Safe

Author’s note: Based on my real-life incident. Life has a way of showing us, doesn’t it?

My father had warned me that if I didn’t crack the exam for the University-affiliated girls school, he will have no choice but to send me here. I could now see why he had warned me. I was horrified when I had to don a salwar-kurta uniform complete with white, starched dupatta rather than the smart pleated-skirt uniform I was so habitual of. But as I stepped inside the high walls of my new Inter college, my mortification was complete.

I had been blessed to be born in an upper-middle class family. My father was a Class 1 State employee who was frequently transferred to different cities. He always ensured we received the best possible education. As a result, I had studied in some of the priciest private schools around western Uttar Pradesh state of India.

But as he said, I had left him no choice this time–the private school that I had joined in the second year of high school had a very bad reputation with too many stories about drug abuse and boyfriends. (In India, boyfriends and drugs come in the same category of nasty.) With my brother out of the city, my father couldn’t have someone to ‘take care’ of me at school, so he decided to move me to a ‘safer’ school (a girls-only school, to be precise). Not many girls-only schools were available and I had failed the entrance test for the only other option. So, here I was, full of horror, thinking of what my future held in store for me.

As soon as I entered the place, a creepy sensation took over. If the place was like this during the day, I can only imagine how it felt at night. Good that they didn’t have any night classes. According to the popular legend, the place was a dharmshala (public resthouse) for around a century when it was converted into a school in 1957. Not sure if the story was true, but the place really looked the part. The place was built in a really old design with very high walls and paint that was already darkening inspite of the recent paint job, thanks to the combination of dust from main road and rainy season. The first thing that I noticed inside was an old peepal tree that served as the centre piece of the front courtyard. (In India, peepal trees are supposed to be haunted.) The entire place had a dark foreboding feeling about it, as if it was haunted. As I stepped inside the door leading to the classrooms, it felt like entering a tunnel. The said tunnel was rather short and opened, within a few feet, in a corridor around the open internal verandah. But somehow, everything felt darker, as if colour has been sucked out of my world. I wondered how I will manage two years when even two breaths felt long enough.

When I reached my classroom, all the seats still standing were taken. The rest were broken and moved to the side so a lot of girls were sitting on desks. The classrooms were built around the internal verandah and were supposed to be light and airy. But in reality, they were too dark to aid any studies. The tube-lights were all out-of-order. The only sources of light were the two doors in each classroom. Even though there were two large windows on the other wall, the net on them was coated with decades of dust. The only fan was weighed down with dust and wasn’t moving at a speed worth mentioning. The floor was made of bricks, but you couldn’t really make it out considering the amount of dust settled on it.

What else could you expect out of a semi-charity school. The fee was a measly Rs. 60 per year (nearly half a pound a year). My books and notebooks costed another couple of pounds–very inexpensive even from Indian standards. Naturally, 99 percent girls came from families that couldn’t afford their education anyway.

I was in shock.

All my previous friends still studied in schools where a single book costed more than my entire year’s school fee and all the books combined. I was sure, had they seen this school, they would have disowned me. Also, this school was Hindi medium. To someone whose only pride was her command on English language, it was a rather strong push down the totem-pole into nothingness.

But the alternative was missing the school year and preparing better for next, which really wasn’t an alternative at all. Cursing myself for not making a better effort at entrance exams, I took a seat on the back desk.

The first lesson was Hindi literature, and the teacher was insightful. It was impossible to take notes sitting on the desk and book in my lap, but I managed to write in page corners. Listening to those ancient verses, I could almost forget where I was. It was nothing like what I had studied in English-medium schools.

Once the teacher was gone, there was a scramble to find the next classroom, I found myself quietly following a group that seemed to know where they were going. The classroom was on the upper floor and cringe-worthy–small, no lighting, fan hardly working but the teacher was amazing. That inexpensive book worth 5 Rupees (around 5 pence) held the kind of knowledge that I could die for. And end of the period, I was talking to some of the girls while walking with them to the next class.

They were as different from my previous friends as possible. Most of them came from conservative families, seeking to keep their daughters ‘safe’. Some had very less income. They could not have afforded education without this school. Some of them had too many siblings and wore hand-me-down uniforms that they would hand down to their younger sisters someday. Some of them were even untouchables by caste. They had dealt with the lack of means early in life.

But somehow, this knowledge only rose their esteem higher in my eyes. They had been pushed in a tight corner, but they are making an effort to get out of it. They had dreams too–they were pursuing Arts because some of them wanted to join Civil Services, like my father. Others wanted to be teachers, or perhaps Professor in a college once, not if, they crack the NET exam. The school also had a Science section where students harboured dreams to become Doctors, Engineers and more. Some of the girls wanted to be housewives, but it was a choice and not submission on their part.

The best lessons I received in life come from this school, both inside and outside the classroom–about unfairness of life; non-uniformity of money distribution and life below poverty line; about creativity and ambition that cared for no obstacles; about not being defined with price tags on dresses. The teachers and classmates–a lot of them long-time friends–made it worth it.

Yes, the place is actually haunted. Once, some invisible being had locked me in the courtyard washroom at the end of the lunch period and was tickling my spine. I was scared shitless and could not even gather a scream for help. I would have been stuck for a long time with my invisible companion. But I was blessed with friends who cared and came looking. Of course, they knew about the ghost. A couple of them had been in my sitution too. That day, we all sat on the chabutara (raised dais) of the haunted peepal tree and laughed about it.

And for all my father’s effort, he shouldn’t have bothered–there were more boys stationed outside my new girls-only school than inside a co-education.

Well, at least there were no drugs!

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*Disclaimer: Note that India has a lot of government schools. Most are well maintained. This one is semi-charity and an exception.