So many Alma Maters!

 Almost everyone I know went to one school, maybe two, all their schooling life and one, maybe two universities for their higher studies. Me? Well, my crazy parents, crazier self, and craziest life had made sure that I have handfuls of Alma Maters and dozens and dozens of “classmates” left behind and lost, who I would have loved to still have in my life. In this too, my life has been quite extraordinary.

I was all of 2 and a half years old, when I insisted that I should go to school. Why? At a time when earliest school age was around seven, why did I want to go at 2 and a half? Well, we were at the IIT campus in Kanpur, and while dad did his class and lab work for his MTech, mom and I stayed in the quarters. In a city it might have been fine, enough stimulation and company and things happening. But IIT campuses are isolated, quiet and lonely at the best of times, designed to help prioritise studying above everything else. The only other kids around were older than me, and would traipse off to school, leaving me the only kid home. One day, I decided enough was enough, and told mom very clearly that I was going to school – that mythical land where all the kids went to have day long fun!

At that time, the IIT wives ran what is today called a play school. Kishalay was – in the late 1970s – a very unusual place. The children danced and sang and played, as did the teachers, and somewhere along the way, magically it seemed back then, some learning took place. My parents also put in a request that I not be “taught” … just allowed to play and sing along. So, that was my first school. As has been the case, more often than not, it turned out to be a great experience – what I can remember of it.

When we moved back to Dehradun, my parents deemed me old enough to start kindergarten. So, I went to one of the then small but now world-famous schools of Doon – Bright Lands. I was there for a grand total of TWO whole weeks! In my second week, the “auto” which was hired at monthly rates to bring me to and from school failed to bring me home. What one needs to remember is that this is a 3-year-old, in school in a city for the first time. When my panicked mother asked the auto driver why he didn’t bring me, the teacher who also travelled with us jumped in and started screaming about how the child should have had the sense to some find the auto on her own, and the auto driver has no responsibility to make sure the children he is being paid to bring home, actually get home. The principal of the school… when informed of the teacher’s misbehaviour, turned around and not just supported her, but claimed my parents were irresponsible and rude. My extremely principled and progressive father promptly told the man where to stuff his “great school”, and took me home.

This was when they decided I was better off in a school with the other kids my age, among our family friends group. So, a few of us, people who are in the rare category of “still in touch”, were sent to the Pine Hall school on Rajpur Road. Frankly, I have absolutely no memory of the two years I spent at this one. The only thing I have from this time, is a photograph of a tiny me, with two of my friends, in one of those class line-up things.

 

Then came Vidya Mandir, also on Rajpur Road, which is now a huge institution called Scholars Home. The name change happened while I was a student there, and I do have mixed memories of the place, but mostly good, I think. Pretty happy school life, friends, pranks, a few adventures, and so on. Overall a good time, which, again, for some reason was decided had to end.

So, entering class five, I joined probably the best school of my life, Mr Marshall’s school. Today it is still one of the best in Dehradun – which is saying a lot – and runs under the name of Marshalls School. Back then, in that prehistoric past, Mr Marshall himself was still running the show.  Francis Russell Marshall, British educator and all around nice man, made sure that his school was very different from other Indian schools at the time. Concepts that are all the rage now, so popular in these international and world schools, we had back then. There were no exams until class 5. Classes were fun, often in the open, and always playful. In the early 1980s, girls had the option of choosing the “trousers” uniform instead of the skirt, and – my favourite – we all wore shorts for sports/games days, none of that divided skirt nonsense Indian schools foist on female students. I was quite happy, had my first (and second) crush there, made some amazing friends I wish I had some way to trace now, and would have happily ended my schooling career from there, but – of course – my crazy life had other plans.

 

 We moved to Madras in the middle of my class 6. In the middle of the academic year, the first decent school we heard of, we went to. Now, my father always had two main principles with regard to our education – no single gender institutions, and no donation. So, wherever we have gone, whenever we changed schools, it was always admission by examination, not a single penny to be given as donation or capitation. So, bhai and I, gave the exam and stated at Boston Matriculation School, Chennai.

This one was a horror show. Used to the free mixing, open, friendly, secular atmosphere of the Dehradun schools, the segregation, orthodoxy and narrow-minded outlook and atmosphere in the school made me very uncomfortable. A girl in my class was beaten – with a wooden ruler – because she claimed she liked a boy from a senior class. She has never spoken to him, he didn’t know she existed, but they held a school assembly and shamed and beat a girl of class 6 – for daring to step out at lunchtime to LOOK at the boy passing by!! In the same larger event, I was accused of making “adult jokes”.

Now I happily admit to be an excellent cracker of adult jokes in my adulthood, but in class 6 I was such an innocent that I am astounded to think of myself that way, when I look back now. So the accusation was not just unfair, but absolutely false, and the entire public beating was too shocking for words! Luckily for me, by the time I finished out the 6^th, my parents had decided Boston Matric was not good enough for us and decided that we should change schools.

The rest of my stint at Madras was in the same school – one Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School, Vidya Press Road, Adayar. Nice as Madras was in so many ways, the gender segregation and orthodoxy were things that always got on my nerves. In Sankara, the school was officially co-ed, or my father would never have sent me there, but it was weird as hell. I still haven’t figured out the mystery of the section A which was all boys, the section B which was all girls, and the section C which was actually co-ed.

There were other weirdnesses, like the side eye everyone from the sweeper to the principal would give you if they saw a girl and boy just standing and talking in the corridor, there were strange teacher like Vijaya Joseph who would insist that you try to “hear the smell”. But there were also good teachers. There were a ton of Sanskrit shlokas to be chanted at assembly, and a “pandit” who made you memorise the Geeta. But there was also a principal who would admit a student thrown out of 2 schools for failing, and tell his teachers that anyone could get a good result out of a good student, and the real test of a teacher was to get this kind of a child to pass.

Overall Sankara was a decent enough experience. But, crazy me and crazy parents, dad decided to move to Bombay at the end of my class 11. Now plenty of people change boards after 10^th, for one reason or another, but no one changes cities, and no one changes boards after the 11^th! In fact it would be horribly difficult to come in at half point of what is essentially a 2-year course, and expect to do well, is foolhardy. And since the result of the 12^th standard boards basically decides your entire career, it can be a horribly bad move too. But, as my teachers from Sankara pointed out, there would be far more opportunity and exposure in a place like Bombay!

So, the next academic year found me enrolled in Patkar College, Goregaon, Bombay. The strongest memories of this time, sadly, involve the riots. The year began well, amazing new city – what teenager wouldn’t love being in Bombay! – new friends, new interests, so many new things. The first time I set foot in a bar, with friends, the first time college friends celebrated a birthday in a restaurant, the first time I watched the shooting of a song or a film scene, the first time I saw all those Bollywood people, only seen on screen so far, just walking around, buying milk, going to market, Bombay was a lot of firsts. Half tat first year was spent less in class and more hanging out outside Filmistan Studios (which was, conveniently, just opposite the college) hoping to – and succeeding in – catching a glimpse of another screen icon.

The rhythm was interrupted, suddenly, unexpectedly, and violently, by the post-Babri riots. That was my first experience of violence on such a level, such long curfews and confinements, and such sustained atmosphere of apprehension and fear. I lived through the post Indira Gandhi assassination anti Sikh Pogroms, of course, but I was small, and we were in Dehradun which had been nowhere as bad as Delhi. And the riots in Chennai after MGR died (of natural causes) was more like a day of vandalism and looting than sustained violence. Nothing in my experience that far, in all my 17 years, had come close to the level of horror, anxiety, and terror of those days.

By the time some semblance of calm descended on the city again, there wasn’t that much of class 12^th left, and a ton of syllabus to get through – new board, new curriculum, making up 2 years’ worth in a few months – and the pressure was mounting. Just about a month later, while we were buckling down to the task and focusing on classes and studies, the second round of riots struck. Various competitive exams were already happening at this point, and I remember us – the whole crazy family – driving across the city while Bombay burned around us, from Andheri to Churchgate, to give some exam or the other, because they hadn’t notified us of cancellation.

So, the latter half of 12^th passed in curfews, holidays (Ganpati and Diwali total almost a month), and exams, and soon I was doing a BSc in Zoology. This was the one time in my life when I didn’t choose exactly what I wanted to do. This was also the first, and only, time my amazing dad had an attack of Indian father syndrome. He insisted I take science, even though I was reluctant, because I had the marks for it, and – as he put it – you can always switch to arts (as humanities were called back then) later in life. And somehow, I lacked the conviction in my own interests to insist I do English Literature, as I wanted. But by the time the year ended, I was sure this is not what I wanted.

Another college, another place, 2 years making up a 3 year course (bit of a running theme in my life), and I emerged clutching an honours degree, and trundle back to “home” – the yet another new city of Pune.

 Pune University was amazing. Fun, open, fairly progressive in parts, farcical and story worthy in others, but overall quite the ride, PU was what I imagined college abroad must be like.

And THAT, the final institution, concluded the great educational saga of my life, bringing the grand total up to 10!
 
 

 

On not having a "Native" - The difficulty of explaining a nomadic life

 

Most people in India – and maybe around the globe – seem to spend most of their lives, at least the growing up years, in one place. Any moving they do, they seem to do for higher education, or work, and they all seem to have a “native” a village or city where they are ancestrally rooted, have generational history, and some kind of HOME which has been theirs for a generation – usually multiple generations.

It is therefore expectedly difficult to explain to people I meet, online and off, that I have no such thing. No roots, no “hometown”, no single alma mater, and I have lived in 10 cities so far, and hope to live in many more before I die. How can that be? They wonder. Surely one HAS to have some kind of a native place, some ancestral home, some place they grew up! Well, I don’t. and here’s why.

The story starts with my grandparents, both sets, who moved from what was the newly minted East Pakistan, to settle in what was left of India, around the time of the partition. One set ended up in Agartala, Tripura, and the other in Kandi, Murshidabad, West Bengal. Displaced and dislocated as they were, further generations only made the story more complicated.

 My father left Agartala to go do his engineering – in Calcutta – at the tender age of just about 15, while my mother migrated to the same city – and college, coincidentally, for her Master’s degree. Childhood friends who had lost touch, they reconnected, and ended up married by the time dad landed his first job with DRDO, and thence began yet another chapter of the nomadic saga.

The new Bengali couple lived for a short while in Bangalore, before moving to Dehradun, where they had yours truly. So, essentially, my part of the saga begins in Dehradun, then UP, where as a child of Bengali parents who were temporary residents themselves, I didn’t really BELONG. It could have become my hometown, had I grown up there and lived there for the rest of my life, or my parents had “settled” there, but neither of those things happened.

 

Kanpur was a short stint, for 2 years, in the middle of the Dehradun stretch, when dad went to IIT Kanpur, with mom and a 2-year-old me in tow, to do his MTech. Back in Doon after, life seemed settled, with dad in his government job, and us immersed in the small-town life and social milieu. Much as I loved that small town life, and neither knew nor wanted anything else, much as I would have blissfully remained under exposed and over protected for life, however, it wasn’t to be.

Before I was fully 12 years old, my crazy parents decided to leave the cushy “government job, quarters, and colony” life for the stormier seas of the private sector, in far off and totally unknown Madras! So, off we went, claiming another city as home, and adding another to the list of “not hometown”. Five and a half years in Madras added a fourth language to my arsenal, another couple of schools to my already longish list, and sharpened my people skills. It exposed me to a much larger canvas of life, unfamiliar cultures, and strange new foods (which I completely fell in love with). Being the outsider, and the new student in class, also taught me the skills to make friends quickly and adjust and become a part of the group. By the time I had finished my 11^th standard in school, though, we were already on our way to a new place.

Bombay was a revelation! Huge, fast, frenetic, fancy, so very different from the calmer and more laid back Madras. 12^th standard was Junior College, friends were cosmopolitan and multicultural, and life was so much more grown up and non-regimented than I had been used to until then. Private sector employment for dad also meant that we had considerably more money than before, not to mention endless access to new opportunities, experiences, sounds, tastes, and sights. If the two rounds of post Bari Masjid Demolition riots had not put a huge damper on my time living there, it would have been a pretty golden time. Age had something to do with that, of course, since late teenage in a place like Bombay is bound to be something else, especially for someone from an essentially small-town background. But access, and progressive parents added to the overall experience and blossoming.

And yet, I wasn’t fated to live there long either. Come second year of graduation, my own crazy genes kicked in, and I decided to go all the way to small town West Bengal, in order to drop my BSc, and get myself an Honours degree in literature (in 2 years, where the course is actually 3 years of work) from Calcutta University.  Berhampore, Murshidabad was a huge culture shock! It was the diametric opposite of everything Bombay was! It was tiny, where Bombay was huge, repressed and orthodox and narrow where Bombay was free and open and progressive, nosy and full of interference and restrictions where Bombay was “don’t care”. My two years in Berhampore were hellish in so many ways, that I can write a series of horror novels about them, especially hostel days, and many a treatise on the psychology of the tiny town dweller, though it did give me 2 of the longest lasting friends of my life.

By the time I made my way back “home”(which for our family has always been defined by people and is never a place) after graduation, my parents had been living in Pune for over a year. So, Pune became the next port in my odyssey. And it was a long lasting one. From starting my Master’s to meeting my own childhood friend again, to marrying my still-best friend, to two years after the birth of my child, Pune was probably the place I loved most to live in.

 Even during this time, the parents moved 3 or 4 times, to Hyderabad for a year, and back to Mumbai for a bit, and even to California for a couple of years, before they returned to Pune again. And bhai left Pune for good, just after I married, to move to the US, eventually settling and becoming a citizen. So, Pune was significant, for the whole clan, and well loved by all of us, but not permanent. Wonderfully cosmopolitan without being as fast or frenetic as Bombay, safe and fun, Pune truly was the best combination of small town vibes and big city conveniences. But that’s not hometown either, for me OR my parents.

From about the third month of my pregnancy to just before the monkey turned one, we spent a year and a half in Nagpur. This was a “meh” time overall, what with morning sickness and physical discomfort on the one hand and the basically-nothing-to-do-here small town quality of life on the other. The bits I did love, were the facts that we were living in a “house” after something like 20 years, the garden and the fruit trees, and the quite mumma-baby evening walks in the sleepy mohalla.

 

When baby was 2, we moved again, this time to Kolkata. So far, this has been the last move, but I am sure there will be more. Monkey is already on her own solo journey, beginning at age 17, with moving to go to college. For us too, this is unlikely to be the last place. For one, I am not all that fond of the place, especially by comparison to some of the other places I have lived. For another, being the parents of an only child, and not having any ROOTS to hold us back and tie us to this place, the likelihood of moving to whichever part of the world monkey is in is pretty high.

The rest of the world beckons, new horizons are waiting, , and I, for one, am more than ready! 

The Unfamiliar Familiar – New avatars of old haunts - Mussoorie, Company Gardens

The last stop – before heading back to home and what passes for regular life for us – of the epic “back to the past” trip, was Mussoorie. After all how can anyone go to Doon, and not do Mussoorie?

We set off in the morning, and stopped first at the pakora point. After all, a few plates of piping hot pakoras and some chai are de rigueur for this trip up the hills. The pakoras are, indubitably, some of the best I have ever had, and the chai, while not of the caliber of the brews of Bengal, was quite enjoyable and refreshing. 

 

From there, and onto the famous Company Gardens of childhood wonder and memory, the roads and sights are familiar and strange at the same time. 

The gardens are at once smaller than I remember and better put together than memory says. Pretty enough, and centered on that amazing experience of memory, the lake and the boating. And that’s where the shock sets in! 

The so-called lake, which had seemed so vast and magical in those – almost ancient – times, is barely the size of my living room, and those “duck shaped” paddle boats are beyond ridiculous, and nothing like the “mayurpankhi” of the early 80s.

But, as always, any disappointment from remembered images is far offset by the stunning vistas around every corner of the hairpin bends on the mountainous roads. 

Post lunch, we head off to the Mall Road. Every hill station in India has one, and it is where the beating heart of the town – in this case the Queen of the Hills – lives, and thrives, though shops, hotels, hawkers and whatnot. 

Parking and walking up to the Mall Road… just that… is STILL an experience worth every second. The views – and the cold!!! – so incredibly amazing! For a polar bear like me… who comes alive in the cold and in the mountains… it was completely scintillating. And it was cold enough to make even me – walking around in a kurti in Dehradun in January, actually take out a jacket and drape a shawl over it! 

The road itself is unrecognizable. Any old denizen of Doon or Mussoorie would be well forgiven for feeling like they were wandering around a totally new place, instead of the much visited and oh so familiar old haunt. The 20 odd shops are now about 2000, the road up to the bhutia bazaar and the paratha haven is as steep as I remember, but lined chock a block with women hawking their wares on benches, and the entire expanse of the Mall is retina burningly alive with neon of every possible shade. Huge hotels and resorts line the hillside, and the valley side is overgrown and walled, with a few gaps here and there for “viewing points”.

 

Dozens of momo stalls and joints populate the market areas with the pakka stores, but surprisingly and sadly, most of them are “veg”. The few stretches of hillside which don’t have pakka stores set in the cliffs are set up with the kind of thing one is more used to seeing in this area… the benches and camp cots, piled high with the fleece and wool wares, manned by the Bhutanese and Nepalese matriarchs talking and laughing and gossiping with each other while sizing up and trying to sell to the steady stream of tourists walking and riding by. 

A rickshaw trip to the base of the cable car station, some photos, and some momos later, we finally bid adieu to the mountains, and sadly made our way back to Doon, dreading the flight home the next day. 

The Unfamiliar Familiar – New avatars of old haunts - Shiv mandir, Kempty

The third installment of the January travelogues is about 6 months late… but here it is…

Of all the unfamiliar familiar places that were planned for visits, the Shiv Mandir on the way to Mussoorie was probably the most highly anticipated. Now this is certain to be a shocker to anyone who knows me even remotely. Because, and this is important, I am a super atheist. No religion. No god. No rituals. No festivals. Not even funeral rites for my beloved father! So how, for such a Naastik, does a TEMPLE become such a destination?

Well, the thing is, I have no interest in the actual deity of the place. Or the length of time it has been around, since it isn’t exactly historical. The attraction are the gemstones. That’s right. This is the place where you can buy precious and semi precious stones – guaranteed genuine (offering to pay penalties in lakhs if one turns out to be fake), for ridiculously cheap prices, and by weight! Having been too poor to afford any, and in too much of a hurry to stop and shop, the last time I was there (that’s right! All of 24 years ago!), we had long since decided to indulge to my heart’s content on this trip. 

So bright and early (well, relatively early, considering we had to coordinate 2 families, one of which had just finished a huge even the previous night) on our last day in Doon, we drove off to the higher grounds, past old schools and new colleges, past familiar institutions like the Ramkrishna Mission and Buddhist Temple and shiny new colleges, on my 2 decade delayed treasure hunt. The way there hasn’t really changed much, as is normal for the soft Himalayan hills, and limited possible road widenings.

The deer park is no longer far outside the city, with malls and buildings, stores and homes, the city extending all the way to the park and beyond. I remember when a trip to the park was a day long picnic. A long row of about 20 scooters and motorcycles – those trusty Bajaj Chetaks, the odd 1980s Lambretta, the cool Rajdoots – all loaded up with the families of the employees of DRDO, would wind its way from the city. The city comprehensively ended before the Ramkrishna Mission back then, and even that was the outskirts. The picnickers would make their way through the Sal forests and up narrow hilly roads, to get to the park. It seemed such a long way away, to the 10 or so year old me.  Whether it is time or many years in much bigger cities, or just the fact that I am much bigger now, the world seems to have shrunk a fair bit. Rajpur road no longer looks like such a vast way across, and places are so much closer. 

Arriving at the temple, things looked more familiar, the narrow road made narrower by the many vehicles parked on the side. The hundreds of monkeys quiet enough on their perches, but a scourge for anyone who makes the mistake of having a packet of chips or an ice cream cone in their hands. Things didn’t look like they had changed much. Until I looked across the road at the actual edifice! 

What was a single gated, open courtyard, small rural temple a quarter of a century ago, not surprisingly, is not this huge building with many dopes and “chura”s … quite the sight, in fact. 

The open courtyard is history, replaced by a dark, covered hallway, and the open tray heaps of jewels are now an organized display of glass cases. 

What hasn’t changed is the fact that you can STILL – for the price you would pay for ONE gemstone in your city – you can leave with a fistful of gems of many hues and shapes!  Shopping done, photographs taken, we set off for the next stop. 

                                            

The last time I was at the Kempty Falls, I was all of 11 years old. 

I remember being impressed then, but from the other side of almost 40 extra years, and much “development”, the actual vista was quite pyrrhic. 

The falls themselves have been cut down to half their height, the top half looking more like piped drainage than any kind of natural spring.  The lower half of the falls still exists, but has been severely crimped in, and work was still going on at the base, probably to hem in the natural pool and turn it into a concrete sink hole. The surrounds, the forests, the steep climb down… all gone. Its all ropeways, water parks, and frenetic construction. 

Waste of half a day, it seemed like, to an old local like me.

The drive there and back, the views, though! Worth every second! The Himalayas NEVER disappoint!