Ursula, the music teacher, was only a few centimetres taller than Melita, usually had round shoulders and a forward protruding head from too many hours spent at a piano. That day she looked haunted, as though she wanted to be anywhere else rather than sitting on Melita’s right. She held herself rigid, with shoulders straight and head erect to show off her height advantage over Melita. Looking at them I suddenly understood that despite the united front they presented, and despite the message of love and friendship they preached, they actively disliked one another and each would use any opportunity to covertly undermine the other. Even in a convent where the nuns have rejected the greed and vagaries of the outside world to devote their lives to God, petty jealousies and hatred abound. It was an illuminating moment for me.
Kanesia was obviously enjoying herself. Buoyed up with an inflated sense of her own importance, she sat on Melita’s left. Since she was short and dumpy, spherical in outline, she gave the tableau a lopsided, ridiculous appearance. The three of them reminded me of pictures of the Holy Trinity that hung around the school and I wondered if Melita was fantasising about being God-the-Father.
It must have been daunting for my mother but to her great credit she refused to be intimidated. Though she was hopelessly outnumbered she looked relaxed, made eye contact with Melita and gave every appearance of attentiveness.
“Your daughter is a very naughty girl. She is consistently defiant and disobedient. She is extremely wilful and doesn’t respect her elders and betters. She will come to a bad end if she doesn’t mend her ways. A Bad End.” Melita spat a litany of similar words while my mother made no effort to agree, disagree, explain or defend. Just heard the nuns out.
Disarmed by dignity instead of the cowering response they expected, perhaps wanted, Melita’s face took on a beetroot hue before she resorted to her trump card of threatening expulsion. Sermons from the pulpit in those days thundered of automatic ex-communication should parents refuse to send their children to Catholic schools, so the nuns thought they had us over a barrel.
Little did they know.
My mother’s look of scorn replaced her surprise. Expulsion? A six-year-old? For refusing, quite logically, to call you “Mother”? She then allowed a moment of silence to accumulate before she stood up to end the interview and taking my hand said, “I’ll talk to Lucy.”
She tried to talk to me.
She tried again.
“It’s convention,” she explained to my blank expression.
“It’s tradition,” she coaxed.
“Everyone does it.” She’d became desperate.
But no amount of persuasion could out-argue my solid logic. From instinct I performed the broken record routine. To her every statement I responded with the same indelible fact. “But Mummy, Lori and Lily are my sisters.” Sometimes I added with glee, because it was such a lovely fact: “And you are my mummy and Daddy is my daddy.”
Intuitively I knew the word “mother” is a precious one, not something to be bandied about casually. For each of us it belongs to one person and one person alone. Allowing it to be usurped by a complete stranger was never part of my ethos.
My father was consulted.
“For God’s sake!” I heard him from my hiding place among the plants behind the piano. “Ninety-nine per cent of the country is starving and these women are worried about how a six-year-old addresses them.” The incredulity in his voice told me that my parents were amused and perhaps a little proud of my logical thinking.
“That child will go far,” he groaned, “or end up in prison and either way send me to an early grave.” Like most people I heard only what I wanted to hear, the first part of the sentence. I was intrigued. Go far – did that mean go to England like my mother had done?
I knew my father wasn’t unduly concerned. As always, he relied on my mother, so he could afford to be banal. “Pay her,” the financier in him proposed. “Tell her it’s worth two annas a day to call the nuns ‘sister’. By the end of the year she’ll have over twenty rupees in the bank, which is a large sum for anyone.”
My mother ignored the idea. Instead she mused, “The child has to learn to choose her battles. Some just aren’t worth the energy.”
And learn I did – an important lesson in life. Disputes such as these are seldom won by the least powerful person. I agreed (without the bribe) to use the prefix “Sister” when addressing a nun. But I did it under sufferance. In my mind, that all-powerful place, I continued to think “miss” instead of “sister”.
The nuns of course behaved as if they had a victory, as though winning over a six-year-old was an achievement, something to crow about.
“Thank you,” I said, receiving my class book.
“Thank you, who?” Kanesia’s stare dared me to use “Miss”.
I paused, looked down to gather mental strength and summon up the most innocent expression I could. To a background of hushed expectations from my classmates I gazed up at Kanesia and intoned in a sing-song voice, “Thank you Sister Kanesia.” My efforts were rewarded with a grunt. She was obviously in two minds about how she should react, but there was nothing she could do. I had fulfilled the standard requirement for decorum and obedience.
The nuns were not known for their emotional intelligence while I had learnt another useful lesson. Subtle guerrilla tactics can be more effective than open warfare.
And now, five years later, I nodded an acknowledgement to the passing nun while I waited for Lily and our friends Peggy Biswas and Anna Koti. I had our Book of Sins to help with Confession.
It had started a few years earlier. I had been grumbling about the difficulty I had in continually thinking up “sins” for my weekly Confession when my best friend Peggy admitted she had the same problem.
“What sins do you use?” I asked her.
“I fought with my brother.”
“But you don’t have a brother.”
“Umm. Father doesn’t know that.” Even though the nuns emphasised the total anonymity of the confessional, it was obvious who was lined up every Saturday morning.
“What about you?”
“I was rude to the nuns.”
A shout of laughter preceded her response. “Everyone knows that! My mum says the nuns hate you. If you didn’t live in such a big house they’d get rid of you.” She spoke with authority since her mother was a senior school teacher.
I dismissed the nuns. Sin was much more interesting. “Do you have only one sin or do you use others?”
When she didn’t reply, I offered, “I can’t think of anything else to say, so I race through the alphabet and Father tells me to say threehailmarys and whispers some words I cannot hear and I go home. Done for another week.”
As it turned out the dilemma wasn’t mine alone. Peggy had trouble inventing sins and in time I realised so did Lily and her best friend Anna.
And thus was born our Book of Sins.
In an old exercise book Peggy and I listed every sin we knew, starting with Peggy’s, because it offered plenty of scope. We picked imaginary fights with our sisters, our cousins and our aunts and every person known or unknown to us. My sin also allowed ample possibilities. There was no end of the number of people on whom we could vent our rudeness.
“I used swear words,” had limited application as the only strong language we ever heard was dashitall. “Didn’t say my prayers,” was broken down to specific, individual prayers. A flash of inspiration further developed it to specify the day of the week. One week it was “didn’t say the Angelus on Tuesday” and the next “the Morning Offering on Wednesday”. Telling lies to all and sundry wore out our creativity. Significantly, it never occurred to me to include any of the “bad” behaviours of which I was accused on a daily basis.
One afternoon Lily was at a loose end. Spotting Peggy and me sitting on the fountain wall obviously in conference, she intruded. With the sense of excitement one gets when dabbling in forbidden fruits, I refused to tell her what we were doing until she bribed me with
her collection of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. My sister, like sisters the world over, automatically knew my weak spot.
“We are listing sins to use in Confession,” I confessed, making Lily want to join in. Being two years older, her contribution brought a degree of sophistication.
“I had impure thoughts,” she offered with her nose stuck in the air, daring us to ask her to explain. I duly wrote, younger sister pride prohibiting me from indulging her ego.
It wasn’t long before Anna was brought into the group. With her worldly experience far exceeding anything Lily, Peggy or I knew, our inventory reached a respectable length. Eating meat on Fridays, spreading nasty rumours and dressing immodestly added spice to the existing catalogue.
Every Saturday morning before Confession, the four of us met in the playground and chose our sins. Since it was now so easy our enthusiasm knew no bounds and each of us was in danger of being carried away with the magnitude of our wickedness. Sometimes a spirit of competition arose over who was allowed the longest list, but in the interests of credibility (and equality) we disciplined ourselves to four sins each.
Soon Peggy and I got adventurous, almost audacious, and moved away from the mundane to more exotic, still un-understood sins. Occasionally an argument broke out. “You can’t have that sin again. You had it last week,” one of us would point out, only to be greeted with, “I like that sin.” We needed a register to ensure popular sins were not overworked.
Anna was very fond of eating meat on Fridays. Significantly, no one ever asked if this were true. In a country that leaned towards vegetarianism, where meat was prohibitively expensive and commercial refrigeration almost unheard of, most people only ate it on rare occasions. Yet the powers that be never challenged it as a regular occurrence.
In a moment of generosity I wanted to offer our book to other poor unfortunates who were also compelled to gotoconfession every Saturday.
Our little system ran smoothly for a few years. Eventually we outgrew our Book of Sins, but the concept remained. With maturity came a shared sense of the absurd, while the realisation of the power we had to make fun of the nuns behind their collective backs consolidated our friendship.
The first ripple to the foursome appeared when Peggy’s family migrated to Canada. Anna left soon after to pursue a different academic path and Lily finished school, leaving me the sole custodian of the Book.
Left to my lonely devices, as there were no other Catholic or anglicised girls in my class, I retained the practice of mentally reviewing a list of sins and choosing something that took my fancy. Whether it bore any resemblance to reality was beside the point. Acting out the motions of goingtoconfession got me past the weekly ordeal and kept the nuns happy.
CHAPTER 6
COMPOUND INTEREST AND BAGGY BLOOMERS
Reaching the age where a girl takes tentative steps towards maturity I came to see the nuns as a funny bunch who didn’t make us laugh. Far from it! If anything, they were a mass of contradictions. Their expressed intention was to provide a morally and spiritually flavoured education for all girls regardless of caste, creed or financial status. With learned skills, a girl would have more chance of climbing out of poverty – a poverty where even little girls have no choice but to sell their bodies in order to feed themselves and their families.
The secondary intention appeared to be to tout the marvels of Catholicism.
The Order was from Germany, having arrived in India in the 1850s. By the time I attended the school only the older nuns were German, while the younger ones were South Indian. There was a fierce hierarchy among them, evident from their attire. The Reverend Mother was always dressed in crisp, clean garments while the youngest postulant, who had no power at all, had to make do with clothes that had obviously seen better days.
In summer they were covered from head to toe in the traditional white habit that hid numerous side pockets for essential items like rosary beads, classroom keys and off-white hand-kerchiefs. Only their faces and hands were visible as even their feet were encased in white socks and black flat-heeled shoes. Though it was the decade following the Vatican II Council when dress codes for nuns were liberalised, their whole image was still androgynous, hermaphroditic.
I’d always considered the nuns’ mode of dressing ridiculous and one Saturday in late April made the mistake of voicing my opinion. Seated at the lunch table after school was over for the day, I scoffed, “You should’ve seen Aloysia today. She was sweating like a pig.”
My mother’s response was immediate, sharp and effective. “If you are referring to your class nine teacher as I assume you are, than please show respect – to her and to me. Use her title and don’t refer to her in that rude way.”
The silence was fraught with sulky rebellion. My mother added, “If you insist of being rude I’ll refuse to listen. Please understand you’ll be talking to yourself. I simply will not be involved.”
I knew from experience my mother’s threat was no idle one. If I persisted in misbehaving she would skilfully look through me, indicating my behaviour, and therefore I, wasn’t worth acknowledging. There is nothing more diminishing than to be ignored. It’s an effective way to control behaviour.
I hesitated, but not for long, as the words simply wouldn’t sit still in my brain.
“But it’s true, Mummy. Sister Aloysia stayed under the fan all morning but was still sweating and sweating. She couldn’t stop wiping her face.”
My mother sighed with exaggerated weariness. “She is probably facing that time in a woman’s life when her threshold to heat is hormonally lowered. You should be compassionate. One day it will happen to you.”
No it won’t. I gritted my teeth and resolved to prove her wrong. It was beyond my comprehension that parts of my life would be beyond my control. At twelve years old, empowered by emerging hormones, the world’s at your feet – if only the adults would recognise it and get out of your way.
“They’re mad to dress like that.” The weather was gearing up to the great heat of summer so people had changed to lighter, cooler clothing but the nuns were still covered in their multi-layered thick cotton garments.
My mother’s manner became one of patient explanation to a subnormal intelligence. “You know full well their clothes reflect the style that was appropriate for working among the poor when the Order was founded. Besides,” she warmed to her point, “you ought to admire their commitment to their vows. They always, uncomplainingly, wear those clothes even when the temperature’s in the fifties.”
My mother was right. There was never a word of complaint. Wordless, accepting obedience taught us by example, traits of fortitude, mental strength and self-control. Fortunately, it did nothing to induce us to imitate their style of dressing.
Or enter the Convent.
In contrast, the uniform for the girls was liberal for the times. It consisted of a knee-length navy blue pleated skirt with a white blouse, short or long sleeved, depending on the season. White socks and black shoes and white rubber-soled canvas shoes called Keds for sport were the norm. A navy blazer with school badge embroidered in gold thread on the breast pocket, a navy cardigan and a blue striped tie were added in winter.
Our sports uniform, however, was plain stupid. To preserve our adolescent modesty during running and jumping, we were required to wear something known as divided skirts. These were knee-length culottes in thick white drill.
Above our normal underwear were extra undergarments: baggy bloomers bound by tight elastic at waist and thigh. It was not uncommon for schoolgirls to line up in front of a nun while she, in a totally asexual way, put her hand up our skirts to check the length of the bloomer.
“Jump higher!” snarled Mrs Lawrence, our sports teacher. “How can we consider winning competitions if that’s the best you can do?” But my bloomers were so voluminous they weighed me down; my waistband so constricting I was almost chopped in half and the elastic around my thighs so tight my legs were in imminent danger of auto-amputation.
“Oh them!” Sarita’s focus was on the sports field. “I line up like everyone else, then when the teachers aren’t looking I go to the bogs and take them off.”
I gaped at this duplicity, especially from one with such an innocent gaze, who was held up to me as a role model. Still looking at the field, Sarita added, “We all do it!”
While my mouth hung open she laughed without humour. “You can’t do it. You argue with the nuns all the time so they expect you to be wicked. They’re so busy watching you, they can’t watch us. After all,” her reasoning was sound, “there are many more of us than them. They can’t watch all of us all the time.”
Never were the differences between my classmates and me so apparent, never had I felt so alienated from my school friends. Having gained admission to an elite school from which most of their parents had been barred, my classmates focused on education as their path to a prosperous future. Theirs was not to reason why – whatever their individual inclination.
On the other hand, because of our religion, the nuns were stuck with me, a Catholic girl caught in the trap of a Catholic school. In my life it was the only place where every move had the potential to be recorded as a misdemeanour rewarded by a refined form of punishment. And it was the nuns, those terrestrial brides of Christ, who owned and controlled a whole array of punishments.
Their power lay in what was supposed to be adult maturity and wide experience of life, which they took as the right to control me by constant criticisms and dire predictions about my future. To further demonstrate their authority I was often locked away for lengthy detentions, which I turned to my advantage. I soon found Shakespeare and Milton gave me the best quotations to clinch arguments with the nuns.
Challenging the status quo was my burden not my choice. Poor logic always sat uneasy with me, forcing the compulsion to question.
As an institution, the nuns espoused feminist views way ahead of their time. In the 1960s when opportunities for girls were restricted to household roles, they were role models of working women who demonstrated a belief in higher education. They provided science and humanities courses to a university entrance standard and without actually saying so, imparted the belief that hard work would achieve boundless ambition. The school motto, emblazoned on badge and blazer, read Nihil Sine Labore – nothing without labour.
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