Animals ko dekho – Part one

First of all, animals are not new to the department. Second of all, one afternoon in 2014, during one of those nice June days when college had just reopened, I was paapa sitting at my table and minding my own business. There was a GE meeting going on in the little corner that was CA, ER, MMB, and AM’s tables. Everybody except one other colleague and I, was in the meeting. 

I was paapa listening to Amelie and typing so I couldn’t hear what was happening but then I saw a hand waving in the distance. It was waving at me and kept moving rapidly and then it waved at several other things. That hand was my colleague’s hand and I removed my earphones to ask her why she was handing me. She pointed to 2 squirrels – one on my shoulder, the other on my lap. I didn’t know where to look first but I screamed and those creatures whisked themselves away before I could show them how violated they made me feel. It was humiliating because first of all squirrels are scared of everything in life, second of all despite this fear, they treated me like furniture and decided to climb on top of me. No maryadhe only.

When the colleague and I jumped up and down screaming squirrel squirrel, the meeting was interrupted but no one looked interrupted. Arul sah snorted and Cheriyan sir brushed his hand casually, didn’t even uncross his legs and declared, “squirrels don’t do anything.” Then like that only, he went back to discuss PSA General English. Colleague and I grimly walked out and began jumping up and down in the corridor.

****

Then many weeks later, one monkey came. In life there are many monkeys but the monkey that came was a real monkey – it was big and its tail was oranger than the rest of its body. First of all it walked into the department aaram se as if it was coming to get feedback for writing. Second of all, it stood and growled at all of us. Mini Ma’am said “Arool Arool, there is a monkey here Arool”. Arool Sah started giggling as if the monkey was proposing to him. Etienne sir looked puzzled and came to investigate. Then he put both his hands in both his pockets, leaned against the bookshelf and looked at it. I have seen him do this when he is getting ready to talk about postcolonialism. Cheriyan sir, legs crossed, declared, “monkeys don’t do anything” and went back to drinking tea. 

I clutched my heart and went to class. When I came back, I saw that a line of colleagues was standing a little away from my table, smiling at it as if Shah Rukh Khan was sitting there. I looked and it was the bastard monkey sitting on my chair, drinking my leftover tea from my tea mug. After everything in life, it also had the bloody gall to spit out my tea and walk away, as if it didn’t approve. Cheriyan sir told us that he once saw on Discovery Channel that monkeys are afraid of male aggression so Mini Ma’am, and him ran after the monkey, stomping their feet. Monkey walked aaram se to the fourth floor.

Arul sah was sitting at his table seeing all of this and enjoying like anything. When I went to him with my mouth open, he said “don’t feel bad vj, it’s probably because your tea didn’t have sugar”. I closed my mouth and went back to my table.

****

In the Staff Seminar Hall later that same year, there was a meeting happening. I was sitting in the last row because it is closest to the exit. The squirrel-colleague was sitting next to me and Cheriyan sir was sitting in the first row. We were discussing some HRD syllabus and right when someone said this is the only way to do it, a pigeon flew into the staff seminar hall, startling me and my squirrel-colleague. It flew over our heads, bloody wings flapping near our ears. We screamed. The speaker said damn these pigeons and Cheriyan sir, without even turning back, without even uncrossing his legs, looked sideways and declared, “pigeons don’t do anything”

My heart was clutched once again.

****

Six years later, a couple of girls and I went to investigate the newly renovated department. The girls were excited to see the new department. I was seeing old wine in new bottle so I was in some different mood only. We were sitting in the Dean’s chambers and I wanted to demonstrate my full appreciation of the chambers. Nice vyoo was there outside Dean sir’s window also – sky and skyline, garden and clothesline and all.

See outside means one pigeon is hanging there. It was a dead pigeon hanging by a kite thread and oscillating to and fro in its life-like stillness. I said aa aa aa, and pointed at the window. Akanksha leapt across the aisle, ran away from all of us and started weeping for the dead pigeon. Naziti couldn’t stop laughing and called it Lalit from House of Secrets. I had just watched that documentary so although I could appreciate her mad wit and charming presence of mind, the pigeon looked more and more life-like the more we looked at it – freaking all of us out. Shireen made some dead baby type jokes, Chrisitini wanted to slap everybody. I said Karma and sent them all home.

Next morning, Dean sir is calling snakes, the manager to inform him of this most urgent matter. Snakes comes in, sees it, nods at all of us, says “100% suicide case”, and walks off like CID.

Exactly a year after that, I came here to tell you that all this happened.

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Keliri Makkale

I cleaned out my table for the 18th time this week. I am purged.

In other news, I was on two podcast shows run by two interesting men. One is with the very excellent Anurag Minus Verma. The other is with the also very excellent Aditya Sondhi.

Keli heli. okthanxbye.

This week, I ate one persimmon and many tangerines. I’m loving this fruit love I have developed. It is not sudden. It was always there. I am only noticing it more and more now.

Words to live and work by, brought to you by a friend – don’t tell anybody what you are thinking fully. Drop truth bombs every now and then.

Mona Lisa Smiles but Miranda Priestly Won’t

Between Mona Lisa Smile and The Devil Wears Prada, in the glorious world of two white women, I seem to have found a way to teach, and a way to work.

Dreaming

My phone was dying at invigilation yesterday and this is dangerous for more practical reasons than I care to admit. If there is a question paper shortage and there is no one outside that you can plead to, then the student and I are both somewhat little screwed.

Yesterday however, there was no question paper shortage and no emergency except the thin voice in my head that wondered where that lovely blog I used to stalk all those years ago was? I typed in all the combinations of the two words I remembered with a 5% battery. Phone died, I felt weak, so I stared into space.

Today I sat at my table after invigilation and googled the link without any hassle, and the blog just came on, like magic, and I was returned to all those evenings and afternoons I spent years ago reading this blog, imagining independence and cities and independent women in cities. I felt more fondness for this writer than I have felt for anybody in months and wanted to run to her and tell her all about my life over a tall bottle of wine. That she may not be in town or be entirely uninterested in what I have to say is a fear I don’t have to deal with at all because reading her is a pleasure that will remain even if we don’t talk for months and years.

I read her and then I was moved into the kind of sleep that is yellow in its dreams. I must have napped for 10-15 minutes. I have no memory of what I dreamt about. But she was there and I was there and we were both chasing each other in a city that I was trying to reach in my sleep. I slept urgently and when I woke, I was grateful for having known her and to continue to know her. The dream was written in her language, with long and winding sentences that make me giggle and sigh and think of how much I love eating oranges.

For now, I am going to return to my dream and think of cities and how much they’ve given me and how much I love them.

What would Thomas Cromwell do during Invigilation? — and other wonderments

That time of the month. In more ways than one.

I think I know why Hilary Mantel is called Hilary Mantel. Woman is mad funny. I am reading a scene where Thomas Cromwell and Mary Boleyn meet for the first time. Full seduction pro max – green stockings, heaving chest, heaving Adam’s and other apples, index finger tracing and all is happening. Our hero is leaning against the wall and she is standing close to him. (I have watched couples do this in Sophia College, Mumbai which is Spencer College in Ishq Vishq)

In Wolf hall, this scene is harmless flirtation but it is also 1530s. I don’t want to be pompous by assuming I know what is harmless what isn’t. Mary indirectly proposes to him and he is taken aback but says nothing.

She is on his mind long after the conversation, and they are both on ours but he is our hero for a reason – he believes it would be best to put some distance between him and all the Boleyns even if he and we are pretty turned on by all the wall-leaning. He tells Rafe (an adopted son-type boy who works for him), and Rafe says, ‘I think you imagined it. She must have meant something else.’

Weeks later a rumor is heard that Mary is pregnant. And Rafe asks Cromwell – Bro, are you sure you only leaned against the wall? it seems.

I guffawed. Am having mad fun reading this book.

In other news, I had invigilation duty in the Electronics lab yesterday. I’ve never been in there before. It’s part of the old campus and one way of knowing this is how cool the body becomes because of all the stone walls. There were two refrigerators inside, and 2 godrej cupboards which were kept ulta. I wonder why.

Took me back to my short-lived stint as a science student and how petrified I was of the Physics labs. The teacher apparently thanked god after I quit and called me a dud. Lol.

I wonder what she’s doing these days.

In other other news, we kickstarted the department quiz sessions yesterday. I teamed with Nodzi because she’s a rockstar and would win. I only knew 3 answers and was too afraid to be sure of 2 other answers which turned out to be correct. Somewhere in between, I began pouting and became inwardly bitter because there was some quiz boi energy I was getting irritated with. But watching Franny giggling, smiling, and basically having the time of her life while playing made me want to do the same.

When in doubt, always look at a girl having fun.

FFF

There is a young girl who lives inside me. She is hungry for something that I don’t want to give her anymore. Bitch wants female friends. Where will I go looking for them at this age? She wants it when she sees it in others, in films, in books, in songs. She isn’t happy just seeing them, she wants them for herself and then eats my head all day all night asking me why I can’t give her that. It’s not that I haven’t tried. But there’s this whole caste thing. I can’t say for sure that it’s why all of my female friendships have flopped in the past but I do know it’s why they leave, it’s why I leave.

She doesn’t believe me. She gets the caste bit but doesn’t think it’s a reason – she thinks I do something wrong, that I mess things up somehow.

I am going to be a year older soon and am already tired. I don’t have the energy to sit and wonder whether things happen to me because of who I am or whether I let them happen to me because of who I am not. Also, no energy for so much self-pity. All the worst things in the world don’t happen to me because I am Dalit. They might have happened to my father, my mother, their parents. But not to me. Especially because they didn’t work their butts off to give me this life only for me to sit here and cry about not having female friendships. Fuck Female Friendships.

Having said that, because of how much they’ve had to lose to give me this, because I wan’t born into the life that they left behind, I am often stupid and ungrateful. I have a very warped understanding of what untouchability is and am sometimes too spoilt, too blind to admit that it is happening when it is happening. Kindness returned with a stamp that screams no thanks, behaviour that automatically corrects its posture to stand and bow down to savarna/male presence, gifts that are returned without explanation, intimacies that are withdrawn and rejected again, again, again.

Sample this – it’s also a kind of caste chutyagiri at display when people make it a point to perform their loyalties to specific people in front of other people. A memory comes biting from years ago – a student, of all people, stood tall at my table one evening and thought it necessary to tell me that his loyalty is to his friends and that he would be very upset if his friends were troubled in any way. This was after they had all been called out for being casteist gobi manchurians along with a few older gobis. I now giggle at his hulk moment. But over the years, various people have demonstrated similar ways of loyalty performance through speech-giving and other pointlessly, painfully cute gestures.

In school, I tried desperately to become a part of a girl group. I invited five of them home for lunch one weekend, they all agreed. The next morning, one of them disinvited herself saying periods. By evening, two other girls said they couldn’t come because that girl was not coming. Eventually they all pulled out saying she’s not coming so I also won’t come.

My mother was relieved. I couldn’t understand why.

It took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t their menstrual cycle which was in sync. It was their untouchability radar. When I encounter versions of this today, I am merely amused. I applaud their massive self-worth and move on with my life.

Everything I should have said to them continues to die inside me in volcanic sighs. I am now writing with borrowed rage, and in echoes that are comical to say the least.

Maybe it’s a good thing to not have friends at this age- you don’t have to worry about performing loyalty to anybody.

As I write this I am wondering why this girl who lives inside me is hungry for FFs. But then isn’t that the story I’ve always told? The one about Kottuncheri Devi, that little imp who tricks people into becoming friends with her so they will play with her? She hides their valuables and returns them only after they play with her. Can’t believe I am having this revelation now, when I am bloody 35 – that I have been kottuncheri devi all this while.