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.
