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.

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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.

Reflections in the receding water

This is a bit of writing in the wake of the Chennai floods, a string of thoughts as and when they came to my head. The piece is written in two parts, the first after a day out in the city helping with distribution efforts and the second written today after we wrapped up relief operations.

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My Chennai flood experience started a little different. It was one of luxury, of prosperity, of excess. Two hours after young boys battled each other to grab a packet of biscuits from my hands, I ate hot food and drank hot chocolate milk at my college mess. Why me? Because I'm lucky to have access to a campus that's in the spotlight, a campus that convinced all the vendors to operate on credit, a campus where the mess workers waded through waist deep water surrounding their own homes to cook for us because, in their words, "naange illena ungalukku pasikkum." (If we don’t come, you will all be hungry.)

But my Chennai flood experience is also one of need, of desperation, of want. It's one of women as old as my grandmother begging for food from my fast depleting bag, of young boys discussing how many mouths a Rs 5 biscuit packet can feed, of the scores of eyes laying sight on food for the first time in days. It's the experience of giving and getting instructions to barricade our buses and close the windows to stop people from climbing onto the bus as they try to grab food, of people flocking the minute they see what looks like relief supplies.

My Chennai flood experience was one of gratitude and oneness. Of volunteers coming together and spending hours collecting, sorting, loading and distributing without stopping to ask for names. Of the IITM team realising we don't have a master list of everyone who worked to thank later on because no one waited to take pictures or fill a roll call. Of locals who tell us "Inge oru vellai saapadu irukku-nge, neenge aduthe edathukku ponge." (We have our next meal here, do go on to the next place.) Of citizens sharing contact details on public forums if that means access to more bread loaves or medicines. Of us thanking the stranded for magically procuring coffee while they thank us for turning up. Of running out of paracetamol in the middle of a medical camp only to have a stranger offer to go shopping and return with a box full.

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I’ve seen Bhanu Akka every day for the last five years, as she sits patiently in the lobby of our hostel, in charge of our security. Every day for the last week, she has told us stories of her house and her neighbours, as they struggle to put their lives back together after floods ravaged the city. She told us stories of another Akka whose house was washed away but who was ”lucky” enough to save her ration card, which she proceeded to dry on a dosai kallu. She told us of people whose utensils were blackened by sludge, whose choice lay between washing them thin or the unaffordable solution of replacing them all. There were stories of snakes in the stagnant water of bedrooms, people lying on the bed anyway for want of somewhere else to go. There were tales of traffic jams caused on the only half of the road that was usable because people began spilling onto the streets to escape from the cramped, unhygienic environments of shelter halls. The auto driver who dropped me home late last night thanked God for his first floor house, telling me how the people on the ground floor were flooded and those on the second were dealing with leaking roofs and walls. The beginning of every conversation in Chennai today has become ‘how is your home?’

Behind every aching muscle in my body today, there is a story. The stories from Anankaputhur and Vyasarpadi, Moggapair and Iyyapanthangal, Velachery and Taramani. The stories of people in neighbourhoods I barely knew existed till recently. The stories of the woman as old as my Paati who begged me to give her a sari she could use. Or the Anna who ran behind our bus as we pulled away after distribution. Or the Akka who bent down close to thank me for distributing sanitary pads, saying only we understood her struggles. Or even the woman who stood by me as I assisted in a medical camp, warning me when the time came to stop. “People are coming back for seconds, ma,” she told me. “Go give this to people who need it more.”

Never before have I seen this kind of longing. More often than once, I have been shaken by men and women much older than me thanking us for our work, their eyes glowing at the sight of food and medicines. Even in the ruckus of our “control room”/collection centre, as we joked of having stocks to last for years, there was a tinge of unease in our voices, speaking volumes of the roads just outside our gates. No matter how much we joked and collected and segregated, all this would disappear in minutes outside, we knew.

This last week and all the hours in it have taught all of us many things. It taught us the value of bread and water, of dry roads and cloudless skies. It taught us to save every drop, switch off every extra light, huddle in one room to optimize candle light. It taught us that good faith and trust can still drive mass movements, a lesson reinforced every time supplies traded hands with no questions asked. It taught us that our city, known for orthodoxy and conservatism often spoken of in the same breath as boredom, can rally together when the going gets tough and not give up. It taught us that in times of need, hierarchies are forgotten memories as professors checked with student coordinators to volunteer in the efforts and children lugged many kilograms of rice to unload/reload. It taught us to share information, resources and encouragement. It taught us to stick together and come out stronger.

1 week. A dozen core members. Around 25 neighbourhoods. Hundreds of volunteers. Many thousands of kilograms of supplies.

Doing our bit to reclaim home.

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?

The Dead Man's Woman

Yes, it has been a while. Ah well.

This is pretty much all the good that can come out of late night exam mugging. I was recently told that this blog is 'all serious' and in that spirit, here is a piece inspired by Albert Camus' The Stranger, fiction written from the point of view of Marie. Title credits, a play adaptation I was a part of a couple of years ago :D

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I’m tired of being the mistress of a man sentenced to death. How long am I to hold on, hang in there, not let go? To cling to a sliver of hope by the tips of my manicured fingernails? To shut out the voice in my head crying for rationality, for a better future?

I love him. Or at least, I did.

We met in strange circumstances, we did. His mother had died, my boyfriend had left me. It is unsettling, speaking of these situations in the same breadth, almost writing off the death of a progenitor as being the same as a spineless, transient relationship. Yet what can I say? That queasily unsettling feeling of the very first day set the tone for our liaison. I became the mistress. He became the stranger whose unidentifiable charm drew me in deeper than I expected.

I want to marry him. Or at least, I did.

He grew on me, that man. How and when, I do not know. He had an abrupt way about him, always answering questions off the top of that intelligent head. If one didn’t know better, one would claim there was no heart in the man, that he was merely a machine with bodily needs. God knows I knew of them. Yet, I walked up to him one sunny afternoon. And I asked him to marry me. What possessed me, I have not the slightest clue. Did I expect him to gush with emotion? No. Did the long forgotten memories of girlish romance threaten to rear their suppressed head? I think so. I should have known better. He said yes because I was the first woman to ask.

I know him. Or at least, I did.

He didn’t do it on purpose. He is not a bad man. We went swimming that morning. Out in the middle of the ocean, our legs intertwined as we floated in the calm waters, I almost felt happy, normal. His hands found their place on the small of my back and we kissed. The salt in my mouth mixing with the salt in his mouth mixing with the salt in mine. Four hours later, they found a man with five bullets in him. They said he had done it. No. I don’t want to hear more.

I believe him. Or at least, I did.

He told the world it was an accident. A series of unfortunate events. A set of bad circumstances. A mere coincidence. He didn’t speak to me at all. His lawyer said he hadn’t meant to kill that man. It was Raymond who had a bone to pick after all. Maybe it was the sun at the wrong angle or something about the sand. There was a dead man on the floor and the gun in his hand. This is all we know. But he isn’t a bad person. He isn’t.

I want to wait. Or at least, I did.

I visited him at prison. Once. I sat on the other side of the glass with a plastic smile plastered on my face. I asked him if he was fine. He said he was. I felt stupid asking. So I spoke. I spoke to fill the awkward silence. I spoke to hush the nervous beating of my heart. I spoke. I told him of work and tennis and swimming. Of Raymond and Masson. I spoke till my jaw hurt. Till the men came to take him away. I spoke and I smiled. And I never went back.

I’m tired of being the mistress of a man sentenced to death. They say he will die and I will live. But I want him to survive. At least, I did.