My Alma Mataji

The fine institution of Walsingham House School was located in the former palace of the Maharaja of Kutch. When His Highness moved out, it really would have behooved him to take his stuffed tiger with him. I am not talking about a plush, cutesy toy. I am talking six-foot (if any bigger) taxidermic trophy. As it was, he left it there, right at the entrance of the school, just before you entered the hallowed halls. As our driver Lobo dropped us off in the morning, I scrambled up the wide stairs, true to my scaredycat nature (no pun intended) keeping my gaze on my black, pointy loafers – the ones my grandmother or Ba as she was known, rightfully insisted were warping our toes.

It stood there, this panthera tigris, with its glassy hypnotic eyes, fangs protruded, mouth open in a frozen, perpetual promise of devouring the next student that walked up the stairs.

Shouldn’t the School Board, (if one did exist in India), have enforced an intimidation statute? “Against the law to display creepy objects to impressionable young students.”

Why would the Maharaja leave this gruesome beast at the entrance? Had he no place in his new palace? Hadn’t he thought about selling it? Not that there would be a huge market for stuffed tigers, but still. These days, it would’ve been a cinch. If you can sell your virginity or your kidney on eBay, selling a tiger would be a breeze.

My sister was in first grade when my father got his first parent-teacher letter. Apparently, she would raise her hand every period and ask to go to the bathroom. A bit suspicious after a few days, the teacher followed her and caught her, hands against the glass, bemused or bewitched, staring the tiger down with her own ferocious, snarling expression. I finally figured out that this is how she had perfected the look she used to scare the living daylights out of me at home.

The schema for getting ready for school operated like a well-oiled machine. The wheels would set in motion starting from the time we got up. The water heater was turned on early in the morning and buckets replenished with hot water after each bath. Ba would check that our servant Vishnu had combed our hair in tightly-woven braids. The braids, or plaits as we called them, stayed in their pristine condition from morn to night, with the help of a lot of coconut oil. We smelled like oleaginous crud, and looked like dorks, but at least we were well coiffed.

A belted, green-checkered uniform was worn over a white shirt, both duly washed, ironed and starched every day. Once a year, the tailor, Purshottam Darzi would arrive at the house, a measuring tape around his neck, pencil stub stuck behind his ear. Yards of green and white checked material would have been bought earlier and lying waiting for him, bound in newspaper and tied with a thin, white thread, which he would cut off with his teeth. He would make sure there was enough material to include a little extra for his own personal use.

A side-bar about the uniforms. When the darzi came, my sisters stood in front of him patiently, turning this way and that, head up, shoulders back, so that the measurements would be just right. What was not just right, is that I was rarely included in this little annual sartorial charade. That’s because, as Hand-Me-Down Hannah, I wore both their uniforms till the hems could not be let out any more.

The maharaj would have small steel boxes or dabbas ready, with a home-made snack, this being the age when pre-packaged, preservative-laden, plastic-bagged junk was mercifully not available.

Vishnu would have already loaded the car with our school bags, which were the square, gray, Air-India bags that my dad got gratis from the airline. He did a lot of business with them, and after a few, really, really good years of business, got upgraded from free school-bags to free international tickets (which I used with great aplomb).

Lobo then drove us to school.

By noon, he was back at school again to take us for Home Lunch. There were three kinds of ‘Lunches’ in school. In pecking order, at the top, was Home Lunch. This was if you were fortunate enough to live within walking distance, or lucky enough to have rich parents (in more ways than one), you went home for lunch in a car. The next strata down was Hot Lunch. This was when your parents could afford to send a servant with a tiffin, but could not afford to send the car. The Hot Lunch people ate together at tables, with their individual nannies or servants standing behind them, serving them food. The bottom rung was the Dry Lunch. Oh! The poor Dry Lunches, who tried to hide their lunch bags from the Hot Lunches, who would look wistfully at the Home Lunches as they drove away. And the Home Lunches would dream one day of being able to bring a Dry Lunch and sit with the lucky students in the basement of the school.