Dear Mrs. Naidu

by Mathangi Subramanian

  “Not you,” Deepti said. Abhi looked like he was about to cry, so Deepti chanted, “Q-R-S-T-U-V?”

  “V is the name of Vajpaiji!” Abhi sang.

  “Annie Miss can be the teacher,” I said. “And we’re all women – or, girls and women, I guess. But anyway that’s good.”

  “So all we need are parents,” Deepti said. “Your Amma will do it.”

  “Um, well – she’s actually pretty busy right now,” I said, swallowing hard. “I mean, she’s just started a bunch of new houses and stuff.”

  I thought Deepti would roll her eyes or spit or something. But instead, she put her arm around my shoulder.

  “I can’t imagine if my Appa wasn’t around.”

  I probably shouldn’t have done this, Mrs. Naidu, but I blurted out, “Your Appa? Isn’t he useless?”

  “He drinks a lot,” Deepti admitted, “but at least he gives us money every month. Not as much as he should, but it’s something. And at least Amma and Abhi and I aren’t afraid that someone is going to come take advantage of us because there’s no man around.”

  Imagine that, Mrs. Naidu. Here I was feeling sorry for Deepti, and this whole time, she was feeling sorry for me!

  “It’s not so bad. At least we stay in one place.”

  Deepti shrugged and said, “Yeah, well. We’re lucky we both have families who are speaking to us and care about us in their own odd ways.”

  I thought of Amma then. “Do you think we’re going to get in trouble for doing this?”

  “Probably.”

  “Wait, really?”

  “Really.”

  “You’re not worried?”

  “I’m worried about a lot more than getting in trouble,” Deepti said. “I’m worried that my Amma and Appa will never make enough money to keep our farm, which is the whole reason we came to work in Bangalore in the first place. I’m worried Appa is going to get so drunk one night that he won’t come home. I’m worried Amma isn’t going to find the next job for us and that we’ll have nowhere to live and nothing to eat. I’m worried that my parents or Abhi are going to get hurt or maybe even die at the site. It happens a lot, you know.”

  “I didn’t know you worried about all that,” I said, looking at Deepti out of the corner of my eye. Usually she acted so light and careless. Now, it was like all the years of her life were pressing down on her skinny shoulders – and even though her whole life is technically only twelve years, her problems made it sound more like a hundred.

  “I try not to talk about it – or, actually, think about it – because if I let worrying stop me, I’d never do anything. I’d never try to change anything. And if I don’t change things, then nobody else is going to, and the worries will just go on forever – for Amma and Appa, and for me and Abhi, and probably for my kids, and even my kids’ kids. It’ll never end. And that’s my biggest worry of all.”

  For a while, we let Deepti’s words twist in the damp morning wind. I thought about how Amma must have felt when Appa left us alone in a strange city when I wasn’t even able to talk yet. Back then, Amma wasn’t much older than me and Deepti are now. Her worries were probably a lot like Deepti’s. Which, actually, are a lot like mine.

  Suddenly Abhi started jumping up and down and saying, “School school school school school!”

  “Calm down,” Deepti said, scooping him up. But he kept bouncing on her hip and started chanting some rhyme about a monkey drinking bisi bisi payasa before going to anganwadi.

  He launched himself off of Deepti’s hip and took off across the compound, the bottoms of his bare feet flashing browner and browner as they caked with muddy earth.

  “He does this every time he sees the gate,” Deepti said.

  “Imagine how he’ll feel when we fix it,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Deepti said, smiling. “Just imagine.”

  All the best,

  Sarojini

  August 1, 2013

  Dear Mrs. Naidu,

  Today was a big day, Mrs. Naidu, because we officially started the plan to fix our school. I thought once we started I’d be happy and proud. But I’m not, really. I’m… well… I’m not sure how I feel, which I guess is why I’m writing you this letter.

  Our plan has four steps. Step One is forming the SDMC. Step Two is making a school development plan, Step Three is getting money from the government to pay for what we need, and Step Four is doing all the stuff on our list so we can fix our school. Today we didn’t really do step one, but we did something we had to do before Step One. So I guess what we did was actually Step 0, or maybe Step 1/2.

  (I think you’ll agree, Mrs. Naidu, whether it’s four steps or four-and-a-half steps, it’s a pretty fast plan. Much faster than your plan to make the British quit India, which probably had at least a hundred steps, or maybe even a thousand. Definitely more than four-and-a-half.)

  Anyway Step 0, or 1/2, or whatever you want to call it, was asking the Headmaster if it was okay for us to form the committee. We went to see him this morning because we had no choice: the HM only comes in on the first of the month. No one knows where he goes the rest of the time, because no one knows where he lives. Everyone says he has another job, but I can’t picture him going to office or driving an auto or doing anything, really, besides grumbling.

  I’ve always thought our HM looks kind of like a criminal sidekick in a Kannada movie. He’s got a big, thick moustache that curls a little at the ends and bushy black hair that sticks straight up from his head. He’s also kind of square and solid looking, like if he got angry he could pick up a whole box of books and throw them across the room. Except that he wouldn’t get angry unless someone told him to, because he’s not the kind of person who does things on his own. That’s why he’s the criminal sidekick, not the evil genius – he’s like a bodyguard, or the guy who drives the getaway car who’s listed as ‘Kalla #3’ in the credits.

  (I guess it’s funny that I don’t think he’d be the person running things, considering that he runs our school.)

  Mrs. Naidu, I know from this book I’m reading that your sister was an HM at a school she started in Lahore, which used to be India, but is now Pakistan. So you know what an HM is supposed to be like, and you also know what happens to a school when the HM doesn’t do his (or her) job.

  So before you think badly of us, Mrs. Naidu, I should tell you that it wasn’t always like this at Ambedkar School. Our old HM, Janaki Madam, was like your sister: she was there every day for years and years and years – in fact, she had been the HM for a lot of my classmates’ parents. She came to school every day. She arrived early, she stayed late, and she knew everything about everyone. If kids were absent a lot, she’d go to their houses and talk to their families. When you saw Janaki Madam go to someone’s house, you knew things were going to get better. After her visits, Appas and Ammas got jobs, rents got paid, food started showing up regularly – sometimes, all of those things happened at once.

  Everyone loved Janaki Madam, but she completed 35 years of service and decided to retire. She still lives around here, and I sometimes see her when I buy the greens Amma likes at the carts near Janaki Madam’s house. I miss seeing her at school, though, and I especially miss stopping by her office after class – she used to keep English and Kannada picture books on her desk so we could practice reading in both languages while she filled out registers and made lots of phone calls. Sometimes I was worried that we were disturbing her, but she told me that she liked having us around. She said it gave her energy.

  This new HM though? He’s not like that. It’s not that he likes having us around or that he dislikes it – it’s that he doesn’t notice us at all.

  It felt strange to be back in the office for the first time in three years. Some things were the same – like Janaki Madam’s metal desk, which was kind of slanted and had a crooked drawer that you could tell would never close no matter how much you forced it. But a lot of things were
different, like the stacks and stacks of registers and papers sitting on the desk collecting dust and waiting for signatures (Janaki Madam always did her work right away and then put everything in files, and she dusted every day), and the blank walls (Janaki Madam used to cover them with our artwork and tests where we scored 100%), and the stack of cardboard boxes full of new uniforms (Janaki Madam used to pass them out the first week, or even before if you stopped by and asked her).

  When we walked in, the HM was writing in a register. Without looking up, he asked “Who are you?”

  Well, that was a bad start. Especially if you’re talking to Deepti.

  “We’re students here,” Deepti said. “Don’t you even recognize your own students?”

  “Sir,” Miss said, putting her arms around our shoulders like she wanted to protect me from the HM, and the HM from Deepti, “Sarojini and Deepti are two of my brightest students.”

  Great, I thought. Now he knows our names.

  “Sir,” I said, “we want your permission to start a committee to improve the school.”

  He didn’t react, but I kept going, trying to remember the lines that Miss and Deepti had made me rehearse yesterday afternoon.

  “We want to make some simple changes that will improve our education and will reflect positively on our community,” I said.

  “Basically, this whole thing will make you look good,” Deepti said, which probably was true, but definitely was not something we agreed to say. “We’ll do all the work and you’ll get all the credit.”

  I elbowed her, and she said, “Ow!” and then rubbed her arm and said, “What?”

  The HM didn’t say anything. He just kept writing.

  Deepti took a breath like she was about to speak again, and I think Miss noticed, because she quickly said, “Sir?”

  The HM put his pencil down and folded his hands on the register.

  “I was at my last school for seventeen years before they transferred me here,” he said, staring at the register instead of us. “I loved that school. I started it with my wife. We bought all the books, hired all the teachers – we even put our own money into the building costs when the government funds didn’t come on time. We sent our children there, even though we could’ve put them in private school. We wanted to set an example. Of course, at the time, it felt like we had hundreds of children – our students were our family.”

  “So why’d you leave?” Deepti asked. She didn’t say it very politely, but the HM didn’t seem to notice.

  “The government closed it,” he said. “Our enrollment was too low. I did everything I could to save it. I started all kinds of committees. Committees for new toilets and new textbooks and new teacher recruitment. You know what came out of those committees? Nothing. No toilets. No textbooks. No teachers.”

  The HM told us all this like he was reciting an exam. His voice was flat, and if you didn’t listen to the words, you wouldn’t know that the story was sad.

  “Committees,” he said, “are useless.”

  I should’ve been angry, Mrs. Naidu. Thanks to the HM, it seemed like we weren’t even going to get through Step 1/2, let alone Step One. But honestly, I didn’t blame him. I know enough grown ups to know that there’s nothing harder than watching your dreams fall apart, especially when you put your whole life into them. Sometimes those dreams are schools. Sometimes they’re farms, or children, or marriages.

  “I don’t know what I’d do if Ambedkar School closed,” I thought. But then, too late, I realized that I didn’t think it – I said it out loud.

  The HM looked surprised too, like he had forgotten I was there. After a minute, he picked up his pencil and started writing again. Miss silently motioned that we should leave.

  We were nearly out the door when the HM said, “Do whatever you want. Just don’t ask for money, because we have none. And don’t ask me questions, because I don’t want to know about any of it.”

  “Thank you sir,” Miss said.

  “You’re just wasting your time,” the HM said.

  And that was that.

  Like I said, Mrs. Naidu, I should have been happy because now we can get to Step One. Deepti and Miss were certainly were – when we left the office, Deepti started doing a victory dance and Miss’s eyes got all just-and-beautiful-world-y.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she said.

  “Yeah!” Deepti whooped. “Dance with me!” She took my hand and started twirling in circles.

  “See you girls tomorrow,” Miss said, as Deepti pulled me towards the anganwadi to pick up Abhi.

  I guess I wasn’t shaking my hips hard enough, because Deepti, still dancing, said, “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s the HM.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’ve spent all this time thinking he was useless, and it turns out that he was like Janaki Madam. But look at him now. He’s lost everything – his school, his students, hope. Everything.”

  “But he has new students and a new school,” Deepti said. “He has a second chance and he doesn’t want to take it. He didn’t lose hope. He gave it up.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  But I’m not sure, Mrs. Naidu. When you think about all the things that could go wrong in our plan, even though it’s only four steps (or maybe four and a half, depending on how you look at it), it makes me wonder how I’ll feel if we try and try and try and it doesn’t work.

  Will we turn out like HM Sir and not care about anything and be sad all the time?

  Did you ever lose give up hope, Mrs. Naidu?

  Will I?

  All the best,

  Sarojini

  August 3, 2013

  Dear Mrs. Naidu,

  Mrs. Naidu, I guess I still have a lot to learn about fighting.

  After we met with the HM and finished Step 1/2, our next move was Step One, which is convening the SDMC.

  (‘Convening’ is an English word that means bringing people together. It’s not a detective word – it’s a lawyer word. It might also be a politician word, but I’m not sure.)

  Out of all four steps, I thought convening would be the easiest. Vimala Madam said the SDMC should have nine people. Me, Deepti, and Annie Mam are three. So we only needed six more, and they all had to be parents, mostly mothers so that we could make sure that the committee was 50% women.

  (Who knew that convening took so much math? I wonder if lawyering does too.)

  You know who Deepti and I know a lot of? Mothers. If you remember, Mrs. Naidu, in my neighbourhood I know everyone and everyone knows me. As for Deepti, once she and Abhi registered at Ambedkar School, she took a bunch of the other kids from the construction site and got them enrolled too, so all the Ammas love her, and will pretty much do anything she tells them to do.

  Between the two of us, how hard could it be?

  The answer is: very, very, very hard.

  Here is the list of people I asked, and what they said:

  Kamala Aunty won’t leave the area without her husband, but her husband won’t come to the meeting because school is women’s business.

  Mary Aunty is going to enroll Joseph in private school so she doesn’t want to waste her time.

  Amina Aunty says she doesn’t want to be involved in anything that the HM is involved in. She says she met him once, and it was one time too many.

  Nimisha Aunty doesn’t want to leave the house she works in and lose pay for some useless meeting that won’t get us anywhere anyway.

  Hema Aunty says she is not in the mood to watch people break promises because she gets enough of that from her husband, not to mention the local leader who still hasn’t gotten us new roofs.

  I didn’t mean to, Mrs. Naidu, but just by asking about the SDMC, I started an aunty galatta, which everyone knows is the worst kind of galatta because it is the loudest and the hardest to stop. By the time I spoke to Hema
Aunty, there was a whole crowd of aunties telling me all the reasons why they weren’t coming and why I should just give up. All of them were talking at me but also at each other, and their words kept slamming against the place in my heart that was supposed to be growing.

  “You’re going to form a committee that’s only women and children?” Hema Aunty said. “Who listens to women and children?”

  “Definitely not that HM,” Amina Aunty said. “That man doesn’t listen and he doesn’t do anything.”

  “But Aunty,” I said (although I wasn’t sure which aunty I meant), “we spoke to a lawyer who is going to help us, and she says–”

  “That woman your mother works for?” Nimisha Aunty said – actually, she kind of spat. “Those rich people love to help us for a second and feel good. Then when things fall apart, they’re nowhere to be found.”

  “None of you should be bothering with that school to begin with,” Mary Aunty said. “If the government runs it, it won’t work.”

  “That’s the point,” I said. “The government is supposed to make the schools work. It’s in the Constitution.”

  “Constitution?” Amina Aunty laughed. “Where are you learning these big English words? The Constitution is not for people like us. It’s for people like your lawyer friend.”

  “But it is for us!” I said, thinking of you, Mrs. Naidu. “Besides, the government schools may not work now, but they’re the schools we have. I don’t know anyone who has gotten into a private school reservation seat. Do you?”

  “Sarojini, darling, you’re such a sweet girl,” Kamala Aunty said in her gentle, Kamala Aunty way. “You get such good marks and are so helpful to your mother. Just leave things be.”

  When I came home, I was so angry, I couldn’t concentrate on my assignment, so I picked up the book about you. I read about how during the freedom movement, when you became the leader of the agitation in Dharasana, you convinced all the protestors to stay together and remain calm, even when the Britishers beat Indians with lathis. All our teachers say Dharasana was the protest that made people around the world realize that the British were being unfair to Indians, and that they should leave.