Tender Beginnings

(A twelve-year-old boy goes to study in a different city from his village and writes a letter to his mother.)

Ma,

I know, I know it has been a week since I reached and I should have written you earlier. In between settling down and making new friends, writing to you slipped my mind. Finally, I sat down to tell you all that I’ve been meaning to tell you ever since I reached here.

It is 9:30 PM now. I have eaten my dinner. I am sure you must be sleeping now. Sister too must be sleeping beside you, holding one end of your saree. If I were there, I would have definitely woken you up in the middle of the night for biscuits. I miss how she would play with me every evening and the moonlit nights when you'd feed us our dinner. I think of you both often and I miss home. I’ve never imagined settling down at a new place would be this hard and tiring. But I remember dad's words, that it's important for me to pursue higher education as a part of growing up. Now, I really don't understand why I wanted to grow up.

Our school hostel is very huge. The first thing I noticed after getting down the carriage was its height. I felt so small in front of it, but I was also in awe of its size. It is an ancient building, probably 75-years-old. I have been told that the Maharaja of this town donated his house to a school to build a hostel for the boys many years ago. The branches and the leaves of the trees in the garden gently caress the lofty red walls of the building, and in the evenings, it is a true delight to sit under these trees. The playground here is vast, ma. I cannot see its end, it's that vast. There is a different and much nicer ground beside the garden where the senior boys play tennis. The world here is different and I am adapting to it, quickly.

Our warden, Mukesh ji, is an aged man and is often mistaken to be weak. But he does not entertain any funny business. He is very particular about cleanliness and checks our dirty shoes and nails each time we enter the dormitory. He wakes us at 5 AM and makes us run at least 10 times around the ground. Later, we are sent to the canteen to drink a glass of peppered milk. Then the boys take turns to shower and reach the canteen again for breakfast. The food here does not taste as good as the food you make at home. Our cook has a grumpy face and if we put his cooking skills to a test, it would be rated as something you eat to survive only. His soup is rather watery, and his potatoes lack flavour. This reminds me of the aroma of the food you cook. I remember the number of times you let me grind spices in the mortar and pestle that grandma passed on to you. Our cook’s food is barely edible, maybe I will get used to it soon. However, he makes delicious samosas and chutney in the evenings. We devour them with another glass of milk before we head out to the library. This brings me to the library -- the giant walls of it are adorned with the photographs of the Maharaja and his ancestors, who donated this building. I have discovered a lot of books here, ma. I spend most of my evenings reading Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew. The librarian told me that Tagore and Conrad are for senior boys and that I still have to wait. I have to wait to grow older for the books that have no readers in the school. What a strange world, ma!

My classes will begin in another week and I am particularly looking forward to the geography class as we'll be taught maps. I already got a globe for the dormitory and I spend several hours locating cities and countries on it. Ma, did you know that Australia is down below India and around 7,800 kilometers away from us? But on the globe, it is a one-finger distance away. My dorm mates are kind and sometimes mischievous. I've made two friends - Nakul and Nandan. Nakul is the silent one and Nandan is the funny one. Although it's been only a week, it does seem like I've known them for years. We lose the track of time when we are together. Under the apple trees, we spend hours. It reminds me of the Summer afternoons when you feed me the pickled rice under our trees.

I wish you were here so that I could come home to you and tell you everything instead of sending you a letter. But I promise to write more often and study well. I will wait for your letter. For now, I take your leave.

- Arjun

Labels.

When I was in school, I was a geek of all orders. I took an active participation in crafts, poetry, science clubs, literary contests, and of course, my favourite - Philately, Library clubs. In spite of being a nimble kid and a participant in almost anything, I was still that weird, geeky and often the ugly South Indian kid from III (A). It did not matter much then. I mean, what would an eight year old know of labels and the baggage they come along with? Well, pretty much nothing.

As I grew older and moved to high school, not much has changed. I was still a good student. I was still fetching good grades. I was still taking part in myriad contests and stuff. But I was still the not so attractive high school girl. I was barely thirteen and this issue did seem to trouble me a great deal. My unruly curls were barely tamed and I had no absolute interest in anything but reading and sketching. I was painfully skinny but I could easily lose track of time, and forego dinner while immersing myself in a project that I thought was highly important. Sure, I did want to be the prettiest girl, but I also wanted to be one at my accord. You know, be a part of Philately club and still be seen as a girl who was gorgeous by all standards. Unfortunately, those standards weren't met. Being the poster child of anxiety, I fretted upon things like this and stayed up late several nights crying over my looks.

I don't know what transpires between primary school and high school, but in high school, everyone turns into delinquents, slowly adjusting to that abominable attitude. Trying to please the world by hurting themselves or trying to please themselves by hurting the world. In due time, I grew older. I transformed. And owing to the transformation, I was subjected to garbage like 'Wow! You look pretty now.' 'How did you change so much?' 'What a splendid transformation!' 'Are you the same girl?' Boys who thought I was a lost case in high school soon turned into men who tried to win my attention. The ball was finally in my court. However, this wasn't high school and I had a bad case of attention disorder. From 'Boys don't like nerds like you' to 'You cannot keep a man', I have been labelled more often than required. And sometimes, for no reason whatsoever. It troubles me even to this day, but hey, I've been developing some thick skin these days.

I label people too. Based on their actions. Based on how they deal with their fellow human beings. Hell, even with animals. I am not sure if it's alright to label people even on that but I am sure as hell that it's better than labeling people based on what they do not do.

On interacting with my younger cousins these days, I happen to realize that nothing much has changed. High school still does seem like a place where geeks remain to be treated as smart yet ugly people while the good looking ones are treated as the dumb ones. Labels, I tell you! Hard to change. Hard to pet. They come in all sizes, shapes, and colours. Right from you to the stranger sharing your seat in a local bus, we all have been labelled (often nastily) at several stages of our life.

Clearly, it's no fun.

We all still do it and go overboard with it.

What we don't realize is that they don't have to define us. We are not things that come in boxes with tags and labels. We could be a lot of things, but a mere label? Well, that's not what we are made for!