Sentimental Little Fool !

Ruhi goes to a 'new' school that just started this year. Its a beautiful school and though its an hour's school-bus drive away from home, everything else about it makes up for that extra distance. At least for now. 

They do not have an auditorium yet and they make do with a large open space for a special assembly each week till their fancy audi gets the final touches. Since the Kids have been with them a couple of months now, they are having each class to host the special assembly for the parents each week. Last Wednesday was the turn of Ruhi's class. I was excited as hell and had been anxiously waiting for the day and I planned meticulously to leave home well in advance to account for every traffic eventuality. 

Office time in the morning, the traffic is a bitch and the BRT is well....I don't need to swear, anyone who lives in South Delhi already know what I mean. I insisted on driving since I didn't trust the driver or the husband enough to get to school just as my precious darling begins what she had told me was a big 'surprise' for me. We were moving at a snail's pace but I had accounted for this delay...but half an hour later, I knew it was impossible to make it before the assembly. As the traffic became more stubborn I wouldn't as much glance at the watch. I couldn't hear a word of the conversation my husband was having with me. My heart felt like a log and I wondered what it is that makes me so silly, so weak. Why is it that my husband who loves our daughter as much as I do,if not more, is so matter of fact about these things? Am I strange ?

We reached school half an hour late for the hour long special assembly. I drove past the screaming guards at the school gate, right into the porch, abandoned the car and my husband to pacify the guards and ran my fastest race to the assembly. There was a row of children up there with tall masks covering their faces, taking the final bow just as I reached. I spotted the Pink shirt that I bought for her just a day before and I quietly stood at the back fighting my tears and taking pictures till the masks went off and she noticed me. 

Her face lit up like sunshine. I pretended as if I had been standing there forever. She was with her class, following the teacher's instructions to walk in a file, stand straight, sing the national anthem and all through her eyes were fixed on me with that silly sheepish smile. 

I got to speak to her for a few minutes before the children ran away to their classroom. She told me she had been crying under her mask since she had thought I was not going to come at all. And that like an idiot she had not seen me standing at the back. 

I told her she was a sentimental little fool.

Yeah !

I proposed, God disposed : As usual.

Thats Ruhi on her first day to 'big' school. Class 1-A.

I had eagerly waited 3 years for Ruhi to start proper school. These three years have been a journey which made me wiser or so I think, even more cynical in case that is possible and less hyper about situations I have no control over. 

I don't know if it was my good or bad luck that M quit her  job with the most sought after school in the city to take the top job at the most sought after Play school instead, before my kids were born. Good luck perhaps because my kids sailed into the Play school without the agony others faced, bad luck because : only if she had still been at 'that' school I so wanted !! 

Sounds funny now but over these years I have realised that if you are ambitious about your children's primary education environment, you must be careful about the choices you make in your own life - choosing your own school to begin ( better go to that same school you want your Kid to go to LOL), the person you marry, his bank balance and the residential address he inherits ( within 8 Kms of the school you want for your kids), the cars you drive, the foreign degree you pay for, the career that you opt for etc etc etc. 

If you have lived the life of a Maverick and worn it on your sleeve then you better be prepared to reap what you have sown when the time comes! Like I did.

When Ruhi turned three I enthusiastically started the rounds of the schools for her pre nursery admission with a firm belief that it wasn't as difficult as other neurotic mothers made it sound to be. By the end of that year and another, I was another neurotic mother myself after we were rejected yet again for pre Nursery and Nursery ! By the third year I had given up mentally but did not stop going through the motions. I must also mention that for Ruhi's admission I have done what I always thought was the unthinkable for me ! I made a list of ALL the people I knew and I asked them for that elusive 'Pull" the strangely nonsensical loaded thing that one needs to have along with everything else to survive this city !

This post is an epitaph for all those who pushed me harder than the rest on the dizzy school admission merry go round ( I do love this word ! )

One among many others was husband's cousin who for years had been the guy with connections. Someone who always talked about dinner meetings with Ministers and seemed to know everyone important enough in 'The' community. At his own initiative he assured me that because of his fondness for us he had a seat pre-reserved for Ruhi in 'that' school in which lesser mortals may need to pay up upto Rs 5 Lacs for a Nursery seat. I gratefully accepted and told him to hold on to that seat till I've tried and failed on my own merit. After the inevitable had happened,  I gave him an SOS call 2 years ago and said I was taking his rain check. 

As I realised very quickly afterwards, there had been no seat, no connections, no intentions. It was just one of the things that people with big egos and bigger insecurities say to sound important ! I was amused to find out that he was giving the same assurances to another gullible aspirant mother this year! 

Then there was this 'agent' who was introduced to me through a close friend of mine. My friend would have done just anything to help and Mr agent was a government employee and friend's aunt was his boss. As a favour and obligation to my friend's aunt he regularly took me for a ride upto the school reception ( same school as above@ Rs 5 Lacs per seat) and after an hour of waiting would come back and say 'madam ji aaj busy hain".

Then, another well connected brother in law of a close friend, who said he would have helped if only he knew the details about the kid. I must have given him the details on phone, fax, e mail over and over again but after each lapse of time and memory he would ask the details again. 

And many, many others, each different in their quirk but the with the same cliched result ! I must also mention here for posterity that our old driver who now works for a VIP ex politician got so disturbed by the situation that he threatened to quit unless his perplexed 'madam' gave him a recommendation letter for school admission for Ruhi.  There was also an estranged brother in law who I havn't spoken to for years, but who, for some reason went out of the way to help. But no thanks I didn't need it.  Though perhaps if it was really the school I wanted, I would have compromised on ethics ? Thank God I didn't get to finding out.

I also used to wonder what the future had in store for Ruhi -  she seemed to have been born on a particularly unlucky schooling star ! To beat the stress I used to listen a lot to my favourite Art of Living music those days - now, even if I accidentally hear that music again, it stresses me out for no reason at all, just by bringing back unconscious associations ! LOL

I mention those days here because memories of the misery and the anger are slowly losing their edge.  I always want to remember that no matter what happens, there is a way and that is the only right way  for us.  Also to record for the future that I did try everything under the sun to get her in that list of a handful schools that everyone sends their Kids to. Nothing worked. 

It was as if she had her own course charted out for her - I used to spend sleepless nights wondering if she was going to stay at home after her nursery class which was the very last class at her Play School. Just before her session ended, the school announced they were starting a proper school ! If I step back and look, she's grown up playing and learning with a bunch of friends since they were all 2 years old ! They are going to spend the next 12 years together in the same school that has made her incredibly happy and secure in the play group atleast.  Even as her mother tore hair over worrying what comes next !

The new school is straight out of my imagination - like I had dreamt it should be except that its far from home and expensive. But I am wearing rose tinted glasses yet and I think I am more excited about her starting new school than she is about it, though for the last 2 days she has refused to take off her new found school uniform ! Lets see how long this lasts.

Getting her started on the journey of her life !

Ruhi's rather elite little Play School has branched out and added a full curriculum school in Greater Noida. The very first session will begin in the April of next year and grudgingly I have resigned to send her to the back of the beyond for the rest of her 12 years of growing up ! I always like to complain that I have no other option except this. But, if I were honest there are probably only a couple of schools in Delhi that I really would have felt happy sending her to. The others I visited were cramped, overcrowded, had teachers who bully kids, gave senseless homework with a mad rigid schedule. Or that is what I felt watching and asking around. Those couple of schools that I wanted - didn't want us. We did not have the right credentials and in retrospect I understand that.

Ruhi's new school had a written exam for Ruhi and ten others in her class who have applied to the new school besides kids from other schools. And they called us today along with Ruhi for an 'interview' the dirty word which in context of school admissions in Delhi means that a few stern and important looking women will grill you with questions aimed at making you feel small and useless. I know everyone in Ruhi's Nursery school. She has been going there since she was two, yet I started getting that same creepy feeling that I used to get while visiting other schools for her Nursery admission.

After a long wait, as Ruhi played on the swings with mad abandon - her brand new white trousers soiled completely at the knees, I sat outside wondering if many years down the line, I would regret my decisions about Ruhi's education.

We were ushered in to meet a tall, fair big lady with light eyes and pleasant features. As soon as we sat she looked at Ruhi and said she was happy to invite her for admission to class 1 in the Step by Step world school.......they started having an adult conversation and I kept wondeing if Ruhi knew what was happening. They spoke about what she likes and laughed and talked. We sat there, Wasi and I, each on one side of Ruhi, feeling and looking quite useless in the context of things. It made me so incredibly happy. It didn't matter who I was, where and what I had studied or where we lived or what we did - the only thing that mattered was the child who they were going to bring up for me.

Ruhi was saying she loves to swim and that she can make a 'roti' but cannot put it on a 'tawa' and that she loves to play with clay but not so much with toys though she loves best the 'Ballerina' Barbie but she doesn't have one yet and that the best thing she likes in the world is to get gifts !.....and that she loves to eat Papaya and all other fruit but doesnt care too much for food except Rajma Chawal and Maggie Noodles !

After their little tete a tete was over Mrs Raina asked me if I'd like to tell her something about the child. I told her Ruhi was a shy, introvert and a sensitive child. I told her that she was growing up too fast and that I was concerned that she may not be able to enjoy the innocence and abandon of childhood like other kids. About her being madly jealous of my attentions to little Rayyan. I told her about her questions about God about poverty, beggars, about the good and the bad. About how she gets bullied and that she was the only one in her class who was not naughty and that I never wanted anything more than for her to be naughty and 'normal' like other kids.

She heard me through and then said to me that the world was becoming an insensitive place because our kids are taught to be tough and aggressive from the start and that in fact what is required today are 'more Ruhis'. She said it will be a painful journey for me because I will have to handhold her much earlier than other kids, through her struggle with life and its understanding, but I must learn to be stronger myself and to let her be. Because she is OK like she is.

In my heart I believe that too. I realize I am only looking for reassurance.

John Holt, How Children Learn

Birds fly, fish swim, man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to motivate children into learning by wheedling, bribing or bullying.We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do, is bring as much of the world as we can... into their lives; give children as much help and guidance as they ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest.

GETTING OUT OF THE WAY......

Ruhi hardly slept last night in her excitement about her school Play at Kamani. She sprang out of bed and was ready in a jiffy this morning. I must mention here that it is quite a chore to get her up and ready for school on most ordinary mornings. They had the full dress rehearsal today. Ruhi knew all along that she was going to be a clown in the play but when I went to fetch her back this afternoon she had a glum expression and looked quite comical with her cherry red painted nose, dark pink circles on both cheeks and her large sad eyes. I had parked the car quite some distance away and on the way, a bus full of school kids hooted and waved when they saw her and that was the cue for those tears which had just been waiting to pour out. She was inconsolable.

My heart broke when she said she was so upset that all the other kids had such nice costumes but she had to wear a clown's dress. She said she wanted to be a Penguin or a Fairy instead like Rhea and Trisha. She said her teacher had promised to wash the Clown makeup from her face and then forgot to do it and how could she. I told her that everyone loved a Clown and that Clowns make sad people happy but she wouldn't listen. I started speculating in my mind how they could have chosen this shy little sombre child to play a clown ! And then I realised I was once again trying to carry her cross for her. I know she has to learn to accept that that life also offers lemons. But my heart bled when she cried.

I suddenly remembered I had seen her friend Rivan Mehra walking out of the auditorium rather sheepishly with green make up on his face. When I asked she said he was to play a Frog and that in fact Rivan Mehra looked the silliest of them all. I told her was she not glad she wasn't a frog instead of a Clown. She thought for a while and said she was really glad and then asked for some wet tissues from me to scrub off the red paint from her nose.

Tomorrow is the play and as part of the PTA I have to mind the very last rows of the Hall. I cry shamelessly every year when I see her up on stage and I don't know why I cry. I am glad I wouldn't probably be able to see her from back there. But on Sunday I get to mind the first few rows.

God knows I need help to survive her growing up. :)

Still looking for you, Sr Remegia !

A Merut University Teacher is making News these days. She was involved in a murky game of sex, sleaze and money, or so it seems. Her profession as a Teacher seems to everyone my generation a bit incongruous to her end and how it came. I really wish Teachers came with a lifelong guarantee of remaining in that castle full of glory where kids keep them. Yesterday was Christmas and when Ruhi woke up in the morning she laid claim to the gift under her baby brother’s pillow along with her own since the damn gift was kept in the other foot of her own pair of socks. I told Ruhi that Santa couldn’t make out her socks from Rayyan’s since it was so dark in the room. She believed me. She also believes all that Neena Ma’m her Kindergarten teacher tells her. Sometimes she believes Neena ma’m more than she believes me. I wish that would never never change.

I was a child that you could easily not notice in class. And those days when dull and quiet kids went to hell I really didn’t make it to the approval of any of my teachers in school. Except maybe just a few who remained in the fairy tale that I weaved of my own.

As far back as memory takes me I recall my first teacher was Sister Jane. She was short and very thin. Someone who I now would say had ‘malyalee’ looks. She was soft spoken and very kind to me. Though I remember no act of kindness but I do recall my obsession with her and her great importance in my rather unhappy life as a child. She was transferred to another school and it broke my heart more than others. For several years I wrote letter to her which were sometimes replied to in a letter that would be addressed to all of us mentioning every name…I also recall that every morning all 35 of us were inspected for clean nails, polished shoes, neat hair and ironed uniform. The clumsiest 2 kids were made to stand inside the two tin dustbin boxes on either sides of the blackboard in front of the class. I was a regular in that dust bin along with a motherless boy called Andre Simon. He had pointed yellow teeth and hair that looked like hay. He was so dirty always. I think I stood in the other bin since my shoes were never polished and my socks were soiled. Why did mom had to be so ill always.

The other teacher that I remember was the South Indian Maths teacher in Class 4. Her husband was Dad’s boss in his office and I was particularly bad at Maths. I recall accompanying dad to her house and her making filter coffee for us in a dark and bare room. She had told Dad that I was a “Dream Girl’ and that I would be lost in thought through her class always staring out of the window and completely oblivious to what was being taught….her comment stayed with me. I took it as a compliment…being a dreamer was important in my sad, gray world. And there was so much to see out of that huge window overlooking the school playground and the endless fields beyond…

A really big Sri Lankan woman taught us music. And we would stand in a file like prisoners waiting for the gallows and one by one she would summon us to the Piano and off she went ‘ Do Re Me Fa So La Te Do…..” with each and every child. Her house was so bright and full of sunshine. Wonder why I went to her house though…

When I reached the 9th standard, my class teacher was Sr Remegia. She also taught Biology. Tall and graceful with strong features and black rimmed glasses. I think she was taller than all the men. She was the antithesis of all the other nuns who seemed frail and vulnerable even if they were fat and big. Sr Remegia was strong like a man, opinionated, she could hurt with her tongue and she laughed without a care. Not quite a nun’s behavior. Our favorite gossip those days used to be that maybe she had a short bob of a hair cut under her veil. It seemed most nuns tied theirs in a bun. It was said that she joined the order since she had a broken heart and that the man she loved got married to someone else. She fascinated me. I was madly in love with her and pined for her for many months when she left for Nainital. She came back next year as our Principal. What joy it was. We would sit with her and discuss grown up stuff like relationships and skin problems! A lot us had just about started getting pimply then and I remember she used to say: scrub your face with soap and water and do nothing else! She was never a prude like all the other nuns, we could be ourselves with her.

A few months after we passed out of school and I had come to Delhi since Dad took a transfer, I was told that she eloped with her childhood sweetheart and that the school forbids any enquiries about her. We never again heard of her. Every now and then I google for her. She is never quite off my mind yet…