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)

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

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.

Learning from the Legends: includABILITY 20

There is a cream visiting card in my wallet that reads Former Chief Election Commissioner of India. Yet, if I close my eyes and think of Navin Chawla, I will see him breaking a Rs. 5 KitKat bar into three to share with the police officer accompanying us and the driver of the VIP black Merc courtesy The Park.

There is a note on my phone with an email id of India’s most famous ad man. But if I close my eyes and think of Prahlad Kakar, I will only hear uproarious laughter, spontaneity and the ability to talk of everything from a soufflé omelette to scuba diving. That, or the time he asked me for the Tamil translation of ‘fruitface’, venturing to try himself and coming up with ‘pazhimoonja’ or something like that.

There is a picture of the stage on my phone, and in centre stage wearing a pale pink bhandini sari, sits Bollywood’s mother figure. Yet, if I were to close my eyes and think of Jaya Bachchan, I would hear her voice congratulating me on feeding the teleprompter, smiling as she squeezed my arm in congratulations.

There was a moment when I went up to introduce myself to Siddharth Jayakumar, a boy who has cerebral palsy and has worked in the private banking sector for over five years now. I meant to tell him I had seen him at many events before but never had the chance to talk to him before he stopped me and asked “aren’t you the girl from TEDx?” Turns out he had told his mother the same thing.

My afternoon at includABILITY 20, Ability Foundation’s celebration of their 20^th anniversary, was a humbling evening of learning and inspiration in a room filled with such different people, each a celebrity in their own right.

There will be a bigger article that comes out in places other than my blog, but till then, here it is. The memory of greatness standing merely feet away. The experience of humility and gratitude of having the chance to be a part of that moment. The opportunity to grow.

In that room were people with disability and people supposedly without, there were celebrities and then aam junta. There was laughter and there were hugs. There was never-ebbing conversation in everything from English to sign. In those few hours, identities were put on pause – he wasn’t an ad man, she wasn’t a heroine, he wasn’t an IAS officer, she wasn’t an activist. In those few hours, everyone sat together and held hands through stories of pain and struggle, discrimination and bullying, and ultimately strength. In those few hours, we were all audience to stories of immense will power and determination.

Yesterday, I met India’s biggest ad-man and a top-ranking heroine of a generation past and the man who ran multiple elections. But I also met a blind cognitive neuroscientist who paraglides for fun, a deaf girl who struggled through insensitive mainstream schooling to become a trainer today and a quality control executive from a famous corporate who has celebral palsy and left the audience in splits with his humour, even as they stood to give him a standing ovation. Tell me, who are the celebrities? Who are the real heroes?

The idle musings of an almost adult

Think, everyone told me. Think and it will come to you. Think and it will dawn upon you. Just think and the world’s answers will appear in a heartbeat and clarity will come giftwrapped in a nice little box miraculously left behind by the Tooth Fairy one Tuesday morning. All you need to do is think.

I’ve thought on planes and trains, buses and bikes. I’ve thought while I was meant to be thinking and much more when I wasn’t. I’ve stared just to the right of my professor’s face during class and doodled pointlessly in the corner of my notebook. I’ve made more To Do lists than anything I’ve ever done and then stooped from putting ‘Figure it out’ to ‘Shower’, in an effort to check something off. You can’t say I didn’t try.

When it all fell apart all around me and all the same advice kept pouring in, I turned to clichés. I took a long, hot shower. And I thought some more. Or atleast I tried.

What do I write my paper on? And once that is done, what do I do my thesis on? And once that is done, what do I do next? Where do I work? Do I let go of a great job just to leave home? Do I accept another great job even if the cash isn’t great? What qualifies as good enough and how do you identify a challenge? When you can’t differentiate the road less travelled from the well trodden path, how do you choose to be conformist or rebellious? And how is it that the more I think, the more questions seem to need thinking about?

This thinking thing is a lie, a web designed to keep you in a never-ending loop. You think you get more questions, you kid yourself into thinking you can answer them all. For now, I’m going to take a break. The paper may happen, or not. Reading all day is fun in itself. The thesis will definitely happen. On what, well, epiphany shall strike before graduation some time. As for a job, I’m only almost adult for now. Please don’t burst my bubble?

Opportunity, the scribe

My last piece was titled 'Fourth year blues' and true to expectations, the semester has flown by in a haze of coursework and academics. Here I am at the fag end of the term, putting together another piece. With holidays approaching, I still dare to dream of regularity and inspiration.

This piece was driven by the time I spent volunteering this weekend at TiECON Chennai 2014, the state's largest entrepreneurship conference. Wonderful experience, beautiful people inspiring some halfway-decent writing :)

Any incoherence and/or typos to be excused under the large ambit of midnight syndrome :)

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The massive stone steps of the hall greeted her as she walked in, hassled from a week of classes and hours of running errands. Bag in hand, eyes popping, she struggled to maintain a facade of nonchalance. I must act like I belong, she thought, striding with what she believed as confidence towards the escalators. Things didn’t get easier from there. Chandeliers spreading dim light, a wave of black suits and ties, the quiet murmur of professional conversation. Suddenly, her phone was her alibi, the blank screen a perfect excuse to regain composure. As the rest of them discussed ways to change the world, she sat down, alone amongst the crowd, getting her bearings.
Yet, in every desert, there is hope of an oasis. Within this phenomenon, she found her niche, using the mike and the camera as her armour, protecting her against imagined eyes. She had a reason to stay. She belonged.

Bright lights, brighter eyes

What do I say and who to?
What do I do and why am I here?
Neither branded student nor volunteer, no less.
Alien. Child.
Alien child?
Yet, connections run deep.
Blood is thick.
Aren’t you her daughter, they asked.
Turned out she belonged.
After-all.
Gratitude.

Yes, Uncle

Sorry, Uncle?
How are you, Aunty?
It has been so long!
The stairs were forgotten
Amongst the flurry of
Assumed relations.
Turned out she belonged.
To it all.
Gratitude.

There had been many people asking why she did what she did. Why walk three kilometres every day? Why volunteer with something she isn’t a “part of”? Many days later, in the many lines of midnight conversation with one who many consider ‘celebrity’, between the giggles and chuckles and gentle banter, the answer seemed clear enough.

Yet another line had been scripted on her “Tabula Rasa”, a stroke contributed by each of the Uncles and Auntys, by each of the interviewees, by each letter of the tweets and each word of the phone calls, peppered by the humility and modesty that surrounded her every conversation.

I do what I do to have a say in what gets etched on my blank slate. I script my own story.

I want to be Superlady.

Over the last few years, I seem to have developed quite a soft spot for the cause of education. So when I was interning in Ladakh and was desperate for something to read, I was drawn to this book intriguingly titled 'Three Cups of Tea - One Man's Extraordinary Journey to Promote Peace... One School at a Time'. Bogged down by the thought of having to lug what was fast becoming a mini library around the mountains myself, I let it go but when I spotted a copy in a second hand book fair in Chennai, I didn't as much as read the cover before picking it up.

While I know the book has been at the centre of quite some controversy ('Three Cups of Deceit' is a 22,000 word expose on the book), it acted as a good source of motivation to write. If Mortenson has done everything that he has claimed, brilliant. If he hasn't, it could just be seen as fictionalized motivation for the rest of us.

Here is a piece that was deeply inspired by one of the side stories in the book. The story of this girl gripped me, made me wonder where she is today. All factual inconsistencies in this piece are my own and all the background, history, context provided are grace a authors.

Unsurprisingly, it is a tad long but bear with me.

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Hiding behind a boulder almost as large as her, eleven-year-old Aliya was stunned. Men, old and young alike, scurried past her with planks of wood and an eclectic assortment of other construction tools, swarming like starved ants to a drop of honey towards the medium sized piece of land that had been cleared for this purpose. In the corner, a ledger in his hand and a look of sheer grit and concentration writ large on his face, stood a hulking foreigner, his blonde haired tall stature striking a sharp contrast against the diminutive mountain people he was working with. His size eleven feet were swamped in the dust, grit and grime that came from working this high up the mountains, exposed to the sheer brunt of Nature. He wore a traditional salwar kameez, the loose robes that had been long associated with their side of the world, though not often with the men and most surprising of all, he seemed at home.

As she peeked from behind her vantage point, she saw her grandfather, the village headman respected by all and silently feared by most, go up and embrace this foreigner with as much love as his short arms would allow. Khan dada did not seem to mind this Amreekan’s bleached hair and skin. He did not seem to notice how his feet were twice as big as his own, or he seemed twice as tall as even the biggest uncle. Instead, her grandfather was murmuring his thanks to the higher powers for showing them a way, for offering them a six-foot solution on a platter when they had been let down by everyone else.

Nestled in the depths of the mountains, Aliya did not know what the world thought of her. In fact, she did not know of most of the world to begin with, her eyes judiciously widening at every mention of a trip “downside”, when some of the more privileged or adventurous men went in search of growth or grain. Her world was here, between the apricot trees and loose boulders, revolving around making cha with her grandmother and playing with the younger children.

Fatima dadi was a force to contend with of her own, having the uncanny audacity to pull at dada’s beard and tease him, surpassing boundaries many women of her age held sacrosanct. She had allowed the White Man into her kitchen, allowed him to meddle with her utensils, allowed him not only into her house but into her home. Now she told everyone who cared to listen that she had an Amreekan son, one who brought her miscellaneous goodies from time to time, but one who was, more importantly, on his way to changing the way their forgettable hamlet had lived for years.

Little Aliya never understood this part. She never quite knew what dadi meant when she spoke of ‘change’ and ‘miracle’ but she always loved hearing the stories. She sat in rapture at dadi’s feet as she told stories of sahib and how he first came to them, exhausted and at the verge of collapse after a failed mountaineering trip. She giggled every time she heard how everyone was intrigued by this hulking man shivering under her dead mother’s blanket, how dadi had put all their precious sugar into this man’s cha as a token of welcome. She listened, stunned, as dadi’s eyes glistened with thanks and memory as she told the tale of how sahib had crossed the river that first time, acting on his promise to come back, to change their lives forever. “He is a blessing. He really is,” dadi would say each time she ended wiping the moisture from her eyes with the back of a wrinkled but steady hand; and Aliya would nod in silent agreement, not entirely sure what she was agreeing to but soaking in the prosperity and possibility that always seemed to cloak anything to do with sahib.

Hiding behind the sheer mass of rock, Aliya shyly kept her eye trained on this man who had come to mean so much to her people. His size was countered by the kindness in his eyes, she decided. And those giant feet were neutralized by the kind pat he gave every child who mustered the courage to walk past him. He was okay, she decided. More than okay. As the men dug trenches and lay stones and the first signs of a building begin to materialize Aliya plucked up the nerve to emerge from behind her hide out and sidle up to dada and the big man. She stood there, clutching to the end of his salwar, hoping that some of her grandfather’s strength would flow into her own self. She stole glances up at this man, sometimes needing to peer against the glare of the brutal Himalayan sun, and as time flew by, she learnt to let go of dada’s coattails.

Aliya had dreams; dreams she wasn’t sure she should speak too loudly about. After all, the women of her family had worked all their lives and as the headman’s granddaughter, she was expected to bring pride to her family’s name. She had never known her mother and the deep red blanket that sahib now used had long stopped smelling of her. For as long as Aliya could remember, she had looked up to Fatima, her gutsy grandmother whose spirit seemed misplaced in this quaint Himalayan village. But beyond this all, Aliya dreamed. She dreamt of sitting in front of a page, tracing her finger along the words as the knowledge entered her mind. She dreamt of going “downside” and tracing her finger through some more. She dreamt of going where no village girl had. With only nine years to her name, she wasn’t sure where exactly this was, but something told her sahib  could help her find out.

Years after the child had crawled out from behind the rock, Aliya stood in front of the closed doors that separated her from sahib and all the village elders. At seventeen, she had milked the local school for all it had to offer and was itching to make that much awaited trip downside. She drew in a deep breath, adjusted her maroon headscarf and swung the doors open. Without allowing herself to get intimidated by the elders, she made a beeline for the man who had singlehandedly changed her life. “I want to begin my medical training,” she announced. In the next few minutes, by sheer force of willpower, she walked away with the twenty thousand rupees she needed for her fees. She couldn’t see the look of contentment that shone in sahib’s eyes.

With the mountains as  her guardians and medical books as her companions, Aliya embarked on her newest journey to become the first woman from the village to be educated, travel downside, and be educated some more. And then one day, sahib visited. With the quiet self assurance that echoed Fatima’s sure handed training, she brew her mentor a glass of tea; the teabag concoction’s similarity to her dadi’s cha limited to the plain adoration with which it was served. She sat by him while he and her father looked through her work, each of the older men glowing with unmasked pride at the young girl who had come to represent everything they stood for. As the tea cups emptied and only the dregs remained, Aliya stared placidly out of the window, thinking back to the time behind the rock when something told her this man would show her the way.

“Sahib, I want to head a hospital,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, filled with unquestionable determination but flecked with incredulity, as if the girl herself couldn’t believe how much her dreams had grown. “Yes, I want to be Superlady.”

Deep in the most treacherous mountains known to man, nestled in a village that wouldn’t feature on most maps, Aliya looked out of her window to see the world. She would no longer hide behind the mountains. She would move them. There, in the small, pretty figure of the village’s first successful girl, a flame had been lit, a fire had been kindled.