Tuesday 25 October 2016

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.

-

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

Wednesday 5 October 2016

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.