Who Else am I not-"The Two Idiots"

The next decade was a blur of places, names, people, schools, uniforms, teachers, exams, report cards.....

The one thing that remained constant in our lives were the Himalayas.

In this time, my father went from Udhampur, through Kalimpong(a second time), and Phuntsholing(Bhutan) to Thimphu (Bhutan)

By now I had started taking the weather, always ranging from pleasant to cold, the breath taking view, and the non polluted environment for granted.

Whenever we visited our cousins in the plains, I longed to get back to ‘our’ side of the continent.

Academics appeared to be the only "black lining in our silver cloud", as we joined our new schools at any time of the year. Sometimes, after more than half the academic session had elapsed!

It never occurred to my father that my mother, my brother and I should stay back in a place to complete a session, and I will be eternally grateful to him for that.

In a way that was good for all of us in the long run, he felt strongly about the family staying together at all times, whatever the consequences.

Our regular traipsing all over the Himalayas with our parents had two very happy consequences, in my opinion.

The first was that academics became an inconsequential matter in our household, though not deliberately.

Our school life just could not match our experiences outside the classroom.

Though our parents sang the usual refrain of “you must come first with 90%”, they were easily distracted by the other options available.

Udhampur saw my father come into his own (he was a trained classical singer, an amateur actor, and a stand up comedian), whether it was announcing tambola at the Chinar Officers’ Institute, singing popular duets with officers’ wives and /or daughters, having musical evenings at home (where everyone sat on mattresses covered with white sheets, and ate pakodas while listening to classical and film music), or writing and acting in humorous plays.

He was all over the place, and, as a consequence, so were we.

The second was that, with my father’s penchant for travel, and despite my mother’s distaste for it, we were enjoying holiday weekends long before the phrase became popular in India.

Srinagar was on our monthly calendar, so, at least once a month, sometimes twice, breakfast would be in Batote (two hours from Udhampur), late lunch in Verinag (just after the Banihal tunnel-now called the Jawahar tunnel), evening would include a shikara ride on the (then) beautiful Dal Lake, and dinner would be in the cosy Officers’ mess situated on the main road running along the lake.

This was also the time when we were visited by hordes of relatives and friends.

Kashmir, and the expansive and generous nature of my father was too loaded a combination to miss out on! Thanks to them, we visited Vaishno Devi four times, and seemed to practically live in Pahalgam and Gulmarg!

How could school and boring text books ever match up with this?

The occasions when our father would glare at us before signing our report cards were tiny blips dismissed by the radar of our minds!

Kalimpong the second time round was very different compared to our previous stay there.

This time, we had to stay in a colony built by my father's organisation for its personnel. While my brother and I did have a good time, I missed staying in our previous house on the hill above the 'Kali Mandir'. In my mind, that was the ‘real’ Kalimpong.

I believe that the beauty of a place can only be felt by seeking out and absorbing its native, local flavour, which was absent in the colony.

After the gay abandon in Udhampur, with the happy informality of the Indian nuns, getting back to the strict and at times unsmiling demeanour of the European nuns was difficult.

Academics could not be overlooked here, as long as they could help it. So, life did get a little tough for my brother and I, when we failed in, of all things, Moral Science(I had to read up the Holy Bible in a couple of months) and Nepali(the only thing offered to us as a third language)!

Though I got back with my old classmates, I noticed now what I had missed, and what may not have been as distinct, earlier.

The boarders were THE people to be in the school and dayscholars merely incidental (I saw the other side of this world only after I attended another school as a boarder myself, later on). For the boarders, spending five hours a day with 'dayskis' as we were called, could not compare with spending every waking moment with each other.

I remember being extremely envious of their midnight feasts and after-school activities.

Some other things about round two of Kalimpong will remain forever etched in my mind.

The omnipresent Kanchenjunga was everywhere. I didn't remember taking note of it as a child, but now its beauty seemed inescapable. Like the sea, this majestic mountain had different moods, and just when you thought you had seen them all, it surprised you with a completely new one!

Our school song, which I loved to sing, was sung to the tune of the Scottish National Anthem (of which I learnt only a couple of years ago!).

Our uniform included a light blue beret, and made our uniform look the smartest I've ever worn to any school.

On the 15th of August in 1978, we girls put up an 'Ai-Ki-Do' (a martial art form) performance in front of the Town Hall, to the tune of 'Kungfu Fighting' by Carl Douglas!

At home, life continued as before. My father was undeterred in his zest for travel. So, it was no big deal to visit Gangtok for the weekend, or to be woken at 2 a.m. in the night, be bundled in the back of a Willys jeep (now Mahindra), and be driven to Darjeeling in time to see the sun rising behind Tiger Hill!

Like I mentioned before, my cloud was made of special sterling silver!

Very soon, we were off again, this time to tranquil and breathtakingly beautiful Bhutan...!!

Who Else Am I Not? Part Two- “Are you from India?”

A week later, I stood in front of a dilapidated wooden structure. My father said it was to be my new school.


In the 1970's, Nagaland had a lot of Christians, but surprisingly, it did not have the kind of schools that the missionaries built in popular hill stations and the plains of India. The Indian government was hated, and therefore, not allowed to do much.

We had just arrived a few days ago to Mukokchung, and had settled into a nice big wooden house on stilts, in a little valley surrounded by hillocks.


We were to share it with another family from my father's organisation.

The road trip from Mariani to Mukokchung that usually took three hours, had taken us five, as, just outside the town, had occurred a mud slide. I have yet to see again such a huge pile of soft silky light brown mud.

I distinctly remember how peaceful the long line of vehicles on both sides appeared. No honking, no gathering of irritable people desperate to get to the other side. Loved ones would simply assume the best, and not the worst as is the case now.

Laden with memories of the vast expanse of my previous school, with its sunlit classrooms, manicured lawns, and pretty little flower beds, I looked with distaste at the structure my father now ushered us into.


My brother and I wrinkled our noses at the smell in the ‘office’ of the disheveled ‘principal’, and giggled, silenced by the stern look on our father’s face.

Soon, both of us were escorted  to our respective classrooms.


I looked around for polished desks with small attached seats that I thought every classroom would have,  only to find rough long wooden tables, with one long bench shared by ten or twelve children. The ground was littered with pencil shavings and paper.

I noticed, many of the children were wrapped in red and black shawls, some of which were faded (I don’t think the school had a uniform).

They looked at me curiously, standing there in my yellow frock, and when the teacher read out my name haltingly from a slip my escort was carrying, amid much laughter and giggles. It was deja vu time.....

The girl I sat next to (I don't recall her name. In fact I don't remember a single person's name from that school) turned towards me and asked, in halting English, "Are you from India?"

I took my time to reply, as I wasn't sure. My concept of India was vague at the time.


"No, I'm from Kalimpong."

That broke the ice, and though I was very different in many respects ( I wore frilly, sometimes starched frocks to school, while many children wore either the tribal dress or jeans, which the missionaries got them),I was accepted very soon, as my English, Math and Science was the best in class, thanks to my three years with the Scottish nuns.


Although I gained the respect of my classmates easily, there were many things about my new friends that invoked envy in me.


I noticed that the world (comprising, for me, of Kalimpong and here) was full of girls and boys with black straight silky hair, skin that was hairless and smooth, and eyes that were small and sparkling.


I spent many hours in front of the mirror pulling the corners of my eyes upwards in a slant, to see how I looked.


I felt like the ugliest creature in the world (that was, for me, made up, just to remind the readers, of Kalimpong and here) with my strange large eyes, hairy arms and legs, and curly long hair that my mother dutifully made into two long tight plaits every morning.


My prowess in class did assuage some of my feelings, but deep down I wanted to look like the rest so much!


However, the one thing that I was glad was different from ours was their food.

Once, on a holiday, I asked my father to drop me off at one of my school friend’s house to play. It was raining, and the evening air was full of little bugs flying all over, and crowding the streetlights.

My friend’s mother called out to her and gave her a little mug, with some instructions. She ran about with the mug in hand, trying to catch as many little bugs as possible.


"This was a great game", I thought, and joined in, collecting as many as I could till the mug was full.

We handed the mug over to her mother, who then, to my horror, proceeded to fry them in hot oil! All for my benefit!

My vegetarian mother, equally horrified at the ‘honour’ accorded to me, forbade me from visiting other friends’ houses, and didn’t wish to entertain them either. For a woman enterprising enough to follow my father to the "ends of the Earth" as she put it, eating bugs was where she drew the line.

The hillocks around our house had little huts on them belonging to the labourers who worked on the roads that my father’s organisation was building.

Every evening, they burnt their wood fires, and cooked rice and (I learnt later, after the loss of our Alsatian, Peter) sometimes, dog meat.  While waiting for it to cook, they strummed their guitars, and sang quaint songs I had never heard.


I noticed that every family for miles around, rich or poor, owned a guitar.

The sight of the beautifully burning fires lighting up the night sky is still fresh in my memory.

The knowledge of how differently we were perceived was brought home in a rather unwelcome fashion one summer night.


That night, three or four men quietly broke into our house via the back bathroom door, with the intention of causing bloodshed.


The Naga insurgency was at its peak at the time, and my father's organisation was a part of the Indian Army, which was enemy number one for the insurgents.

As children we were blissfully unaware of this fact. I just remember waking up that night by the screams and shouts coming from my parent’s bedroom.


On hearing the commotion, my father's colleague and another friend who was staying the night, rushed in to my parent’s bedroom, to find my mother, shaken and alone.


My father, not one to be scared easily, had momentarily overpowered one of  his assailants. When they all ran back, out from the bathroom door, he followed them in hot pursuit!

He managed to catch that one guy. After interrogation, in a week's time, the rest were caught too.


Post this incident, it was considered too dangerous for us all to stay in town, so in record time, some makeshift accommodation was constructed for us near the project office, and we were shifted there.

Childhood is a time of flexibility, and I had settled in beautifully in my strange new surroundings, but, my parents, it seems, couldn't quite adjust. So, in just a matter of ten months, we were all packed and on the move again.....

To be continued...

Who Else Am I Not? Part One-"What's not in a name?"

There is a popular saying in Hindu philosophy that if we wish to understand life, the answer to just three questions can reveal all:

1. Who am I?
2. Where have I come from?
3. Where am I going to?


In today’s time, when the nation with its demands for separate state hoods simultaneously splits itself along hitherto non-existent seams, while appearing to be united and secular, I often find myself plagued by the first question.


If you know me by name, I appear to be a female Hindu Kayasth. Yet, my mind cringes at the thought of all the stereo types that most people imagine when they hear my name or meet me for the first time.


Being born to a UP man and a Haryanvi woman, raised in different states in the North East of India, living for the past 25 years in the west and south of India, loving Hindustani Classical music as well as Western Classical and Carnatic, I find that I’m at the same time part of all groups, and also a part of none.


Similarities and differences are two sides of the same coin. So, I thought, in order to find out who I am, let me first discover who I am not.....


Here is the first post in a series towards that end.....
                                        
 "What's not in a name?"


There was something funny about my name.


The teacher ran through a list of names like ‘Karma Choden’, Deki Wangmo’, ‘Sonam Tsering’, ‘Charmaine Jones’, and similar other names. Then , a pause, and very carefully, as though trying out a new tongue twister, ‘Smita ************.’

This was my first day at school at *****************, Kalimpong, a boarding school that also allowed day scholars, in the year 1969 or was it 1970?


I forget which, but that trivia is insignificant.


What’s significant is that I felt different that day, and I didn’t want to be different.


Being too young to know that one could take all one’s grouses to God, without fear of a reprimand or a shouting-at, I went home and cornered my mother. Why on Earth did I have such a funny name? I wanted it changed at once!


How should I do it? Should I tell all our neighbours, friends, my younger brother, my father’s friends, or would she and my father do it? Why was I named by them? Shouldn’t I have some say in what I would like to be called for the rest of my life?


I wanted it to be Sonam Caroline Wangmo.


That way it would be better than all the others.


I raved and ranted, to no avail. She just gave me an exasperated look that turned into a dismissive one, and carried on shelling peas. Even at that age, I could sense that I shouldn’t try my luck too far, as she would take just one second to decide whether she could pause long enough in the rapid disembowelment of the peas to give me a whack on my behind.


I returned to school the next day, determined to tell my new classmates my chosen name.


Once there, however, I soon forgot all about it, as we found a surprise awaiting us inside our desks. Each one of us had been gifted an old, empty little metal tin by our teacher, to keep any odds and ends that we might like.


Each tin was different, mine had been an old tea container (in those days, tea and many other items usually came in metal tins), red, with a black pagoda on the top and also on all the sides. Some of the others received old tea tins as well, while some others got biscuit tins, and a few got toffee tins.


Mine was one of the prettiest, and very soon everyone knew my name in the class, as they tried hard to get me to part with my tin. I realised that it didn’t matter if I was Miss Unpronounceable for them as long as I held on to that tin, so I guarded it zealously.


Three beautiful years in one of the prettiest school properties later, it was time for my father to move. The orders were for him to move to an unheard of tongue twister of a place, Mukokchung, in Nagaland.


With packed boxes painted black, that displayed the neatly stencilled name of my father, the place where we were boarding the train (New Jalpaiguri) and the place that we were going to (Mariani-in Assam, the last point that it would take us to), we all headed for Nagaland. Little did I know that the comfort I had arrived at after three years of being ‘Smita *****************’ would be short lived.


To be continued.....