On the 3rd day at our training institute, we were asked to make a life map for ourselves: everything in our lives that has led up to this moment right here. It's not an easy task - reaching back into your life and buried memories and extracting both the happy and the painful; sharing intimate details with strangers. The connections and understanding between us that developed from it are hardly tangible at the moment. But the internal reflection helped me at least get a better sense of my decision to join Teach for India, and to get a better sense of myself.
Privileged
For as long as I can remember, I have felt this way.
...Having had a PR card in Canada without ever having lived there, and so never paying the exorbitant international fees like all my friends.
...Going to TISB, an international boarding school in Bangalore that is often automatically assciated with rich snobs.
...Living comfortably in Kuwait with two doctors as parents who earned enough to give my brother and myself the best education.
...Squirming awkwardly when approached by a beggar on the streets of Bangalore, and being told not to just hand out money to everyone. "It's just the way things are."
...And Dehradun: the place where I was born; the place where I learnt that not every human being is "created" equal. I had a friend there, more like a sister. She was our gardener's daughter, and lived with her family in a one-bedroom house next to our huge bungalow. We used to play, laugh, spend all our time together: I would tie rakhis to her brothers, and she would tie one to mine. She was family - or at least, I thought she was.
There's this memory that was burnt into my head when I was 5 or 6 years old - a memory that I think got buried under layers of useless information until I extracted it again yesterday. One day, I had invited her over for dinner (I can't remember now if that was a common occurence - this is the only night I remember). Mamma was making maggie for us. Excited, I sat down at the dining table, and when I turned around to look for her, I found her sitting sublimely on the floor with her plate. Shocked, I asked her to sit up at the table, but she politely yet firmly refused. (Again, I can't remember clearly what happened after that: either I convinced her to come up or I sat down with her). Her calm refusal still shocks me everytime I think about it - it was as though she was saying she knew her place.
It was hardly an out-of-the-world incident, but to that 5-year-old me (and even to the 21-year-old me), it was an eye-opener. She knew her place in society. Her parents and brothers knew their place in society. I don't think my parents have ever propogated this discrimination, but neither did they pretend to be on the same level. And I say pretend because it would seem like pretence to most - this discrimination has been internalized so deeply by every member of our society, that any attempt at equality seems like pretence to others.
And so, at the age of 5, I too learnt my place in society - it was at the table, not on the ground.
Privileged
For as long as I can remember, I have felt this way.
...Having had a PR card in Canada without ever having lived there, and so never paying the exorbitant international fees like all my friends.
...Going to TISB, an international boarding school in Bangalore that is often automatically assciated with rich snobs.
...Living comfortably in Kuwait with two doctors as parents who earned enough to give my brother and myself the best education.
...Squirming awkwardly when approached by a beggar on the streets of Bangalore, and being told not to just hand out money to everyone. "It's just the way things are."
...And Dehradun: the place where I was born; the place where I learnt that not every human being is "created" equal. I had a friend there, more like a sister. She was our gardener's daughter, and lived with her family in a one-bedroom house next to our huge bungalow. We used to play, laugh, spend all our time together: I would tie rakhis to her brothers, and she would tie one to mine. She was family - or at least, I thought she was.
There's this memory that was burnt into my head when I was 5 or 6 years old - a memory that I think got buried under layers of useless information until I extracted it again yesterday. One day, I had invited her over for dinner (I can't remember now if that was a common occurence - this is the only night I remember). Mamma was making maggie for us. Excited, I sat down at the dining table, and when I turned around to look for her, I found her sitting sublimely on the floor with her plate. Shocked, I asked her to sit up at the table, but she politely yet firmly refused. (Again, I can't remember clearly what happened after that: either I convinced her to come up or I sat down with her). Her calm refusal still shocks me everytime I think about it - it was as though she was saying she knew her place.
It was hardly an out-of-the-world incident, but to that 5-year-old me (and even to the 21-year-old me), it was an eye-opener. She knew her place in society. Her parents and brothers knew their place in society. I don't think my parents have ever propogated this discrimination, but neither did they pretend to be on the same level. And I say pretend because it would seem like pretence to most - this discrimination has been internalized so deeply by every member of our society, that any attempt at equality seems like pretence to others.
And so, at the age of 5, I too learnt my place in society - it was at the table, not on the ground.
this hit home.
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