What happened to Raj?

Swarna asked !

I had left the story at the night when Ruhi cried about kids teasing her and how I was resolved to sort it out. And there was a PTM on Saturday...

As I got ready to leave for the PTM, I hesitantly took out the 'I love you note' from my laptop bag. I had no clue what I was going to do with it, but I saved it for the impulse.

I walked around her class while the teacher was busy with others, eagerly looking up as the next parent walked in - just had to meet the Raj kid but I could not spot any unfamiliar kid amongst the visitors. Finally, the teacher came to me and I silently handed her the neatly folded paper in my hand.

She looked embarrassed and concerned at the same time and immediately crumpled the paper in her hand. I found out that she and other teachers had known about this for months. Raj's mother had visited her twice to discuss the 'problem'. He had been spoken to 'firmly' by the class teacher and sent twice to the principal's room. Had been given 'warnings' at school and at home. The teachers were making a special effort to separate him from where Ruhi sits in class and the lunch hall. It seemed like a very big issue over there !

I felt a surge of guilt of having it made worse for him. In the background I could hear the teacher advise me to talk to his mother and to encourage Ruhi to 'complain' to the teachers rather than keeping it bottled up to tell mom later. But all I could really hear and feel was enormous sadness. 

This kid had a problem, he was new in class and maybe he was lonely and sad and the soft spoken, kind little Ruhi was the easiest to approach in a class full of cheeky, preposterous kids. 

I have ignored Ruhi's protests about Raj ever since. Each time she complains I tell her to make an effort to 'include' him in their gang. I think she will come along...or maybe not. I've overheard her talk to her cousin yesterday, slyly inviting him to school to fix someone who 'troubles' her...

If you must know what this 'trouble' is - touching her hand, insisting on sitting next to her always, looking at her - as Ritu said in her comment, trying to be included.

I tend to make a big deal of small things, and maybe its unimportant and will pass, but I do know that sometimes small smarts in a 6 year old's life stay for ever, like they've stayed in mine.

Just like that.

My husband has the quality of making the most mundane of incidents sound filmy. A few days ago he said : "I have news to share with you that will gobsmack you" ( my words to translate whatever it was that he said).

My pulse fell. I hate surprises. In my life surprises are never pleasant, not till now.

I barked back "NOW WHAT?".

He smiles dramatically, modulating his voice, said " Ruhi is in love". And he almost giggled. I told him he was so absurd and that he needed to seriously grow up before the kids do and I walked off.

He persisted, and offered more details " his name is Raj - she is wearing a bracelet that he gifted her, the maid told me ".

Ruhi was fast asleep and I wriggled her right wrist from under herself to find an oversized plasticky band with shiny multicolored rectangles. I let it be, must have been some innocent thing that had been misconstrued by the maid who it seems has been brought up on a strict diet of cheesy hindi movies.

The next morning Ruhi woke up chirping about an elaborate dream about pink beaked birds and elephants and a tiger who slouches while shaking his bum and pointing his curved finger at her friend Ashna. She slouched on the bed shaking her pointy little bum and explaining the tiger's gestures with her finger. I watched with familiar fascination, marveling at the beauty of the world she sleeps in. Then I pointed at the band and asked "what's that Roo?"

She smiled "friendship band. Raj gave it to me. You know mama he specially bought it for me with REAL money". I tried not to scowl at her and asked " Who is Raj ?"

"Arre, my best friend in school. I love him mama, he kissed me on my cheek in the nap time" ( the kids take a half hour nap in school).

I wasn't liking the thought. What do six year olds know about kissing ? I tried to sound indifferent so that she doesn't feel it was some big deal "Did you tell Namrita Ma'm ?".

Ruhi was getting impatient now " Why ? He didn't kiss on the lips ?". I almost chocked on my toothbrush. I must say I am completely unprepared for this conversation so early in our relationship. For God's sake she is still a baby.

I decide to leave it at that for the moment. She goes on "you know Ma, he gave me the band so that when we grow old and if we get lost, he can find me"!

Hmmmm... straight out of Karan Johar movies. Her father's daughter for sure.

Yesterday, the grotesque thing was missing from her tiny wrist. When I asked her she said she had put it back in that kid's pocket.

"Why?"

"Just like that".

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 !

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.