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Our high school in Muthukur was a co-ed school...there was no girls' school. Up till Class VIII we were about twenty boys and ten girls. Boys used to wear knickers and bush shirts while girls were dressed in what were called 'gowns' with plumed shoulders.
All of us squatted happily on the sandy floor in a thatched shed with a makeshift mobile blackboard on a huge tripod and quarreled and fought and indulged in fisticuffs when the teacher was away. One of the girls, Sarojini, was so rowdy she was made our CPL (Class Pupils Leader aka Monitor) to report on others.
She was fiery like you know which CM...
By when we graduated to Class IX and moved into a pucca room with desks and benches, we found only one girl, this Sarojini in our class, the rest having dropped out quietly, not to be seen anywhere except in their courtyards, peeping.
Sarojini stayed with us but she no longer wore plumed gowns but came to the school in a pleated lehanga and elbow-length blouse and a half-sari called voni; and sat far away from us boys on a special bench provided for her near the exit perpendicular to it...and fell quiet and demure and shy.
By and by we came to know that she was no longer a madchen but turned into a fraulein...like a caterpillar nestling in her cocoon. Time enough for her to turn into a proper butterfly-frau and fly away with her chosen man.
Then onwards segregation in our class was complete...we boys were not supposed to play or even speak with our erstwhile Monitor. And the big boys amidst us slipped to the backbenches to ogle at her slyly. And our old teachers were too kind to her lest she too should drop out and make the classroom a flowerless desert.
The same segregation was strictly maintained in our village buses. Women, if any, other than the blouseless fisher-folks, were seated at the back and no adult male was allowed to sit beside them. When there was dearth of room in the bus for males, the conductor would find a child and seat it sandwiched between the bhadramahila and the mustachioed new arrival. Village folks were strict about this protocol.
And then one day my Physician Uncle from the City of Vizagh got married at 21 and visited us at our seaside village on his honeymoon. And stayed with us for a day and was returning to Nellore by our cranky bus. And asked me to accompany him and his brand new wife to Nellore.
As soon as we boarded our bus, my Uncle sat his bride in a front corner seat and sat beside her placing his hand across her shoulders seating me by him on the other side. And was chatting her up with sweet nothings.
And I sensed there would be trouble.
As the bus got filled up and the conductor boarded it, he saw the couple in what he thought was a most compromising posture and abruptly asked my Uncle and me to change places, with me acting as a buffer between the man and his wife.
And the janata was supporting him silently but nodding eloquently.
My Uncle got red-hot angry and asked the conductor to go to hell. And the conductor complained to the driver refusing to blow the all-clear whistle. And the driver came down from his seat in the cockpit and politely requested my Uncle to oblige, citing the sentiment of co-passengers, which my Uncle refused to do.
And there was a clamor.
My Uncle then opened his medico bag taking out his steth and knee-hammer and telling the chaps off that he was a House Surgeon from Vizagh visiting the HM of the school (pointing to me) and threatening to complain to the police if they persisted in their insolence.
That silenced the crowd, and the passengers started shouting at the conductor for making trouble with a charming bhadralog couple...
I didn't have to go to Caesar's Rome looking for the Roman mob...
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Our high school in Muthukur was a co-ed school...there was no girls' school. Up till Class VIII we were about twenty boys and ten girls. Boys used to wear knickers and bush shirts while girls were dressed in what were called 'gowns' with plumed shoulders.
All of us squatted happily on the sandy floor in a thatched shed with a makeshift mobile blackboard on a huge tripod and quarreled and fought and indulged in fisticuffs when the teacher was away. One of the girls, Sarojini, was so rowdy she was made our CPL (Class Pupils Leader aka Monitor) to report on others.
She was fiery like you know which CM...
By when we graduated to Class IX and moved into a pucca room with desks and benches, we found only one girl, this Sarojini in our class, the rest having dropped out quietly, not to be seen anywhere except in their courtyards, peeping.
Sarojini stayed with us but she no longer wore plumed gowns but came to the school in a pleated lehanga and elbow-length blouse and a half-sari called voni; and sat far away from us boys on a special bench provided for her near the exit perpendicular to it...and fell quiet and demure and shy.
By and by we came to know that she was no longer a madchen but turned into a fraulein...like a caterpillar nestling in her cocoon. Time enough for her to turn into a proper butterfly-frau and fly away with her chosen man.
Then onwards segregation in our class was complete...we boys were not supposed to play or even speak with our erstwhile Monitor. And the big boys amidst us slipped to the backbenches to ogle at her slyly. And our old teachers were too kind to her lest she too should drop out and make the classroom a flowerless desert.
The same segregation was strictly maintained in our village buses. Women, if any, other than the blouseless fisher-folks, were seated at the back and no adult male was allowed to sit beside them. When there was dearth of room in the bus for males, the conductor would find a child and seat it sandwiched between the bhadramahila and the mustachioed new arrival. Village folks were strict about this protocol.
And then one day my Physician Uncle from the City of Vizagh got married at 21 and visited us at our seaside village on his honeymoon. And stayed with us for a day and was returning to Nellore by our cranky bus. And asked me to accompany him and his brand new wife to Nellore.
As soon as we boarded our bus, my Uncle sat his bride in a front corner seat and sat beside her placing his hand across her shoulders seating me by him on the other side. And was chatting her up with sweet nothings.
And I sensed there would be trouble.
As the bus got filled up and the conductor boarded it, he saw the couple in what he thought was a most compromising posture and abruptly asked my Uncle and me to change places, with me acting as a buffer between the man and his wife.
And the janata was supporting him silently but nodding eloquently.
My Uncle got red-hot angry and asked the conductor to go to hell. And the conductor complained to the driver refusing to blow the all-clear whistle. And the driver came down from his seat in the cockpit and politely requested my Uncle to oblige, citing the sentiment of co-passengers, which my Uncle refused to do.
And there was a clamor.
My Uncle then opened his medico bag taking out his steth and knee-hammer and telling the chaps off that he was a House Surgeon from Vizagh visiting the HM of the school (pointing to me) and threatening to complain to the police if they persisted in their insolence.
That silenced the crowd, and the passengers started shouting at the conductor for making trouble with a charming bhadralog couple...
I didn't have to go to Caesar's Rome looking for the Roman mob...
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