Lessons Learnt from my Body

This post was written thanks to Sumeetha Manikandan, who asked me to contribute to her beautiful space 'Lessons Learned from Indians'.  

An excerpt ...

My body has been talking to me.

Once upon a time a body, to me, meant black circles for heads and sticks for hands and legs. As a child, that is, drawing on paper with crayons and sketch pens, picturesque scenes I had never seen before and bodies so far removed from what they actually looked like, yet real in their sameness of being. Short-lived were those days, because when I was taught to a happy tune how chubby cheeks and dimpled chin and blue eyes and curly hair make one the teacher’s pet, the reflection in the mirror told this child’s head I could never be her. I had held the picture of the cherubic girl in the nursery rhyme book in front of the looking glass. Next to my reflection. To look at dark coffee next to peaches and cream. A horse tail next to luscious curls the colour of sun. Eyes with not even a drop of the blue ocean the teacher’s pet mirthfully looked at me with. In the mirror.

And my body sighed! Loud enough for me to hear its echo for a long time to come. It told me as it thought aloud that I could never be loved enough, because I looked different – from the girl in the book. Even from the doll in my bed who I dressed in pretty clothes. So pretty, my best friend. And so different, from me.
In my first school which was an all-girls convent, Monday mornings were ...

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Early birds and night owls

They say an early bird catches the worm. But it had to take more than a wriggly worm, not an object of my desire at all, to tempt me into becoming an early bird in my school days. It took my mother. 

By some divine coincidence I would always forget that exams were round the corner, as if they were one-eyed monsters dragging their many hands and feet towards me and my neck. Well, they were, but who wanted to believe that before the results were out, warts and all? So, for the most part of my school days, and especially for classes we hauntingly called ‘Boards’ (such a hoax!), my mother was more serious about our exams than me or my kid brother were. And she also believed (show me the person who told her this, by God!) that no time like early morning to study. Sometimes, very early. 5 am in those “crucial” days. It was almost like she was messing around with my whole genetic make-up, by forcing me to open those leaden eyes and mutating me into an early bird when my very genes were protesting to tell me (quietly of course) that you have been adopted, without doubt. I am sure I could sue her for this in a Court of Science. But I had my own science to study. 

So, with the valley stars still out and the gardeners and sweepers yet to come, the light in my room would be the only one switched on till all the way to Mussoorie, and me and my brother would be staring into the space between the two pages of open books. You know, the spine area. For it would be the safest place for the head to drop, without crushing the letters printed. Oh the tricks we tried! I would lie down on my tummy, rest my face between my hands with fingers in blinker-position, and snooze. Eyes tightly shut but ears totally open for footsteps coming to remind me of those monsters I had to pass round the corner, and with flying colours no less. My brother, the smarter one, discovered super smart angles to study. Where even closed eyes seemed open. I had a feeling one morning that he had painted his eye lids with black dots in the middle to confuse people around, but I can’t be too sure. My eyes were tucked inside my own lids, lids the inside of which I especially loved to admire those times. 

Needless to say, and since I am a safe distance away from those days, not a wee bit did we study in those wee hours. Or maybe he did, for now he’s a doctor, but I’m going to drag him into this without his permission. There is comfort in numbers. Plus, I know he used to sleep on open books. I know! If there is anything I could know in those days of sleeping with eyes open wondering why the ureter and the urethra look the same or why I need to know that ethyl alcohol cannot be drunk or how unfortunate that I cannot calculate my escape velocity, it was this it was this it was this. 

But college changes everything, this being one of the loveliest cliché. 

Add to it a hostel full of girls and every atom in your body gets a makeover, much like those black and white pegs in the board game ‘Othello’. Black becomes white. No, wait! White becomes black and the person in the mirror transforms into a being she would not have recognized one of those early-bird mornings from school. Here, she is a night owl. Here, all good things happen at night. All good things. 

You are productive soon as the sun sets, dinner had, mess exited and rooms entered – your own or another’s. Usually, another’s. A two-seater transforms into a train’s top with girls sitting wherever they find enough space for their derrière. And then discussions happen, serious ones. Warden and matron, princy and that-other-mahila-college. About cranky calling on the yellow hostel phone and who stands in a queue for receiving their after-dark fantasy calls. There is midnight hoot-hoot-twoeetohoo everywhere. Also, a no door policy, where you walk in and walk out of rooms asking ‘I need your iron. Is it still hidden in the bin after the last check?’ or ‘May I borrow a packet of Maggi? Promise, will give you a packet back tomorrow’ or even ‘Hey, will you put my bucket in the hot-water-geyser-tap line early morning? I have to study till late!’

Study. Or something like that, needed no mother-figure to enforce. Actually, needed, but there was none. So from 10 pm to 2 am we would be seen with books around us and 30 days to go before those badly-printed university question papers graced us with their presence. While we did not have mothers, we needed company – as constant support against the the mosquitoes, the sleep, the hunger and the heat (Delhi is closest to the Sun in university exam months). In the common room we’ll study as one, motivating others and getting motivated in return - was our motto! Some walked around at sonic speeds slightly swaying as they read, others closed their ears to the buzz turned their backs to everyone else. Some, sans books, would be seen mumbling to themselves and others borrowing papers, critiques, odomos, tea, pencil, tuck, tweezers, erasers, rubber bands, books. It was a Study Carnival, and one which promised us good hostel days to remember, if not university marks.  Ahem!

But that was so many years back. You see …

Oh dear, I just heard the ‘rise and shine’ alarm going off. I better go shake my lazy 3-year-old up. It's 7 am already. You see, next week he takes his exams in the play-school. Colouring, tearing paper, stringing beads, identifying means of transport, and the usual S for She-becomes-her-mother. And no time like early morning to learn it all up! 

Isn’t it?

P.S - Mummy, I can explain. Bhai, this is a test to see if you read my blog.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was - Your time to shine - Early bird, or night owl?]