Hey Little Girl... Part I
The little girl aped her elder
brother. To her, he was the coolest dude that existed. She was the kid in
school who was spoken to because she was so and so’s sister. As a kid she was
extremely naïve. Her brother was the quizzer, the topper, the
teacher’s pet, the social guy and everybody liked him. She on the other hand
was the brat, the swimmer, a teacher’s nightmare, anti social and didn’t want
to be liked by anyone. They were polar opposites of each other. Her brother -
the witty charmer and She, the *shrugs shoulders* and very impolitely leaving
conversation kind of person.
Perhaps… the younger version of her
envied the ease with which her brother was able to make friends and be at the
core of everything that was happening in school. The fact that they were so
different and studied in the same school eventually led to teachers constantly
comparing them. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. But imagine a little
girl always being chastised and all sermons ending with, “why aren’t you more
like your brother?” Truth be told she
tried.
As she grew a little older and
started understanding the school and the people in it. She decided she had to
make friends. She had the weirdest set of friends – the Assamese, the Bengali,
the Catholic, the Coorgi and the soon to join army school kid. She was very
proud of her set of friends they enjoyed enacting wars and scenes from
mythology and for the strangest reasons loved to portray death in their
enactments. Being the youngest, the
shortest and the smallest she was an easy target for bullies, but her posse of
friends kept her safe. The idea of gender differences hadn’t crept in, so life
was good until one day somebody pointed out saying that She had no female friends. She looked around at her friends and
realized that it was true. She didn’t have a friend who was a girl. But what
the heck she didn’t mind it one bit.
This Needle who had pointed the
obvious to the little girl was also a girl. The Needle offered the little girl
her friendship. The little girl accepted. The Needle then introduced her to
another girl and they all became friends. 2 weeks passed and then it began. The
Needle and the other girl asked to be invited to the little girl’s house for
lunch. The little girl asked her mother if she could invite her friends and the
mother agreed. The day for lunch was set and the girls came over to the little girl’s
house.
They exchanged niceties with the
mother and then went to the little girl’s room to play till lunch time. While
sitting at the dining table for lunch, the Needle asked the little girl, “Where
is your brother?” The little girl said, “He’s gone to visit his friends.” The Needle
and the other girl exchanged disheartened looks and didn’t even stay for
dessert. The little girl didn’t mind it a bit.
The next day when she went to
school, the Needle and the other girl told her that they couldn’t be friends anymore
because they only befriended her so that they could be introduced to her
brother. The little girl was crushed. [This was the first of many such female
friends the little girl made as she grew older. Except she had learnt her
lesson well the first time. This was probably where she withdrew into her shell
the first time.]
Her posse took her back without a
word and the universe seemed to be righting itself. She was not short of
friends or fun with them around but that didn’t last long either. What with 6th
standard students knowing their calling when they were 10 making the decision
to join Army school to be trained and disciplined for the life they were sure
they were destined for. In 7th standard the Bengali boy transferred
to Bhubaneshwar. In the middle of the year the Coorgi boy moved to Jhansi,
because his dad was in the Army. In 8th standard the Catholic boy
moved to a Catholic school. The little girl and the Assamese boy were the only
two left in what was once the group. They became easy targets to being teased
as a “couple” and all the other juvenile things kids do at that age. The
Assamese boy and the little girl slowly drifted apart and spoke to each other
only when they met outside of school.
As time went by the little girl
withdrew more into her shell only to venture out when she felt like it. Debates
and chess matches were the only things that kept her going and slowly her love
for books became an obsession. She started living in a world of her own where
characters from fiction were dearer to her than the person sitting next to her.
She felt that the books were meant for her, to be read by her so that she would
not be short of friends or short of advice. Jack London, Saki, T. S . Elliot,
William Golding soon encompassed her into the darkness of their literature and
she went into that world willingly.
To be
continued…
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