Dear Mrs. Naidu

by Mathangi Subramanian

  He told me how he doesn’t like his new school, but he can’t tell his brothers because they worked so hard to put him there. He told me how the teachers don’t pay attention to him except to point out how he doesn’t speak English properly or how he doesn’t have any manners. He told me how it’s kind of nice to have taps and ceiling fans and two-wheelers, but it’s not that nice.

  And he told me that he wants to be friends again.

  Then Amma came to say that the sun had set, and it was time to eat.

  When we went into the hall, there were so many items spread out in shiny silver vessels on the floor that there was barely room to sit: spicy biryani with whole hard-boiled eggs; korma and curries that dripped red and yellow and orange down our arms; sticky-sweet halwa that clung to the tops of our mouths until we washed it down with the sugary payasa Amma and I had brought. Amma and Aunty watched our plates, and the second there was any empty space, they filled it up with food. We laughed and ate and ate and laughed and then we ate some more.

  Afterwards, we drank Aunty’s special chai, and we talked about everything and nothing. Farooq and Tariq made fun of me and Amir like they always do, and Tasmiah Aunty and Amma pretended to be upset like they always do, and then they compared how good our marks were, because that’s how it works – the youngest ones get the most attention, good and bad. The house smelled like ginger and ghee and friendship.

  Before I left, Amir and I looked out the window and saw the skinny, bendy little moon straining and trying its best to give us light. Let me tell you, Mrs. Naidu, it wasn’t doing such a bad job, even though it was so thin it looked like if you got close to it, the smallest sigh would blow it away.

  I’ve been sighing a lot lately, but it’s been a long time since I looked at the moon. The thing is, though, whether I look at it or not, every night, it shines on me and Amir and Deepti and Annie Miss and Hema Aunty and Vimala Madam and HM Sir and Amma’s family in the village and even Appa, wherever he is. It shines on everyone, no matter who they are, or what they do, or where they go to school.

  It’s kind of like friendship. At least, best friendship.

  No matter how long you ignore it, or how far away it is, or how much it shrinks and grows, it’s always there.

  Shining.

  All the best,

  Sarojini

  August 11, 2013

  Dear Mrs. Naidu,

  Now that we are best friends again, Amir spoke to Tasmiah Aunty and got permission to come see me in the coconut grove, even though Aunty and Amma both still think Amir’s neighbourhood is safer. But anyway, when he got here this afternoon, we didn’t even have to discuss where we were going: we put his shiny new bike inside our his old the house, took a couple of idlis, and went straight to the special place.

  I didn’t expect this, Mrs. Naidu, but Deepti was already there. She was sitting on the ground with her legs tucked up under her and her back against the fallen tree, staring at a mynah bird perched on a branch. The bird was bobbing its head and wagging its tail and chirping and chattering.

  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Mrs. Naidu, but mynah birds can’t sit still.

  Usually, neither can Deepti.

  Except today.

  It turns out there are all these quiet parts of Deepti that she usually covers up with noise. Like the way her body strains against the seams of her too-small clothes. Or how the skin below her eyes is puffy and dark like rain clouds. Or the way her face wrinkles with worry when she thinks no one is looking. Or how when she listens to mynah birds, she looks like she only knows the saddest parts of their songs.

  But I barely had time to notice. Because as soon as Deepti saw us, she stood up, put her hands on her hips, looked at me, then Amir, then me, then back at Amir, and asked, “Are you the Muslim boy?”

  Just like that, all the quiet parts of her disappeared, and the loud parts came back.

  “He has a name,” I said. “It’s Amir.”

  “I know his name,” Deepti said to Amir, even though I was the one who answered.

  “I guess you’re Deepti,” Amir said.

  “Are you still being an idiot to Sarojini?” she said.

  (Only she didn’t say “idiot,” Mrs. Naidu. But you probably concluded that already.)

  “Deepti!” I said.

  “No, I’m not,” Amir said. “Are going to be an idiot to me?”

  (Mrs. Naidu, this might surprise you, but Amir didn’t say “idiot” either. I guess the brochure is right: Greenhill really does expand your vocabulary.)

  “Amir!” I said.

  Deepti looked at me and said, “He’s alright.”

  I rolled my eyes at her, because that’s what she would’ve done to me. “Be nice,” I said, handing her the idlis. “They’re covered in masala powder, just like you like them.”

  “Mmmmph,” Deepti said, which may have been ‘thank you,’ but it was hard to make out because she was shoving idli in her mouth.

  Amir sat on the ground where Deepti had been, with his back against the log. When he bent his knees, his trousers crept way up his legs, which stuck out like the back feet of a grasshopper.

  I guess Deepti noticed (although she didn’t seem to notice that I told her to be nice) because she said, “How come your pants don’t fit?”

  “Right. Because your clothes fit so well,” Amir shot back.

  “These aren’t mine,” Deepti said. “I stole them off a clothesline.”

  “You did?”

  “No,” Deepti said. Her face broke into a grin. “But I could’ve.”

  “She’s right,” I said, remembering her climbing the star-flower tree. “She definitely could’ve.”

  “Is that why you’re friends with Sarojini?” Amir asked, as I settled down on the ground next to him. “So when she’s a detective, you can bribe her to keep you out of jail?”

  “Sarojini wouldn’t take a bribe,” Deepti said, crossing her arms across her chest. She cocked her hip and started tapping her foot, like our English teacher does when Roshan and Joseph won’t stop doing Rajni impressions. “Besides, she’s not going to be a detective. She’s going to be a lawyer. You should hear her talk.”

  “Like I talked to that reporter?” I groaned.

  “You talked to a reporter?” Amir asked me. “Are you crazy?”

  “What’s so crazy about that?” said Deepti.

  “Last year a reporter asked Meena Aunty if the water at school was making everyone sick. She said yes, which was true. And she said it’s been making kids sick for years, which was also true.”

  “So?”

  “So,” Amir continued, “Meena Aunty got fired. But it’s still the same water, and I bet people are still getting sick. Nothing changed.”

  “Except Meena Aunty doesn’t work at the school anymore,” I said. “That changed.”

  “Meena Aunty?” Deepti asked, jumping on the log above us and rocking back and forth on her heels. “The old lady whose eyes don’t point the same direction?”

  “She used be the ayah,” Amir said. Then he looked at me and added, “before she talked to a reporter.”

  “I didn’t actually say anything.”

  Deepti rolled her eyes. “They can’t fire us from school.”

  “I’m not worried about being fired from anything,” I said. Then I thought about Amma, and I asked, “Wait, can mothers fire their daughters?”

  “Your Amma could,” Amir said, shivering.

  “Okay, calm down,” Deepti said. “This is all part of the plan to fix the school.”

  “The plan we wrote together?” I asked. “Because I remember a bunch of stuff about playgrounds and corporal punishment, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t say anything about a reporter.”

  “See, right now, no one is paying attention to us,” Deepti said, ignoring me. She jumped down from the log and faced us with her hands crossed in front of her like an
army general. “No one wants to come to our meeting, and no one wants to donate anything. But having your picture in the paper? That gets people’s attention. They love it!”

  “The reporter was taking photos that day,” I grumbled. “No one seemed too happy about that.”

  “That’s because she was writing some rubbish story that no one cares about,” Deepti said. “But who doesn’t want to be in a story about schools?”

  “You sure know a lot about journalism for someone who’s never been a reporter,” Amir said.

  “I read the paper. I mean, I’ve read it before. Once or twice.”

  “We have to read the paper every day,” Amir said, sighing. “It’s required for Social Studies.”

  “Oh, right,” Deepti said, rolling her eyes. “You go to that fancy school. How much did you pay for your seat?”

  “Amir doesn’t have a reservation seat,” I said. “He has a real seat.”

  “A scholarship seat,” Amir said quickly, “but it still costs a lot of money.”

  “Okay,” Deepti said. “You have a scholarship seat, maybe, but what did the reservation students pay?”

  “I don’t really talk to them,” Amir said.

  “Why?” Deepti snarled. “Because you’re so much better than them?”

  “No.” He looked at the ground and started playing with a rock, pounding it against the earth like he was angry at it. “Because they’re all tiny – like four and five years old. I wish they were older. Then I might have friends in my class.”

  “Are your classmates now mean to you?” Deepti asked in a voice that made her sound pretty mean herself.

  “Mostly they ignore me,” he said. “But they’re mean to other people who are small or weak or just different. That’s not right.”

  I guess Deepti approved, because she nodded and she uncrossed her arms.

  “They sound like a waste of time,” she said.

  Deepti jumped back on the log and tried to balance on one foot. She wobbled around crazily like she was about to fall over.

  “I could help, you know,” Amir said suddenly.

  “I’m fine,” Deepti said, miraculously recovering her balance and planting both her feet on the log.

  “No, not that,” Amir said. “I mean with Ambedkar School.”

  “How can you help if you go to Greenhill?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Amir said. “But I used to go to Ambedkar, and you guys are my friends, and you still go there. Plus I like it a lot better than my school. I mean, the students, at least.”

  “If we fix Ambedkar, maybe you can come back,” I said, like I had just thought of it.

  (Even though I’ve been thinking about it all along, Mrs. Naidu.)

  (But you knew that already.)

  Deepti sucked her teeth loudly. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sarojini,” she said. “Nobody changes from a private school to a government school.”

  I looked at Amir, thinking he would disagree. But he didn’t.

  “She’s right,” he said.

  “Why not?” I asked. “What if we get better teachers and nice equipment and everything?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Amir said. “Everyone will think I got kicked out and they’ll start gossiping about my family.”

  “Plus, nobody who goes to a government school becomes rich or successful,” Deepti said. “You think your lawyer Madam went to a place like Ambedkar?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  I guess somewhere deep inside of me, I knew that Amir would never leave Greenhill. After all, at first, even I wanted to get a seat at Greenhill, not stay at Ambedkar. But I felt another part of me twist a little, like the growing part of my heart wasn’t big enough to handle such bad news.

  “I don’t think you have to be at Ambedkar to help,” Deepti said. “I mean, I’m helping, and who knows how much longer I’ll be there?”

  “What?” I said.

  Mrs. Naidu, it’s one thing for Amir to leave. I’ve already handled that. Sort of.

  But Deepti too?

  When was that written?

  “Sure,” Deepti said, shrugging in that way she does when she’s pretending not to care about something she cares about a lot. “When my parents get a new job, who knows where we’ll go.”

  My insides twisted even harder.

  I guess my friends best friends noticed, because Deepti hopped onto the ground on one side of me, and Amir slid closer to me on the other side, and they both put their arms around my shoulders.

  “It doesn’t matter where we live or go to school,” Amir said, “we can stay friends.”

  Deepti hugged me tightly, probably because she’s much better at doing things than saying them.

  Then I saw them look at each other over the top of my head, and Deepti rolled her eyes and Amir half smiled. It was like they understood each other without saying a thing.

  And that’s when I realized that even though it’s not going the way I thought it would, my plan is actually working.

  At least, the part of the plan where Amir and Deepti and I are all friends best friends.

  When I realized that, my insides stopped twisting.

  They didn’t untwist or anything, but at least they held still.

  All the best,

  Sarojini

  August 14, 2013

  Dear Mrs. Naidu,

  For a second there, I thought that it was written that my life would pretty much go back to normal, or maybe even better than normal, just because everything was going so well.

  Here is the evidence that whoever is writing my life is writing a happy ending:

  Amir and Deepti are friends with each other.

  They are also friends with me.

  Amma is so happy after seeing Tasmiah Aunty that she’s forgotten to be angry at me.

  That couple the Aunties were talking about have eloped, which is big news, which means they forgot about the reporter and didn’t say anything to Amma.

  It’s Independence Day tomorrow (which you know, because you were there on the first Independence Day in 1947) which means we have a function but no classes.

  Deepti found out I don’t like dancing, and she convinced the teachers to let the two of us hold flags and march around the back, which is so much better than dancing.

  Amma said I don’t have to come to Vimala Madam’s house if Annie Miss calls to tell her that she’s with me.

  I didn’t have any homework yesterday so Amma said I could go to the special place and read the book about you.

  Can you see how I might have concluded that everything was okay, Mrs. Naidu?

  Well, I was wrong.

  I got to school this morning, and all my luck was gone.

  I thought something was strange when I saw Abhi waiting for me at the construction site without Deepti. He was tracing curvy shapes in the dirt. I guess he thought he was writing Kannada letters, because he kept saying, “Ah-ahhh. Ee-eeee. Oo-oooo,” like they teach you when you’re little. When Deepti’s Amma saw me she acted like she knew I was coming, and then thanked me for taking Abhi to school. I pretended like Deepti and I had discussed it – even though we hadn’t – and I left before Deepti’s Amma could ask questions that I couldn’t answer.

  It took me longer than usual to get to school – Abhi kept stopping to count things – but when I got there, Deepti was standing in the front, pointing to the big scooter-shaped hole in the gate and talking to someone.

  “It’s been like this for ages and nobody cares,” she was saying.

  Can you guess who she was talking to, Mrs. Naidu?

  I’ll give you three clues:

  The person Deepti was talking to was wearing fancy chappals that you can see in the window of the Bata showroom.

  The person Deepti was talking to kept blowing her hair out of her eyes because her hands were busy scribbling in a notebook.


  The person Deepti was talking to was someone Deepti should not have been talking to at all.

  Since you are a genius, Mrs. Naidu, I’m sure you have concluded that Deepti was talking to the reporter from the water truck.

  “Oh good. You’re here,” Deepti said when she saw me. Then she saw her brother, and said, sternly, “Abhi, go to class.”

  Abhi let go of my hand and flew across the courtyard like a kite in the wind.

  “You’re the other girl in the Child Rights Club,” the reporter said to me, scribbling away. “Sarojini, isn’t it?”

  “Yes – no – I mean, don’t put me in your article,” I said.

  “This is Rohini,” Deepti told me. “You remember her from the water truck, right?”

  “Um,” I said. Well, actually, I kind of croaked, because when I thought about my face on the front page of newspapers hanging in every tea shop in Bangalore, my throat started to feel more than a little froggy. The headline would probably say, “Child Rights Club Member Fired from Daughterhood by Mother.”

  At first, thinking of Amma made me shiver. Then it made me remember to be respectful. So I said, “Nice to meet you, Rohini Madam.”

  “You can just call me Rohini,” the reporter said, blowing her hair out of her face again. “Deepti tells me you’ve been at this school many years?”

  “I don’t want to be in the paper, Miss,” I said.

  “You don’t have to call me Miss: just Rohini is fine. And don’t worry, we can do this all on background.”

  “That means she won’t put your name,” Deepti said. “When she puts your name, that’s going recorded.”

  “Going on the record,” Rohini Madam Miss Reporter corrected Deepti.