With Love from Dubai

I am at the NESA conference at Maggie Moon's engaging workshop on Writing Workshops and making them work for you and the kids. Literacy - hurray! ;)

If you know what the balanced literacy model is, then this is something teachers and students worry about a lot - and learn from even more. I tried to put this up right after we had our own little balanced literacy workshop complete with mini-lesson. Maggie conferred with me and researched my clumsy writing, complimented it and taught beautifully... I had a false start. And Miss Maggie suggested I try being in the moment.

Anyway, as a souvenir from Dubai, here's what came of it:

I have a list of nouns running through my head and the one that sticks out is fear. How Greek of me, even being quite Indian! I think fear is different from nervousness because it cripples you. Nervousness is annoying but sometimes, possibly, maybe even energising. Its familiar buzz creeps up on you in an exam, and you think you just might pull this one off. It’s there when you’re playing a team sport and yet you’ve still got all your faculties working.

AFTER THE CONFERENCE
In the moment...

Looking up the trees, with their still leaves, I can see nothing except spots of sunlight here and there. I am wondering where they are and if they’re still floating. Do they have wings? Or do they just look like ghosts? How will I see my mum if she is shapeless? More importantly, I couldn’t talk to her if I wanted to. And I have so much to say to her. I want to hug her and bury my face in her skirt. I am mad at her and I want to yell back and cry and say it wasn’t fair to say ‘Get your homework done or else…’ or ‘Well, we’re inviting the neighbours for the party even if you and D don’t get along!’ And then I want to say sorry. But mostly, I want to cry except right in my chest, it’s too lumpy and knotty and tight for tears. Ugh.

I am ten. I am standing on the pavement on a road in Madras, with vegetable shops lining one side and little hardware shops lining the other. We were walking along and we had had a pretty peaceful afternoon. There were actually clouds to alleviate the burning heat – yay! My mum had exclaimed at the great price for cabbages somewhere and I had managed to nod knowledgeably. We were talking about stories, after that. Little Women, maybe, and how I wished my cousin hadn’t spoiled the ending for me.

And then…. gone. Just like that. I have looked in all the shops nearby and I can’t see her familiar figure or the colour of her dress. I am convinced this is it. Something’s happened. If there’d been a kidnapping, it would have been noisy. This is something weird – the end of the world. And I cannot move off the pavement. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

Meesai Machismo

So such a serious blog name doesn't mean I am usually a serious person. Maybe INFPs are the intense kind generally. But maybe being a joker is a defence strategy I've developed over the years to a fine art ;) This preamble simply to say you're going to get no soul-searching outta me tonight. If any of you are reading, and are committed to handlebar meesais, you should probably not read any further! Coming up: one full-blown rant on unfashionable facial hair types.

I call them meesais and not moustaches because they are prolific in the motherland. And I associate them with the oh-so-Tamil man - and woman, for that matter - and self-satisfied smirks of fatal attraction possibilities! Get this for example:

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=S7C_5NB4bSU&feature=related

Ha! My dad had a pretty big moustache and other people I respect do - and my mum swears that without a moustache every weakness of the mouth shows so that one can only giggle in response to 'hello'. My poor mother. Still I am scarred by encounters with the meesai.

I walked out of school one afternoon, blazing hot 1 pm sun. And I walk circumspectly edged against the wall that lines the long, narrow driveway into the alma mater, knowing every incoming car knows the schoolgirl comes first. I was 11? 12? Anyway, I'm swinging my starched, A-line not-long-enough, not-short-enough skirt, holding my unwieldy lunch basket and shifting 13 kilos from one shoulder to the next (such troopers we were) until I'm nearly certain I don't have any more shoulders. And I'm glad school's done for the day, when who should come along but Biker Dude, in wanna-be black sunglasses and all-black shirt and jeans. He only gets classified dud in retrospect though - so I don't know how coloured my historiography is! At the time, I chose to name it The Curious Incident of the Uncle in the Afternoon. He must have been a little younger than the going rate for uncles generally, with handlebars that vied with his bike's for symmetry and attention. And he tried, from a distance of several yards in a harmless attempt at humour, to block my path. You know it - you go left, they go right, and you do that little dance, so often unintentional. And then he grinned - and oh sorrow, he waggled that meesai at me. I crossed the road. Dance over. No, 'hello, uncle, I'm studying in 3rd standard' opp for you, bud.

Scarred.

Again, switch slides to another after-school journey back home. What do we have here? Policeman combing his badge of honour down either side, twirling it manfully in the face of a police bike's rearview mirror. Guffaws of laughter in the backseat. More tarnishment of the poor meesai.

Not so scarred, but etched for life.

Upward curls on pot-bellied policemen. Tarnishment - check.

Prerequisite for the upswung lungi, symbol of extreme proprietorship, Mallu and Tam landlord images, swaggering but uncreditable machismo. Like, check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aCShcWz5XQ&feature=related The moustache is what you get ID-d on. No entry into Kerala's hottest and most exclusive, or TN's for that matter, without.

More tarnishment. From a colonised, conditioned, Peetru. If you don't know what that is, embrace your identity in Madras terms.