Uma - chooses between Ghosts and Scorpions

Uma has just returned from a long trip. Everyday this trip takes her to another town, a cosy but bustling city compared to the contained campus she lives in, to attain what adults call an ‘education’. She is not sure if her school, a catholic convent named Alvernia, provides her with as much wisdom as do the daily doses of dazzling seconds and minutes that pepper her blank slate of a brain with enough spice. She will commit to memory all that there is such that at a future date: which will be when she is older, prettier, more popular and less lazier, she will pen all this down to win the hearts of her nostalgia ridden peers. Even at twelve she is backsighted. She knows there will be history in the future. That would be made up of the Now. Hence the urgency to reach home, do her homework, polish her shoes, press her tie, shine her belt, do the school thing. After all she will not be twelve ever again.

“Good Evening aunty, is Uma home aunty?” she can hear Akhila ask her mother. She fervently hopes that her mother will not fall for her friend’s charms and sacrifice her daughter to an evening of childish prattle. Akhila’s father’s recent demise and her own inability to be civil and pay proper condolences had made Amma all the more solicitous of the ‘poor kid’ as though it were her fault that uncle had died. She didn’t even know how he died and when they met after a few days the two friends of course never brought up such mundane matters.

The thing with Akhila was that she wanted to play everyday. She was also a member (the only other) of her Secret Service Club so it was tough to avoid her altogether. Added to that her mother literally forced her to ‘play’ with ‘such a sweet girl and she comes first in class’, obviously the sweetness of any girl was dependent on her rank in class. First she did not enjoy what these girls ‘played’. Is this not why she had founded the Club? Secondly she had other ideas about who was sweet and who wasn’t. In reality sweet as a word was anathema to her therefore anyone depicting that quality was not to her taste. What kindled her was spice.

In the 80s there were very few spicy girls in South India.

“ No beta, her bus has not yet come, I am also worried….” Her mother lying? Impossible! If there was anyone after Satya Harishchandra, the king whose love for Truth made for an absolutely pathos ridden and painful life (which was wasted on a whole comic book), it was Amma. “ I will tell her that you came by as soon as she comes, ok? Say hello to your mother”……

“ Thank you aunty” sometimes Akhila overdid it she thought. It would be good to meet her thirty years hence to see if she was really truly ‘sweet’. This whole business of wishing all aunties and uncles was grating. Some kids could do it very well, the innocent smile and the heightened excitement accompanying the greeting, exemplifying the well-brought up lass. Apart from coming first in class the one other parameter of scoring the top-of-the camp charts was to be thought of as‘Mrs So and So has such well behaved children’, since complimenting you directly meant they were guilty of spoiling you.

You could also see that the adults did not care much about anyone who did not in some convoluted way help them get a promotion. What was the point of the Good Evenings? They lived in a boiling cauldron of an Air Force Base with murky goings on. The goings on that fathers at work whispered to their willing wives’ ears which were promptly overheard by their respective kids who fashionably displayed in public this knowledge of your father by pointedly ignoring you or excessively fawning over you depending on where your father stood with their father.

This was what roiled her. Sweet girls, Politicking fathers, Malleable mothers. Now her mother was playing plaint while her ‘sweet’ collaborator stood outside awaiting her company while her father was still working, this was four in the evening, in a country which was not at war. What does the military do in peacetime, she wondered.

Her mother came in while she busied herself with labelling notebooks and sharpening pencils ( Ah! One day to be able to write with a pen!! ) She was naturally conscientious and had earned a ‘good name’ among aunties which she tried desperately to shrug off by such wanton behaviour as not going out to play with her one and only friend instead sitting down to complete her Moral Science lesson on ‘Anger causes Bitterness’.

It was strange how the Kendriya Vidyalayas, where Thank God she was not studying, had no such subject. They had PT, SUPW and other acronym-ed classes that were as wasted on the children but nothing ‘moral’ about them. So if a child was studying in KV Sulur was that child going to be immoral or amoral? Would she turn out more moral than others? Would studying moral science make her automatically more moral? Is awareness as good as knowing? Right now she knew that she was behaving in an extremely dishonest way by making her mother lie, by hiding from her one and only pal and by attempting to study a lesson with a lot of anger (which arose in her for no reason these days) while the lesson had expressly said that it would cause her bitterness.

“Akhila was looking for you, I think you should go play and come back later and study” Her mother seemed not in the least bothered by the lie she had so easily subjected an innocent victim to. Her mother it seemed was happy to have a child who wanted to study and therefore by the powers vested in mothers thought it was alright to give her that one whiff of permission and to award her daughter’s studiousness by debasing herself with a lie. Uma was getting angrier by the minute.

“Why did you lie to her?” she almost choked at the bitterness with which she spit out the accusation.

“I can’t stand your pouting everyday when they come and you have to go out, anyone would think you were being sent to war not to play! I can’t imagine what’s wrong with you…you were such a sweet child….” That word again! Oof! Uma did not think her pout was justification enough for her mother to commit a sin. She got angrier. Reasons ! reasons shouldn’t be the reason to fall from grace.

“How was I to know you are back? Do you even say hello these days? I can hardly hear the school bus in this terrible din! How many times I ask your father and he doesn’t answer me….this temporary accommodation is killing me…right next to the helipad, landing and take off, landing and take off and the Kirans have been flying since morning….I will go deaf soon, from tomorrow you can go and answer the door and your friends yourself…..” Amma took away her empty tiffin box with a “ did you eat your lunch or you gave it all to someone again?”

All is well with the world Uma thinks, she would not have accepted a flawed mother.

Except that Amma was turning out to be a coward instead! Ever since Puri aunty had warned her about Snakes and Scorpions in the camp and how to protect your home from their invasion, Ma was seen, along with Ramankutty Aunty and Kishore Aunty, reinforcing the battlements. Which meant every evening the clothes had to be brought in from the clothes-line before dusk, the doors had to be shut the moment the sun started his night-cap and all the children had to bring out old newspapers (or borrow them if your mother had inadvertently sold the old bunch to the kabaaDiwaalah) and lay it out at the threshold such that the offensive snakes met their match in the fading ink of a month old Indian Express. As for scorpions, which she personally thought of as more piercing, they had to be endured with a courage that only defence families possessed. After all a flying green viper and wild elephants on rampage in Kumbhigram had not deterred her mother, what were scorpions but small ugly creatures who got irritated for no reason at all and stung the nearest available human out of malice? One had to simply AVOID them.

Which meant you couldn’t take long nightly walks because one young honeymooning couple were treated to the horrors of encountering a soporific scorpion disturbed from slumber. The poor pregnant lady had lost her unborn child to the poison. Though none of her friends or she herself were pregnant the prospect of meeting the same killer scorpion on his nightly jaunts dissuaded her adventurous spirit more than her mother’s warnings. She would have liked to investigate the Case of the Biting Scorpion at night, to map out its routes, its habits but she thought that India might benefit more if she were alive.

Though now it seemed that the scorpion species was out to get them!! They were definitely angry (and most certainly bitter) at being ousted from their homes and were sure to have talked to their neighbours, the snakes, who seemed to have agreed that the humans inhabiting their world without permission needed to be taught a lesson. Many lessons. Suddenly there were reports of more and more sightings and more and more bites, stings, close encounters and almost brushes with death. It seemed for a while that everyone had a tale but her, so unfair! Why were the scorpions avoiding her? All her friends had their own scorpion tales to tell, she had to listen to them, they got all the attention. Maybe these creatures know of my club and its motto? That ‘Unearth the Truth at all Costs’ was coined by her? Maybe they are afraid of me! Yes that could be it.

So she sent a mental message to the underlings of the underworld to come face her if they had the guts. And they did.

The first one was quite clever, it camouflaged its look such that under the hazy twilight sky with winds whirring from the blades of the helicopter nearby, it appeared but a pebble lost in muddy thoughts. She went out to get the clothes before the downpour as instructed by her mother and Uma would have added heavy karma to her young heretofore unsullied life, by accidently stepping on this agent but for the timely surfacing of her disgust for female undergarments. Uma was sure she would never wear one herself. This conical cup like, thing. Why did her mother have to dry it out in the sun? Even if it was ostensibly hidden under a towel? Her distaste for such public displays of the private selves saved the country from losing one of its finest potential detectives that evening.

She stops short of going right there to where that ‘thing’ lay enjoying what was left of the sun, unaware of the riot it was capable of causing in Uma’s mind. Right under it lay the agent, very aware that feminine charms were always hidden from public view and hence needed more time to be un-clipped. From the clothesline. He waited for his adversary in vain. For Uma did an about turn and hastily walked into her house lest some boy spying on her might associate that ‘thing’ with her. That would never do! But she now had her story too……it was getting dark, about to rain, I went out to get the clothes, there he was hidden from my view, I was about to step on him when the lightening struck and saved my life...that was sure to get a LOT of attention.

There was more than one story though. More and more agents cropped up in the least likely places. She learned to avoid them, walk past them, jump over them, share space with them and finally even bathe while one agent crouched in the corner of the bathroom, watching the wall (his head was turned). She was not sure if anthropods came as male and female but this one was a gentleman. It was beginning to look like a horror film, her life. Uma did not want to scare her parents. This was spooky. Till a week ago she had never encountered any scorpions and now she was seeing them everywhere. Were they here because she had wished for them? Could they actually hear her? Did she believe that they understood her sub-conscious desire to face the enemy?

Maybe she should tell Akhila and get her opinion. Yes that’s what she should do. She could call a meeting and give out a new password. It was time to change the password anyway. Though they had not yet had any reason to use it they were meticulous about such details. They kept a register of the people they had ‘followed’, of the ‘cases’ they had tried to solve and the snacks they had eaten on the day of the meetings. Which was mostly a Sunday absolving them of trivialities such as school and homework. Since neither of them had access to any secret attics or islands unlike the lucky children that populated the books by Enid Blyton, they had to make do with meeting under the study table, for now. Amma provided them with saboodana pakorasand nimbu paani and left them alone after that but they continued to whisper. Whispering is the essential quality of any secret service as is evident from all the Bond movies they show in the Officer’s Mess. These men and women hardly talk. When they are not spending most of their time half naked wriggling in each other’s company they get to work, in whispers.

So it was decided by them over spicy snacks that they would dedicate their free time in the pursuit of finding the source of all these scorpions. If Evil exists, there is a reason with usually a source. Just as a snake resides in the snake-pit the scorpions have their own haven. The mission was to find their HQ and monitor the movement of the troops. They first made a plan of action. Uma was very found of POAs. It gave her something concrete to work on, while Akhila was miffed that no one else was joining their club.

“Maybe we can tell them about your mother’s pakoras, to encourage participation?” she suggested to a crabby Uma who was trying to fit the drawing of the floor plan of # 5 Base Repair Depot into her rough notebook. That is when they heard Amma sob. She was hiccupping and sobbing and clearing her throat and nose, all at once. She was also trying to convey something in whispers to Puri aunty, who as usual right on dot, at dusk, came by to make sure all the women in her block were taking precautions against the creepy creatures.

Hearing them whisper so uncharacteristically it seemed to her that her mother had hit upon the same idea too, of starting a secret club! Then again she realized that that could not be. Mothers just cooked and fed you and kept you safe. They also tried to force you to play with your friends when you didn’t want to but they did not usually whisper. On the contrary, she had always been a little embarrassed about her mother’s booming voice.

“I am telling you it is Mrs Sharma. I can hear her cry, she says ‘Save me Save me’ and I hear anklet bells and a sewing machine, like she is sewing in a frenzy and ….” Amma gulps down a glass of water takes a break and starts again “She was found hanging in this house you know that don’t you?” Puri aunty must have nodded thinks Uma. Puri aunty knew the Sharmas. Everyone in the camp had heard of how this beautiful lady had killed herself, leaving two young girls in the care of her doctor husband. What the girls had not known was that she had died right here!! Maybe in this room where they were sitting right now, under the table. Maybe she climbed this very table to get to the fan. Maybe. “Speak softly the kids are playing in the next room” Puri aunty warns in an audible whisper.

“Why did she hang herself?” Uma asks a perplexed Akhila. “What kind of mother would do that to her children?” Uma continues not realizing that Akhila is looking very excited all of a sudden. “I know, I know what we can do! We will tell everyone tomorrow about the Ghost who Cries and ask them to help us find out what it wants. Ghosts show themselves only when they want something, that way we can get more people to join our club” she concludes triumphantly.

Uma finally realized that she could not carry on being a small enterprise anymore, with more and more cases cropping up she would need to grow, scaling up was important for survival. This was a good idea, they could engage the interest of others with this scoop. Though in her heart she knew that her mother’s fears stemmed from her unhappiness in living in such cramped quarters and that she was ‘seeing’ things that she wanted to see not as they really were. It also dawned on her that they might be getting a permanent accommodation soon. Thanks to this Ghost who had appeared out of nowhere soon she would be rid of her own personal Scorpions.

Uma - TinTin and Amitabh Bachchan

Uma  is walking back from school, all alone.

In front of her and behind her a group of giggly boys and aggressive girls prance about shouting wildly to the heavens.

Our Uma is a ‘prim and proper’ girl, she does not indulge in such frivolities!

“How silly these girls are” she thinks to herself, a sentence she will repeat all her life, her Mantra to disengage from those who appear to her as lacking in gravitas.

“A full pot doesn’t wobble” her mother has told her in chaste Telugu each time she is subject to a homily and she does not want to behave like a wobbly pot, she is full, isn’t she? Full of Maths, Science, English and Geography. She has also filled her head with newspaper articles, film news, gossip from the neighbourhood and the sonorous Sanskrit shlokas one must memorize to improve one’s memory.

She likes to be in the know our Uma. If there is something someone mentions and she has never heard of it before, she takes it badly.

“I must read all that there is to not let it happen next time” she swears to her hurt heart, “How could I have been so ignorant?” she scolds herself yet again. Despite hating order and discipline Uma repeats everything. She has been informed from the Holy Texts in translation that repetition is the Key. You repeat an action, it becomes a habit, you repeat a good action, you become a good person. It is really simple, isn’t it? She cannot understand why so many non-good people do not just follow this so simple do-good formula.

“I must read all that there is” she told herself yet again while in front of her and behind her boys and girls danced to film tunes mainly because it was forbidden. Her school did not allow any film songs to be sung in its grounds and last year when a boy performed to an innocentChal Chal Chal Meray Haathi O Meray Saathi he was rusticated! It disgusted her that these boys were doing something that was explicitly out-of-bounds. Maybe they too hate discipline like me she thought, which brought her to the end of the road that ran directly from school with a choice of a Left and a Right.

Here was the tough part, she did not enjoy being disciplined, she could barely stand school or her classmates so how could she comment, even to the privacy of her gold studded ears, about these ruffians who sang with such gusto the lamentations of a ludicrous lover. She waited and waited, should she go left or right? This same road everyday with its same same choices was boring her to death and she was not even 12 yet. Oh! dear what was she to do? The  lifeline  on her right palm showed her that she would live at least to be seventy!! Another sixty years of servitude to a life of a left and a right. Buddha had preached a Middle Eight Fold Path of which she had read about in the Ramakrishna Mission books but that too was a compromise. One ought to be able to fly. FLY. 

Thank God for the fact that she was a Hindu, she would take solace in the fact that she could still be a bird in her next janam. It must be terrible , TEERRIIBBLLE, being a Christian or a Muslim, no? With no choice but to do everything in this one life. Plus how did they explain the fact that she, despite her obvious intelligence had no friends while Reena, proud possessor of a silly name and a sillier demeanour was the most popular girl in school? Wasn’t it all about Karma? And how could one neglect to mention forget that ‘they’ blamed the women for every little sin …..anyone officially holding the female responsible for any evil was not fit to lead, that she was sure of. Whether or not these religions really did blame the women, she would see. She had another sixty boring years to figure that out. Right now, right or left?

Uma retraced her steps into a slow leisurely stroll through the ‘short cut’ in the forest. Of course she was warned against it! Why else would she take this path? Of course they had whispered in garishly scary tones saying that there were poisonous snakes, tigers, leopards lurking about….If only all of life’s roads were as exciting…she thought. And she thought.

“I don’t like the boys singing vulgar songs with my classmates not because they are breaking rules but because their intention behind it is wrong, these boys are just teasing them, making use of their naivete and the stupid girls just lap up the attention….. ” she told the trees with creepers that reached down from the very heavens as if bowing to her great wisdom. The difference between her defiance and theirs was that she was not hurting anyone by taking this slippery groany creaky stoney path while they were misusing their choice, their right to be free by harming the poor girls’ innocence….YES!! that was it.

It was cheating pure and simple though how was one to prove a wrong intention?

And that is why she must read all that there is. So boys like these would not be allowed to make fun of her while they ostensibly sang songs of praise in her presence. Currently there was hardly any chance of being teased or noticed. She might be eaten by a Tiger and no one would even know. There was a man-eater right here in these jungles, created by some crazed tea plantation manager who was showing off his hunting skills to a visiting gora.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you know this road is for boys only?” Bharat’s voice unmistakably.

“What are YOU doing here? Don’t you know that this world is for girls only?” Uma couldn’t resist the retort. Here I go playing the foolish game of you and I while we all know from Amar Chitra Katha that this world is just Maya she thought.

 “There will be nothing in the world without us, who will earn big money, who will take care of the women, who will save you from the Tigers?”Bharat smirked knowing very well that she was frightened enough to have made the mistake of answering him back.

Normally as a rule, she avoided him.

She liked him a lot even if he said illogical things such as men being important to the world mainly because Bharat was one of those who broke rules, bended and amended them with such grace that she could only gape in admiration. Of course letting him think so would not do any good to either of them. He might preen and might spoil her image of him that she held so dear, that of a spoilt, naughty, proud, intelligent boy who had the sensitivity and humility to acknowledge his own errors.

“…Though no one needs to take care of you, that I know” he added confidently.

Uma smiled secretly happy that Bharat acknowledged her courage even though she knew the truth of the matter, which was that right now she was terrified. Not only did she have to worry about Tigers, Snakes and such but there was the delicate question of the ‘boy’ who had appeared out of nowhere, people would not like this, when they walked out of a thicket chatting merrily, it would seem so very inappropriate, even at her age she knew that the society she was so proud to be a part of had its limitations. One such was their inability to understand that an innocent friendship could exist between a boy and a girl. This to her was the worst part of her culture. All the people she liked happened to be boys. Although the CONCEPT of ‘boys’ was anathema to her - The idea of a ‘boy’ as seen and practiced by society not boys as humans per se.

“Uma why are you running?” Bharat started to run himself “He won’t get here till 8.00 clock, we have a lot of time….you might scare the snakes…hehe”

“Who?” Uma was more perplexed than scared at this point.

“Amitabh Bacchan” he threw the name out triumphantly."Didn’t you know? All uncles and aunties are getting ready for him at the Officer’s Mess, there is a welcome party at 8.00, if we walk to the front maybe we can see him getting out of the car, no?"  

Uma’s careening stride came to an abrupt screeching halt.  Dust bowls flew out of her angry soles that hit the ground in disgust. Such an important event and it had all happened without her knowledge? Not even an inkling? How was it possible? Who was responsible? How had she failed in gathering such important information? Even her ‘informers’, a bunch of friends who had joined her Secret Service Club had not had any whiff of this …surely?

Her faced turned sallow and gusts of embers shot out making the air hot with her seething.

“How do you know?” she could barely manage to ask, a question that buried her self esteem forever inside this dark forest.

“Oh! All our dads know, papa told me, yours didn’t? They knew a week ago so they could make security arrangements, we get to meet him tomorrow morning at the Library…they are on their way to Ooty…you are coming na?“

“I wanted to but I think we are going out of town, actually to Ooty, I think we plan to see him there...” Uma could lie very convincingly of course.

“Accha hai yaar, no school! How I wish papa would take us out often like Uncle…” Bharat was not really concentrating on her or them, at this moment he was too pre-occupied in clearing the path ahead with a long twig to warn the said snakes. He seemed more scared than she was of reptiles, all his bravado in school…poof!

She realized that he was not totally unaware of her comings and goings either. Last time she had lied about going away was when Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian Astronaut ever had visited their Air Force Camp. Her father had not mentioned this monumental news to his near and dear, making them miss the hullabaloo that surrounded such a personality, parties, autographs, photographs. She and her mother were the only two people in the whole of Sulur NOT to have seen Sqn Ldr Sharma, what an insult!

Her reputation at her Secret Service Club was bound to suffer unless she created an alibi for herself, for her absence. Thus the story about her visit to Mudumalai Sanctuary, with her interest in wildlife she could spin off endless anecdotes involving Paradise Fly Catchers till her intended audience got maha bored. Bharat though was barred from her coterie, first he was a boy, second she was very fond of him.

“Why do you want to see Rakesh Sharma? What is so great about him? Autograph? How foolish is my child getting, wanting a silly signature from someone whose achievement is being the first INDIAN in space!! Is he the first man in space? No. If it wasn't for the Russians...Who is the first man in space, tell me? C'mon.Who is the first woman to walk in space?....” herNanna  had continued to thunder at her turning her blame into a quiz contest.

She knew his answer to this one.

“Who is Amitabh Bacchan tell me, what is his greatness? Is he the first human to act? Did he write any great literature? My child wants to see him? SEE him? Tell me who acted as Othello in…..”

Uma started to think that her lack of friends was not as much Karmic as the fact that she was hardly a part of her peer group, apart from the fact that she did not really enjoy their company, her father made it harder by brushing aside all normal known aspects of a kid’s life as foolish and not worthy of her time.

“Bharat, since you will be busy with Amitabh’s visit the next few days, may I borrow your Tintins?”

Silence. Bharat, it was well known did not lend his comics to anyone. She would know soon where she stood with him, if her hunches were right.

“Haan par no reading in the potty, no tearing pages and if you forget them in Ooty or lend them to Amitji, you buy me two for one, ok?”

“Can you leave them with your ayaah then? I’ll collect them tomorrow while you are busy with...” she could barely say the name. Was she sad that she would miss seeing the legendary actor because she liked him or was it because she was being left out? She was jealous. How horrible, she did not like feeling negative thoughts like these. She was not a big fan really, she hardly understood Hindi, she was angry at her father for keeping her ignorant.

Ha, hunch was right but he was still a boy. Men should not bargain with women, in her world, they ought to lay the whole universe at a lady’s feet on demand.

“Papa who wrote Tintin, tell me?” She would quiz, she knew for a fact that her father had never heard of Herge nor especially his real name.

 

Uma - back from school and MAHA bored!

She had really really wanted to go to some far far away foreign land, visit exciting places, have great adventures and come back to Sulur with plenty of stories to tell.
On the other hand, even if she were to fly away on a magic carpet who could she regale with, with her tall tales? Not only was she bored but she was also lonely. Not only was she lonely she was also indignant. No one understood her dreams, no one came close enough to her. Either they were scared or they were puzzled by this quiet eleven year old who gave the impression of a volcano but behaved like a tree trunk. Brown, oiled and sombre.
That was another issue she had with humankind. Her oily plaits were a source of great rage to her. Every morning she would have to sit under her Amma’s firm hands, which then did what they pleased, pulling, tugging, weaving her scalp into yet another obedient version of herself. While she did what she always did, the moment she stepped out of the house with her basta she ruffled her coconut smelling hair into defiance. She also wished, apart from wanting to travel, to some day convince her mother that she was old enough for one single bun. That is what all the heroines did in the movies. She was not a fan like other silly girls but she was an admirer of all things mature and elegant. Two plaits were not elegant, not when dipped in a can of coconut oil.
Then there was the serious matter of the bottu. Agreed that her Amma-Nanna were not as strict as other parents or some teachers who preached that girls should always wear a bottu, everyday, nevertheless she was torn among so many thoughts. She liked her culture and she was proud of being a Hindu but what was the connection between bottu and her culture? Why were the boys in her class not part of this culture? This was the most unfair part. Off late she kept noticing how boys were always allowed to do anything. NO one lectured them, no one told them right from wrong, no one expected them to be good or uphold any culture but everyone cared about their dreams. A boy’s thoughts were much more important than a girl’s. At least that is what she felt and she was very unhappy.
Hence her only solace was under her favourite Chintachattu where she would read for hours unless of course one of the senior boys threw a stone at her, to disturb her and tease her about her bookish habits. They were actually insecure with her ever increasing English vocabulary, she knew that, but they acted as if they were the bosses and she a minion in her own land under her own tree. Then she would pick up a fight and shout, losing all concentration and enjoyment. She wished she lived in a land with less people, India had too many people. She wished she could just while away time looking at pretty scenery, while life went on right before her eyes and she did not have to go to school or do up her hair for it. In her ideal world there would be no uniforms, it was a pity that even in an enlightened not very populated country like England students had uniforms. Nanna said they removed class barriers and instilled discipline.
Ha! That was it, she did not like that word - Discipline!
Who was this Discipline to decide what colour she wore today? She was feeling like Saffron and she was forced to wear Navy Blue. All the three sixty five days nothing but a dirty blue. Not SKY blue, not PEACOCK blue, not AZURE, not CERULEAN, nothing but the nothing-pretty-about-it-Blue. That was the colour of her uniform and she was confined in its prison for another seven years. How she wished she could splash paint on herself to feel brighter! How could her imagination be expected to flower with such dreary attire? Really most adults were hopeless when it came to such simple decisions. On one hand they were constantly worrying about children and on the other did everything to worry THEM. Thank God for Saturdays, she could drown into an all white gear but then Saturdays reminded her of the dreaded PT. She would never ever ever complain about Navy Blue or Coconut Oil or Discipline if she could just read quietly. Instead of having to sweat and huff and puff with unruly boys and aggressive girls on something called KHO KHO.
She really wished she could indulge in some civilized games like, I don’t know ….hmmm…croquet maybe? Alice had played it in her wonderland. It sounded non-shouter-ly, she could picture it as being very stroll friendly. Come join me for croquet! Sounded like the English high tea, come join us in the parlour, no?
Kho Kho on the other hand involved grunts and growls. Touching (how she hated that most of all) and pushing and running. No, Running is what she hated most-er than most of all. Why did she have to run between crouching figures hitting random people on the head while shouting Kho , at the same time running away from an opponent who might Kho-Kho-you-out by touching your head and ALSO shouting Kho, while you urgently looked for a place to squat? She couldn’t believe that her highness was being made to behave like a common commoner with all these non-entities who were her classmates. In her mind she was a princess of a far off land awaiting to be discovered and crowned a queen by a very grateful public.
She was glad that she was not a boy just for this reason that she was not forced to play Kabbaddi. That would have been disastrous, forcing Uma to say Kabbaddi Kabbaddi all the while trying to enter enemy territory and ‘kill’ a person and re-enter her own without being caught or losing breath.
Uma could not believe that Gautam Buddha or Mahavira were Indian. We are so war like and violent she thought, even in our games. Chess, which she had initially enjoyed playing with her Tathayya was another murderous board game designed for Kings and Viziers. She had given it up on a matter of principle. She would not participate in this competitive game nor anything reeking of such intent. Oh! Where was she to go? What was she to do? She was a helpless eleven year old, a victim of her age and sex, with no outlet or help in sight. Except her books. Plus she did not want a Prince to rescue her if the Prince happened to be a boy.
Everyone was living a fantastic life in a wonderful story while she went to school and came home, went to school again and came home again and then again and again. “If only my life could be like ……” she thought. Like who? Anyone whose story appeared in a book seemed to her as worthy and lofty. One day it was Tom Sawyer another day it was Oliver Twist, yet another day it was the Little Women (she couldn’t decide on just one among the four) and for many many days the girls of St Clare’s and Malory Towers seemed to her to be having the best lives among all living creatures.
Far away in the United Kingdom there were chirpy girls in uniforms, carrying trunks, giggling on their way to their boarding schools, making best friends and gossiping about their French teacher while Uma, stuck here, in this nowhere land in the south south southern most part of India, (probably no one even knew of her land? Did they read about India like she read about them?) while she walked to and fro from a day school with absolutely unexciting classmates and boring teachers. Of course there were no terrible French verbs to memorize to make life exciting the way life happened in England. All she had by way of a foreign language was Sanskrit, Samskrutam is how her Nanna called it, (“it means ‘ civilized’, ‘cultured’ ”), which not only was not foreign, it was dead. What a terrible situation, my poor Uma!