"For seven years, I dwelt in the loose palace of exile, playing strange games..."
Well, not really, but I did dwell (and for seven whole years) in the hostel of an all boys, all boarding public school.
Come to think of it, it was exile as the axis of my existence shifted from mother and father to matron and master and from home to Colvin House.
The horroreality of departure really struck me when the black trunk arrived. Its front announced my name and destination in bold white letters. I still remember that the hinged top alternated between raised black slabs and troughs, also black. Into this trunk went drab uniforms in sorted rows of safas, jodhpurs, white pants and gray shorts. There was also striped peppermint toothpaste, a red toothbrush, a kit bag for used clothes, smelly red hair oil, Feradol, Lifeboy soap and plenty of tears accompanied by a strong vernacular accent. I was as ready as an eleven year boy could be for exile.
Being a somewhat absentminded and forgetful lad, I soon parted company with many of the uniforms and sundry other possessions. These were inadvertent losses.
Two things I learnt to lose deliberately though- the tears and the vernacular.
For if there were any rules to the place, they were, "Little boys who are going to be big men- DO NOT CRY (at least in public)." And , "Only LOCALS and those lower in the social order speak in vernacular." Hell, public schools must be the only places on earth where even Bongs converse with each other in English and not Bangla!!
This was my first encounter with upper middle class male morality.
A laid back macho ethic permeated the place. It is beautifully caught in one of the immortal legends of the school, which goes thus:
Parents of a new boy were lost somewhere in the huge school campus. They came upon a lad resting under a tree. Hesitantly (in Hindi) they asked for directions to the Principal House, Central Ground or wherever it was that they wished to go. Our hero (allegedly the head monitor) spat out the stem of grass that he was chewing and from his reclining position drawled, "I don't know nothing maan. I'm just a lonesome cowboy."
Huh. And here I was in this land of dandies, knowing nothing and without any directions or map as to how to navigate in this alien territory. But I learnt enough to survive seven years, even thrive in some ways....
I can't say I ever became adept at the law of public school survival - strut and stride, abide or hide (or lose thy hide). I just managed to bungle my way through this boy jungle.
(To be continued)
