From the Magic Box

A few scenes from the current school life that I get to see everyday:

The Toddler’s Tiffin Box

It can be incredibly difficult to decide the contents of a tiffin box for a toddler. Toddlers hold their spoons like daggers. They enjoy massacring their food, and if its not interesting, it will never see the light of their mouths. It has to be healthy too, no deep fried stuff. But since it isn’t lunch, it can’t be too heavy. To innovate every day amidst the chaos of filling water bottles, clean uniforms and hankies is no child’s play. Here are a few ideas to keep your little child surprised and full!

Bread Roll

You will need:

2 slices of fresh bread (Make sure the bread is fresh, or it tends to break due to dryness)

1 egg

Butter

Scramble the egg lightly and season with salt.

Cut off the edges of the bread. Now, with a rolling pin press out the bread slices like a roti. It becomes thin and compact. Spread butter on the bread.

The result should be something like this:

Now keep half of the scrambled egg on the slice. Carefully roll the bread till it snugly settles. Do the same with the second slice.

For a change, you can use jam instead of egg. I once tried cherry jam and it was a big hit!

Vegetable Cutlet

This is a great comfort when you are sad that your child didn’t even touch his/her sabzi for dinner. You will need:

Leftover dry vegetable dish (Something mashable)

Wheat flour

Mash the leftover vegetables in a bowl. Use a mixer if it helps.

Add the wheat flour bit by bit as you form a dough. I add a bit of oat meal flour too for more nutrition. The dough should be wet and sticky. Use as less flour as possible or the taste might become bland.

Heat 2 teaspoons of oil in a non-stick pan. Smear some oil on your palms and fingers. Now pick up a handful of the dough, flatten it out and fry each side till the outside is golden brown and crunchy. Drain out the oil in a napkin.

Carrots, cauliflowers, beans…all will disappear. And you will be the coolest Mom too!

Canteen Scene

Lunch time can be a pleasant surprise or a grim revelation with respect to the contents of the tiffin box for students. Much as we want, mothers never forget to pack lunch for the apple of their eyes. But has that ever stopped us from hankering after food available in and around our school? The very idea of buying from school canteens and hawkers is so cool that we don’t really bother about taste and hygiene.

I remember buying candy from hawkers even in Nursery. There was a long candy that came wrapped in a plastic sheet with yellow and transparent stripes. It looked like a little pillar with a ribbon round it. It was nothing but sugar, of course. Then there was the little orange candies shaped like orange segments. I still buy those sweet sour lozenges. And last but not the least, were Phantom cigarettes. These were smooth white sugar sticks, with a little red at the end to suggest a live cigarette. We would feel real cool holding them between our fingers. In retrospect, they tasted icky sweet.

Apart from that, I have already given details about the icelollies, dalmot and masala tamarind of Tura. I have never really experienced a proper school canteen, except the one in KV no.1, Delhi Cantonment. I remember buying alu bonda, samosa, and bread pakoda there. It helped that nobody was there to supervise, since I was staying in boarding. But the most delectable item in that canteen was a gur barfi. Shaped like a perfect dice, this one and a half inch cube was a medley of deep red and orange. I used to eat dozens a day! The canteen guy would keep running out of them so we would place special orders secretly. If another group found out about them, we had to share! So we would smuggle the stuff into our dormitories over the hostel wall. That was sure a lot of fun, and back then we would discuss how nutritious jaggery was for the body.

Let me know your experiences in your school canteen. I am sure you have some stories to share too. I would be happy to hear them!

Tura and Me

My Dad was posted in Tura when I was six. And that is where my serious schooling started. I was admitted to my fifth school and first KV. For those of you who are wondering where Tura is, its in Meghalaya, one of the seven sisters of our North East. A snug valley at the foothills of Tura hills, right under Tura Peak, this town is one of those quieter hilly destinations that we crave sometimes. Don’t go there looking for a Shillong, or an Itanagar. And comparing it with those places would be unfair. I spent three years of my life there. And it was a beautiful place to call home for those three years.

My school there was like the place, sleepy and simple. Not bothered much with studies or discipline, we had fun most days. But I owe a big part of my life to that school. That is where I learnt to write. I had written tons in my previous school as part of handwriting practice but Tura is where I learnt the logic behind writing, the connection between words and ideas. Was there some kind of magic in those West Garo Hills? I would like to believe so.

My Dad’s office cum residence quarters was located on top of a small hill. It was a cute Assam type cottage, complete with a leaking ceiling in the many rain-storms. After a wet night, if the sun dared to venture out, you could encounter a variety of snakes basking around. You really had to look where you stepped. The path that wound from the narrow main road to our quarter was the bumpiest free ride ever. Needless to say, my Dad’s Jeep would always reach home in leaps and bounds.

Still, the entire place was so picturesque, like straight out of a movie. Mornings were fresh and dewy, afternoons were lazy and drunk, evenings had a breeze blowing with the right amount of speed to call them romantic, and nights were silent and spooky. Won’t you call that inspiring now? And that’s when I started writing. I wrote a notebook full of crappy stories, which are still lying around some place, and decided that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.

This was also the school where I learnt Hindi, and got jeered at for my accent. And this is where I woke up to the politics that some cunning kids play. I learnt that people always side with the popular kids, that jealousy can break seemingly close ties between best friends and it could be dangerous to gossip. Apart from that, I remember that our school didn’t have a canteen, but hawkers greeted us at the exit gates, after we were let out. Ice lollies, masala tamarind pastes, dalmot, all heralded us with open arms. The ice lollies were nothing but sweetened ice in various colours and the only ice cream available in Tura. Yes, believe it or not, I have spent three years of my life without ice cream! I remember every time we went to Guwahati, which is around two hundred kms away, I would gorge on a choco bar, as our driver marveled at the eight bucks we paid for it. (Yeah, back then it was eight bucks for a Kwality choco bar.)

Another surprise for me there was girl power! The Garo society is matrilocal as well as matrilineal. That means you inherit a mother’s property not a father’s. And the groom stays with the bride’s family. How cool is that? We came to know many men there who were house-husbands, while their wives were the primary bread earners. I of course decided that no matter where I was when I was of marriageable age, I will come back to marry a Garo boy. That meant I would take him along with me to wherever I was staying, and I never had to leave my parents. (As a child, this was my second ploy to keep myself with my parents, the first being, trying to marry my Dad!!)

A place called Arhai Mile (Arhai meaning two and half) was the most happening place in an otherwise dormant town. That is where most of the shops were. People thronged it on weekends for vegetables, fruits, poultry and fish. Needless to say, everything was always fresh and sold with a warm gusto in Garo, the primary language spoken there. Apart from that, I had some Hajong and Koch friends too.

In and around Tura were many rivulets and valleys, some of which, we were fortunate to explore. I remember a picnic party that went from school. We just walked to the spot. The entire place was so untouched back then, you could just sit near the road and have a picnic! We also got to see our border with Bangladesh. I remember being surprised at it looking absolutely similar to my own country!

I never went back to Tura, looking for my groom, who would release me from the tradition of leaving my parents’ home, but searching on the internet, I find that Tura has changed a lot. Along with the rest of our country it too has grown. But in my mind’s eye I will always be sitting there on a hillock, blowing bubbles, writing stories or licking masala tamarind!

Malory towers and St. Clare’s: Dreams of Being in a Boarding

Most people who read Enid Blyton as a child read at least one of her boarding school series books, St. Clare’s or Malory Towers. Both series with six books each, follow the school lives of a few characters, as they progress from the First Form (something like sixth standard for us) to the Fifth Year (tenth standard). Both books had similar story lines and the characters were quite typical too.

St. Clare’s shows Patricia and Isabella O’Sullivans, twins, who are made to go to St. Clare’s by their parents after they have been spoilt silly in their previous school. The twins are initially determined to cause trouble but learn their lessons and end up liking the school a lot and making a whole lot of good friends too. In their last year they are made head girls too.

Darell Rivers in Malory Towers starts by being led astray by a fellow student, messing up her grades in the process. She also has temper problems which she later overcomes. After proving her prowess in sports as well as academics, she is made head girl in the fifth year. Along with her are her best friend Sally, her sister Felicity, the spoilt Gwendoline and a whole lot of other characters to spice up the books.

Both books are based in England, and give an insight of life of British girls in those times. Each book delivered several moral lessons. Blyton brings out class issues by introducing characters such as Gwendoline in Malory Towers and Prudence in St. Clare’s, who look down upon the girls with working class backgrounds, like Carlotta the ex-circus girl. They are also seen sucking up to richer girls. Common problems like thieving and cheating are also highlighted.

I could never get enough of these books as a child. I would be filled with longing to go stay in a boarding school, away from my parents, living on my own, following strict rules and learning responsibilities. In my imagination, my parents would see me off to England, where I could be friends with the likes of Pat, Isabel and Darrell. I wanted to have secret midnight feasts, play pranks on teachers and fight the unfair vamp-like girls.

I never bothered to check that these books were written some forty years before my time. Blyton wrote the first book of Malory Towers in 1946 and St. Clare’s started in 1941. The entire world had changed since then! But believe it or not, half of my wish came true. In eighth standard, a situation arose that my parents were forced to leave me in a boarding school! I was in seventh heaven, of course. Ignoring the lump that formed in my throat as I said my goodbyes, I prepared to have fun.

I was in the juniors’ dormitory and I quickly made friends with all the other dorm mates. Very soon I realized that out of the protection of our parents, we are so vulnerable. I met spiteful girls, jealous girls, mousey girls, aggressive girls; but never did I find the righteous ones. Everyone had a flaw! Including me. Slowly I learnt that no human being could be as simple as a character in a children’s book, least of all girls! So I learned to accept all these girls with their flaws. After all, we were stuck together 24-7. We had to live with each other.

Moreover, who can forget the notorious hostel food. You have to look for the dal with a submarine! There are no snacks with tea. If you are not on time, food is over. I, a finicky eater, became a glutton within two months. Once when the warden was out, we bribed the cook to prepare some chicken for us. We stole it into our dorms and ate with so much relish that a vegetarian girl decided to try some too.

It was disheartening to find out the difference between my fairy tale boarding school and the real deal. I remember straining my eyes looking for the postman, for just one letter from home (There was no e-mail back then, believe it or not). But once I settled down I did have loads of fun, very similar to Pat, Isabel and Darell. On my birthday, we had a midnight party in our dorm. Then once we tied an anklet around the hostel pet cat and let her loose on the roof. That really scared the hell out of the girls and our Warden! Like Clarissa Carter in Malory Towers, we too had a girl with a heart problem, of which we once took advantage of when we got late for class. We had our own Gwendoline too, a lazy, messy girl who would brag that her family donated four gold biscuits to the local temple every year on her birthday. We also had a dignified head girl to whom we could look up to.

I only spent a year in boarding school, and in that year I really got to see a mean slice of life. But, I also learnt to take care of my stuff, to be resourceful in a crisis and take care of my friends when they were ill. I was a whole new person when I went home for winter break. And among my friends and cousins I was a hero! I did take advantage of that one! Hey! That was one of the things I learnt in boarding school.

Getting Schooled into a Sikandar

There are always a few school songs or school movies that we grow up on. Some of them can make quite an impact on developing minds. I know some people who swear they used to walk like the T-birds in Grease, as teenagers. As I have already confessed, I have never been a great fan of school. I wasn’t a popular kid, neither was I an ace student. As a consequence I didn’t know which school movie to identify with.

Then I thought of my school, a KV (Kendriya Vidyalaya). Certainly not one of the best rated in sophistication. I remember kids from Public schools grimacing when I named my school, ticking me off instantly as a no-good loser. And I have met parents of Convent school kids who condemn all KVs because apparently the grading system is way too easy. Then I remembered, ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar,’ one of the most successful Aamir Khan movies in Bollywood. The movie was a remake of the 1979 American movie, ‘Breaking Away,’ and mostly I don’t sympathize with remakes, but in this case, I haven’t seen the original and thus have no base to complain in terms of originality. ‘Sikandar’ is the name given to Alexander the Great in India. As such, the movie is quite a lesson in life.

The movie opens with Shekhar of Rajput College defeating Ratan of Model College in an inter-school marathon cycle race in Dehradun, which is the crux of the movie. The competition is between the affluent students of Rajput, Xaviers and Queens College and the local ‘have nots’ of Model College. Queens College is the girls’ college with all the boys mooning over them. We have Sanju (Aamir Khan), Ratan’s brother, an irresponsible, carefree teenager, his character most akin to Archie Andrews. He falls for the glamorous Devika (Pooja Bedi) of Queen’s College, the Veronica Lodge, who makes boys trip with her bubble gum bursts. But he has a friend, Anjali (Ayesha Jhulka), who silently loves him and always supports him, the Betty Cooper. Then we have the cocky Shekhar, the Reggie Mantle.

Sanju tricks Devika into believing that he is rich and woos her for some time, much to his brother and Anjali’s consternation. He does some pretty stupid stuff, which we found cute in our school days. Who can forget ‘Pehla nasha,’ an entire song in slow motion? I still remember the lyrics by heart. Pooja Bedi did a Marilyn Monroe too, in a short red skirt that flew around her looooong legs. After Devika finds out that Sanju runs a small canteen along with his brother, she dumps him and the story takes a turn for the worse. After a skirmish with Shekhar, Ratan ends up in a hospital. Sanju turns a new leaf and decides to take part in the race.

The reputation of my school was like Model College’s, in that we were all students of government employees. Nobody could brag of inheritance or fast cars. We all knew we had to somehow make it on our own if we wanted to make it big. Some of us thought of short cuts too. Some guys thought of manipulating the system. Some girls thought of marrying someone rich. But the song, “Jawan ho yaaro, ki tumko huwa kya,” was inspiring. We had a number of Sanjus as well as Ratans. I wasn’t like Anjali but I remember bunking classes (I once jumped off a first floor window to get rid of the rest of my classes).

The State Board in Guwahati is only up till matriculation and many parents want their children to move to CBSE after that. Consequently, in eleventh standard, a lot of new students joined our school. Most of them were from St. Mary’s and Don Bosco. As was inevitable, our boys went nuts. So many Devikas suddenly swarmed the school. They were very different from what our boys were used to. These girls had airs, they chattered away in English with a strange accent. Their Hindi was clipped which probably seemed cute to all our love lorn Sanjus.

Moreover, these Devikas were from a girls’ school. This sudden contact with boys must have been electrifying. Some of them went out of control, while others took advantage of our simple Sanjus. I remember a particular girl who captured the heart of none other than the head boy. Of course, they were famous. He was a bright boy and helped the girl with all his notes. After she got all of it, she didn’t want any of him. He was flabbergasted. I witnessed the scene of their breakup from our corridor. I couldn’t hear anything but it began with the head boy throwing down his lunch box, then tie, then belt, badge… Mercifully, the bell rang and we just guessed the rest.

The Bosconians weren’t lagging behind either. Some of them had been mooning the St. Mary’s girls since Nursery, climbing their school walls just to get a glimpse. Now that proximity wasn’t a problem at all, their hormones were hyperventilating too. As Bosconians, they also had an upper hand in being more polished and with more expendable income. So quite often we would come across an Assamese Shekhar Malhotra in the corridors. Some of our Anjalis were pretty heart broken, because they were never chosen by these spoilt peacocks.

All in all, the last two years in my school were quite a scene from ‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar.’ Some of us took part in that race against the affluent. I agree that KVites in my time had less exposure, were badly trained in English, didn’t listen to rock music etc. But we learnt how to fight a world thronged by hypocrites. We learnt to be cool, but with humility. We learnt to earn our first bike and pay for our high heels! Today so many of our Sanjus and Anjalis are engineers, doctors, pilots or are working in great places. Many of them own fast cars, or have built mansions, or dine in 5 stars daily. I know a KVite who won the Miss Universe title – Sushmita Sen. KVites win races too, it appears. And whoever wins is the ‘Sikandar.’