by Vinita Agrawal
I’m still not sure whether my childhood suited me or not. Oh, it was definitely a happy one because my parents were the most loving parents in the world. I was extremely attached to them. The thing is, sometimes when you’re surrounded with love, circumstances intervene and force you to live away from the ones you love. Then life becomes rather traumatic. Let me explain.
When I was nine, my father was posted to a tiny village in West Bengal called Beldanga. The nearest town was about an hour away. There were no decent schools around the place. So my parents decided to put me in St. Joseph’s Convent – a Boarding school in Kalimpong. One wintry morning, my Dad and I boarded a jeep that took us on the long winding journey from Siliguri to the hill station of Kalimpong. On the way, father tenderly explained the merits of hostel life, its pleasures and fun and of course the responsibilities that went with it. Whenever he caught a look of doubt in my eyes, he reassured me that he and my mother would visit me frequently and that I would come home during the vacations. It’s hard to recall the exact emotions I underwent at the prospect of my life shifting in this way but I guess the topmost of those emotions was trepidation.
I remember the first interview I gave to Mother Tarcissus. She was a stern looking nun with penetrating blue eyes behind gold round-rimmed glasses. At my age and given my sheltered upbringing she seemed like someone straight out of the Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers Series. She looked me over and took in the silly half-grin on my face and asked with doubt if I would enjoy Boarding life. I darted a quick look at my dad and said ‘Ya’.
Say “Yes. Not Ya,”she corrected mildly.
I don’t know if my dad looked more discomfited or me.
But I meekly said “Yes.”
“You may call me Mother Tarcissus”
“Yes Mother.” It was beyond me to pronounce her name just then.
After other preliminary questions were done with, we were ushered into a parlor overlooking a beautiful garden dotted with exquisite orchids. Lukewarm tea and Marie biscuits were served in delicate bone china cups. Outside, birds were singing sweetly. My father took my hand and took me to a huge French window on the north side of the parlor. He parted the curtains and said simply, “Look!”
What I saw then took my breath away. I don’t believe I’ve ever caught that breath back, even now. For there, in all their majestic glory, were the snow-capped peaks of the Kanchenjunga – the third highest range of the mighty Himalayas. They stood outlined in snow against a clear blue sky, their peaks gleaming in the sunlight, their crevices in shadows. They looked like guardians to me, someone to whom my dear father was entrusting his beloved daughter. We looked at each other and I was surprised to see tears in his eyes. I clutched his hand tighter.
Thus began my life in the hostel. I was miserable of course. The school was a prestigious institution located close to India’s borders with Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. As a result, most of the girls belonged to those countries. Education begins rather late in these lands, so I was the youngest in my class and therefore, no match to their worldly wise personas. Later, these awkward beginnings would flower into lifelong beautiful bonds of friendship. But I wasn’t to know that then!
First things first – I missed home food. Corn flakes with milk and scrambled eggs on soggy bread was not the kind of breakfast I was used to, having been brought up on a spectrum of stuffed parathas. Squash for lunch and pumpkin for dinner made things worse. I looked forward to tea though – even though it was only two slices of thinly buttered bread and some Darjeeling tea served in green plastic mugs. I complained home about the food vehemently during the letter writing hour on Saturday. As a result, I was summoned to Sister Declan’s room. She upheld my letter and reprimanded me sternly “We cannot allow you to worry your parents like this! Everyone here including us teachers, eat the same food. Vegetable produce is low in hilly regions like these. So we have to make do with whatever is easily available. Complaining to your parents will only make them anxious.” Without further ado, the letter was torn to shreds before my eyes. But bless Sister Declan for the kind soul she was, she in fact got in touch with my parents on the side and asked them to send me some tucks till I was more appropriately adjusted to the meals offered at school. Plus, she arranged with them, at a small extra cost, to have a glass of milk offered to me during the ten o’ clock short recess.
Now this glass of milk was mightily symbolic of a precious nutrition offered to select students who were ushered to a grassy clearing to the left of the refectory. And there, against the backdrop of the breathtaking Himalayas, Thapa poured out milk into tall plastic glasses with full dramatic impact. I took the glass and while pretending to drink it, surreptitiously poured its contents into the grass. I couldn’t stand the taste of milk and offered it to the soil without compunctions. But in hindsight my action now causes me deep pain and regret. I wasted precious food which would have done good to my body as I was to discover a few months later. Besides, I disrespected the fact that my father had arranged this for me specially – out of extraordinary concern for my well-being.
However my grouse against hostel food lifted enormously when my dear friend Sheila who was a Day Scholar, brought me delicious crisp chikki pressed between two sheets of paper or a steaming alu dum in a bowl made from banyan leaves or hot momos or better still a string of churpis – dry yak cheese strung on a cotton thread that took a full day to chew once in the mouth.
One of the other things I struggled with in my new school was learning Nepali, which was an alien language to me. It was difficult to grasp its grammar. And last not least, I floundered with sports. Everybody seemed good at basketball and hockey and athletics. But I could manage none! All I managed to do reasonably well was singing carols and raising silk worms in a woven basket filled with mulberry leaves for my project. Yes – that I did reasonably well.
Months passed and almost a year later, I developed fever. It had been a heavy misty week with intermittent rains. Perhaps I hadn’t bothered to stay dry or some such thing. But the next thing I knew was that I was admitted to the infirmary with a very high fever. There were two other girls also admitted there. One of them was a short stout girl who wore blue tinted glasses. Her glasses fitted over her cheeks so tightly that whenever she removed them they left a thick white pinched line on her skin. Somehow the sight of those glasses almost vacuumed to her face has never left me. Let me tell you why.
In my condition, I was being given appropriate medicines by the nurse at the infirmary. But maybe the fever was running too high. After about three days, I became delirious. I did not understand what the word meant then but I do distinctly remember ‘leaving myself’ – and entering a stupor like state. I lay listless on the dark blue checkered bed sheet unable to think or feel or absorb anything. Perhaps I looked dead. For, one afternoon, the girl in the blue glasses clambered down her bed and stood peering down at me.
I think she said my name too, called out to me to elicit some response. Seeing none, she knocked on my forehead with her knuckles like one would knock on a door with a brass knocker. I responded to that and lifted my eyes to look up at her gazing at me curiously. She removed her specs to look more closely and those pinched white lines showed stark against her cheeks. They became my first recollection of returning to earth after the terrible fever.
Perhaps she saved my life by bringing me out of that strange slumber or maybe I felt indignant that I was being assumed as dead when I was in fact quite alive. I do not know. All I know is that one by one the other girls in the infirmary recovered and departed. I stayed there a couple of days longer. I watched the sunlight streaming through the windows, spilling over my pale hands, watched the play of dust particles swimming gently in the sun beams, watched the grand Kanchenjunga smiling benevolently at me, just like my father would have done – coaxing me to get up, get well and face a new day.
Pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/
Vinita is a Mumbai based writer and poet. Her poems have been published in Asiancha, Raedleaf Poetry , Wordweavers, OpenRoad Review, Constellations, The Fox Chase Review, Spark, The Taj Mahal Review, CLRI, SAARC Anthologies, Kritya.org, Touch- The Journal of healing, Museindia, Everydaypoets.com, Mahmag World Literature, The Criterion, The Brown Critique, Twenty20journal.com, Sketchbook, Poetry 24, Mandala and others which include several international anthologies. Her poem was nominated for the Best of the Net Awards 2011 by CLRI. She received a prize from MuseIndia in 2010. Her debut collection of poems titled Words Not Spoken published by Sampark/Brown Critique was released in November 2013. Her poem was awarded a prize in the Wordweavers contest 2013.
