If only I could turn the clock back

Anita sat alone in a corner of the room as she did every evening and tried to rehearse the events of the last few months. Had she acted in haste? Had she taken the right decision? She asked herself this question everyday but could not find an answer.

The sound of the doorbell yanked her out of her ruminations. Suraj had returned after playing with his friends. She asked him to change while she went into the kitchen to bring him a warm glass of milk with his favourite cookies. She listened, with a doting smile, to his excited chatter about how none of his friends could bowl as fast as him or get him out. Then she got him to bring out his books and finish the homework for the day before retreating into her corner with her head covered in her hands.  Each time she looked up, she noticed Suraj looking at her through the corners of his eyes and shook herself out of her guilt ridden thoughts.

“What would my little boy like for dinner”, she asked him in a cheerful voice.

“Could I get parathas with butter paneer?” he heard him say and went into the kitchen to prepare her special paneer recipe.

By the time, Suraj was done with his homework, she had set the dinner table and sat him down to serve him hot parathas one at a time.

“Why don’t we eat together?” he remonstrated. 

“But then the parathas will go cold and you wouldn’t be able to melt the butter on them”, she reasoned and promised to join him as soon as the last one was ready. 

Suraj was allowed to watch his favourite cartoon show for half an hour before bed time. Anita put away the dishes and wiped the table as Suraj watched his cartoon and broke into loud guffaws from time to time. Soon it was bed time and she tucked him into bed. After ensuring that he was fast asleep, she returned to her dark corner to stoke her remorse.  

Anita closed her eyes and could see Suraj standing next to Kamal and hugging him from behind. She broke into muffled sobs lest Suraj should hear her. In the next couple of hours, she pondered over the wisdom of every word she had said to Kamal. Was she right in refusing to give in to Kamal’s strange views on education? Was it wrong that she stood up for her son’s rights? 

Anita began to work out this scenario in her head. Had she consented to Kamal’s plan of their son being home-schooled in tune with his experimental education theories, would things have been different? She had made the right decision, she told herself and shut her eyes.

“Who would you like to live with if your father and I were not to live together”? She had asked Suraj.

She could see Suraj sitting down leaning against the wall crumple.

“With none of you”, he had answered covering his face with his hands.

No amount of justifying her decision could get that image out of the child shrinking into himself out of her mind.

Missionary schools are some of the oldest schools in Indian small towns dating back to the British Raj. They believed in inculcating middle class British values through disciplinarian nuns and priests. A flashback of being hit on the knuckles by Miss Sultana when Anita was barely five for being absent for an entire fortnight due to measles list brought back unpleasant memories of her primary school. After starting school in a convent run by Christian missionaries, Anita had completed her schooling from state run schools where one was forced to be self-taught since the teachers with guaranteed job security believed in doing the bare minimum.

In the state run school, she had hated compulsory sports because the sports instructor used cuss words. She had detested the music class because the music teacher hit them with wooden rulers if they sang out of tune.  She envied her classmates who spoke of happy days in private schools tucked away in the hills. They were not only smart in academics but also excelled in sports, dramatics, and other extracurricular activities that their school curriculum included. She would have like Suraj to attend one of those schools.

But they were stuck in a small town with not much of a choice by way of schooling. Would she let Suraj be disciplined by Malayali nuns who had taken over from the Irish nuns and have him sing nursery rhymes in Anglo-Indian teachers’ ‘chi chi’ accents? The other option to send him to a branch of the same state run school from where Anita had herself finished high school. He would repeat the Sanskrit chant Anita had lip-synced to for years and listen to the dull, lackadaisical lectures of ‘permanent’ teachers. She sighed at the thought of the remembered routine from the morning prayers to the school closing that took her back to her own school days.

The thought of her son having to go through the same motions she went through year after year made her feel very depressed. But she was careful to conceal her disappointment from Suraj. She reconciled to admit Suraj into the state school as their students performed very well in the board exams through engaging private tutors. She got the neighbourhood tailor to stitch five pairs of school uniforms and picked up school shoes from the supermarket. She packed him off to school with a brand new schoolbag and lunchbox concealing her deep disappointment.

Anita waited outside the school gate to pick up Suraj. He was one of the first to come out looking completely dishevelled. “How was school?” she inquired. Excited, Suraj began to reel off the names of the new friends he had made. Every afternoon she would go to pick him up and ask him about how the day went. She found out that he had a brand new vocabulary within the first week, which was neither fully English nor Hindi but a strange mix of Hindi and English. She also discovered that the snacks she packed for him were generously given away to friends as he always returned home famished. In a sense, she was relieved when she found him adjusting to the odd school lingua, making friends, and developing tastes in music and movie similar to those of his classmates.

But one day Suraj came back from school and refused to go back to school. “What happened my dear?” She tried to probe but he would not state the reason. Fortunately, the exams were over and the term was going to end in a week. She tried to extract information from Suraj’s friends but none of them appeared to be aware of anything amiss. A week later, Suraj informed her about the betel chewing Hindi teacher who had ticked him off for not knowing the meaning of a particular word.

Anita had the entire summer vacation to think of an alternative. But there was no alternative in the small town they lived in. This is when she came across an advertisement for a new residential school in the hills. She visited the school’s website. It looked like the school she had been looking for promising excellence in academics, sports and extracurricular activities and an infrastructure no Indian school could offer. If only she could afford to send Suraj to this school, she said to herself, and shot off a quick email to the administration inquiring about the fee structure. She did not get a reply from the school but Kamal appeared in answer to her prayers and agreed to check out the school with Suraj.

Kamal had come to drop Suraj back after their visit to the residential school.  He had admitted Suraj in the school the same day. Suraj appeared to have taken a liking to the new school. He was looking forward to joining the school the following week. Not prepared for the unexpected development, Anita began to visualize Suraj being away from her. She tried to double check with him if he was prepared to live away from her. Suraj assured her that he would be fine. They made a deal. Suraj could join the summer term and leave the school if he did not like it and go back to his old school. Distressed at the thought of how he would manage, her knees sank under her as she dropped him in the school. She could still see him waving at her bravely after all these years.

Anita hoped that the novelty of the school’s grand architecture, smartly turned out teachers and cool friends would soon wear off and Suraj would be back with her before the school proper began.  She called him every so often to check if he was all right.  She even hacked into the mails he had sent his father voicing his fears about being alone. But fears notwithstanding Suraj had made up his mind and was not willing to return to his old school. Anita learnt to make do with vacation visits four times a year and visited him as often as she could. Whenever she missed Suraj, she consoled herself by reasoning that he was now receiving the best education the country could offer. She could not be selfish and deprive him of the opportunities that the school could provide him, she told herself.

Suraj appeared to be well adjusted in his new school. He made a number of friends and made plans to do things with them even on weekends. When he was home for his vacations, he was always chatting with them and could not wait for the school to begin. Anita was happy because Suraj was. The only thing that began to bother her was his slipping grades. After scoring all A’s in the first couple of years, his grade card began to show many B’s over the next two years. In his final year, she was summoned by the school and given a warning. “If his grades did not improve, the school would be compelled to not let him appear in his board exams.”

Anita decided to have a word with Suraj and tried to motivate him by speaking about the colleges he could possibly join if performed well. But Suraj had gone completely silent. He did not want to talk about what was bothering him. Suraj’s housemaster was of the opinion that his dismal performance had something to do with the new girl ‘with a reputation’ who he hung around with. But Anita was not convinced. She suspected that there was something more to it. She tried extremely hard to probe the matter but Suraj would not give her a clue.

A few months before the board exams, Anita received a call from the school. Suraj had refused to take the exams. She boarded the next available flight to talk some sense into her son. But Suraj was a bundle of nerves. Neither soft motivational talks nor hard ultimatums could get him out of his stupor. He would not go out to meet his friends nor speak to them on the phone. He had stopped watching his favourite sports programmes. He had even stopped listening to music. He sat all day with his head bent. She coaxed him to go out to eat. He pecked at his food and was lost in his thoughts. “Have you broken up with his girlfriend?” she asked him softly and received an answer in the negative.

One evening he left his chat box open and she fathomed what had been troubling him. She came to know after so many long years that he wanted to be in the school only because of the bonds he had developed with his school friends. He was afraid of going home to an empty house. To a mother who was always lost in her thoughts. To memories of a father who had abandoned him. He was afraid of being alone.

Anita did not care whether he scored an A or failed. All she wanted was him to start smiling again. But it was too late for her to make amends. Suraj had forgotten to smile.