Growing Up

Most of the children of our times studied in Tamil medium school, usually a government school, private High schools in small towns being rare in those days. English medium schools were a rarity in small towns. All school children had to wear uniforms, which was usually a blue skirt and white blouse for all girls under the age of twelve and a full length-skirt, blouse and a half-saree for all the girls older than twelve regardless of their figures. We, the smaller girls, could see all the older girls sporting the uniform of white ‘dhavani’(as the half-saree is called) and thought of them quite old and grown-up, though they were only teenagers.

When we were small children, as I have stated elsewhere, there were no TVs and we had no means of gaining knowledge apart from our school and what we saw in our daily experience. Ours was a middle class family comfortably off thanks to our family income being supplemented by rice, pulses and baskets of fruits sent from our grandparents’ homes. I did not know that children of all our neighbours didn’t share the level of prosperity enjoyed by us. I used to see the gypsies in threadbare tents at the roadside and people living in huts at the end of our street but they never registered in my mind as signs of poverty. (In fact the meaning of the term ‘poverty’ had never entered into my experience in the ‘real’ life. I knew the word of course, as an antonym for ‘prosperity’ in my school lessons but didn’t associate the term with what I saw in the outside world.) Rather I used to think how exciting it would be to live in a hut or a tent! I remember how my neighbourhood friend and classmate U and myself used to lie down on the sandy bed of the nearby stream in summer evenings and tried to imagine how nice it would be if only we could live in a tent all our lives!

I was rudely awakened to the reality of poverty as a fact of life by an incident while I was around ten years old. We had a Sports Day celebration in our school. I was also one of the dancers who had to perform a ‘folk dance’. Our teachers knew that most of the students of the school couldn’t afford to buy a new skirt just for this dance programme. The teacher who trained us for the dance came up with the brilliant idea of pleating the school uniform half-saree (which was white in colour) and making into skirts for all the dancers with a bit of glitter added with gold-coloured paper strips stitched onto them as designs and borders. Of course, all these logistic discussions had taken place in the staff room and we were told to bring a white half saree each when we came to school the next day. As I wore only the blue skirt, I was told to borrow a dhavani from an older girl. I was new to the town and I did not know any senior girl.

Remembering that I had a nodding acquaintance with a girl who studied in the next higher class and most importantly, who wore a white half saree to school, I hit upon the idea of asking her for its loan. I knew that she lived at the end of our street and went straight there from school. She was yet to return from school and I waited for her in the small front courtyard.

A big grinding stone pulled by two bullocks was grinding a mixture of lime and sand in a deep circular groove. Apparently this 'home-made' mortar was a substitute for the costlier cement mixture for building dwelling units. Fascinated by the sight of the bullocks going round and round in the same circle, I waited patiently. In a few minutes, I saw the girl returning from school and was surprised to see me. After the initial 'hello' I promptly requested her to lend me a white half saree for the dance. I was very sure that she would give it to me at once as this was after all a school project and she was a fellow student whose duty it was to help me. Imagine my surprise and shock when she said a very agitated ‘No!’ to me and disappeared into her house banging the door shut!

I walked back very slowly to my house and on seeing my mother at the doorstep, started pouring out the story almost in tears. I had never been told ‘no’ before that. (This incident had many ‘firsts’ in more than one aspect and that’s why it still stands out fresh in my memory with all the details etched very clearly, in spite of the long years in between.) I used to be a student who took the words of teachers very seriously and would be very nervous if I had not finished the home work/studied for the day’s test etc., I took the requisition for the half saree with as much seriousness and badgered my mom why, oh, why she couldn’t have lent me that. My mother consoled me saying, ‘She is poor ok? She must be having only that one set of uniform.’

Only then it dawned on me that being poor meant you had to wear the one set of clothes daily, washing it in the evening to dry through the night. The fact that poverty affected the way you ate, clothed and lived your life was brought home forcefully to my young mind. The world was never the same again for me!