek and college stories. And this was just today.

Did you ever tell your family about our essays? Did they amuse you, excite you, entertain you? When you picked up the red pen to correct our work, did you feel a rush of both privilege and responsibility? Because I know I did. That first time today when I signed ‘YR, 15/6’ on a notebook, I know I did. When you gave us feedback on every word we wrote, commenting on how to make things better and correcting our mistakes, did you ever worry that you were being too harsh on us, maybe killing our confidence? Did you know how much to push us, or did you never set boundaries and just let us fly as much as we could? And how did you know that was the right call?

You see, I only remember enjoying your classrooms, and when my kids ask me to make grammar fun, I am a little stumped. I keep trying to think back to when you taught us prepositions and direct/indirect speech. I wonder if we played games or sang songs, and if we did, what in the world were they? Your classrooms taught us what we need to know, your pens showed us that an empty sheet of paper always spells solace, your classes gave us the confidence to believe we had something to say. As part of prep for class, I picked up the notebook of essays I wrote in Class 10 and laughed to myself. Here were pages filled with adolescent writing, immature in most parts and plain contrived in others, and you have patiently peppered the margins with smileys and ‘good job’s. So many years later, dealing with adolescent writing, I remind myself of that patience every day.

Dear Ma’ams and Auntys, you taught me across schools and syllabi. You taught me across exam patterns and curriculum necessities. And yet, at the core of every classroom, the lesson remained the same.

Fall in love with the language.

Commit to expression.

Words will find their way to you.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Go ahead and use preposterous words until you get them right.

No matter what, keep at it.

From the teacher who told me in Class 4 after an essay that was ripped off of Snow White that I could write to the teacher who saw me through literature in Class 12, I wish I could find my way back to your classroom today to ask you one thing – how did you do it?

Love,

An old student

Dear Writer. Be responsible.

Inspired by recent events and filled with gratitude for anyone who has taken time off to read what I have to say. This is me saying thank you the only way I know how.

-

Dear Writer,

So often, as we type away from the recesses of our rooms, struggling to find a way to produce those words with the ghost of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome hovering over our shoulder, we forget. We lose track, lose focus, lose awareness. It is important for us to remember, to remind ourselves to pay attention, stay rooted.

Remember that words are important. Be responsible about wasting them, as with any other resource. The white of a page doesn’t exist to be filled. Instead, it is a canvas for you to use judiciously, conscientiously, respectfully. Embrace the blank spaces of the margin, between your words, dividing your paragraphs, as much as you treasure the letters you are weaving together.

Remember your words are subtle. There is a difference between ‘said’ and ‘asserted’ and ‘opined,’ a difference that runs deeper than the middle school diktat of not repeating words in successive sentences. It forms opinions, defines points of view and could make a difference in ways we often do not envisage. Stay honest to the cause of expression without falling slave to the lure of aesthetic. The page should be pretty but given the choice, choose ugly over untrue.

Remember your words are read. Sitting ramrod straight at your desk long into the night, pounding away at your keyboard, it is easy to lose track. Don’t forget that a Word document becomes a page and the page travels much wider than your desk. The world isn’t the screen and those words you are mulling over are being read. You do not know when or by whom or why. They do not hear your voice or see your experience. Be accountable for your opinions and recognize their possible impact.

Remember your words are powerful. Decisions are made on the printed page. Much like the famed butterfly, that odd word could make a difference light years away. The child could receive an education, an adult could lose a relationship, someone’s world could change. It could fix a bad day, your funny piece on the perils of adulthood, or exacerbate existential angst, your rant on the state of the world today. Be sensitive, be responsible, be aware.

But most of all, remember, print never dies and ink breathes a life of its own. Use it judiciously. Wield it sensitively.

You are a writer. In your hands is magic. You are a creator. Be cognizant of the burden of creation. You are an artist. Paint a picture and bring a world alive. But always remember. You are a writer wanting to be read. Sometime, somewhere, somehow, that may just happen. Be responsible.