Aches and Pains

View from the Lower Field

I remember with vivid clarity the sense of complete abandonment I felt at the age of six, when my hand was put into the firm grasp of a strange looking woman in an unfamiliar habit. Having no concept about nuns and boarding school, I watched my parents walk away, my mother in tears, and in my childish mind  was convinced they had given me up forever. I could barely stand the feeling of ecstasy, when I saw them a couple of months later in our summer sports break and appreciated that I had not been forgotten.
The first few days of school would pass in a haze of home sickness. This was something I chronically suffered from, and for someone who has not experienced the actual physical sense of emptiness and heaviness, it is a sensation that is hard to describe. I hated going back to school after holidays and wept and cried as if it were the end of the world. At the beginning of term we would be dropped off by our parents at different locations, from where the nuns would take over the group for the rest of the journey up to Nanital. These clusters were called school parties. My father would escort me from Gorakhpur to meet up with the Lucknow Party. I would sit in silent misery, huddled into a corner of the  compartment, sometimes even sticking my arm out of the window, in the hope it would be chopped off and I wouldn't have to go back to school - so desperate was I. This feeling of dreadful angst would last a week or so and was a nerve wracking and traumatic time. 

House Badges - I was in the Green House, St. Anne's

My husband often asks me how I am so emotionally self sufficient. When I am ill I prefer to be left alone and as a result  am not good at dealing with sick people either, because I expect the same from them. Physical pain does not bother me and I am calm in an emergency. I don't cry easily and am not overly emotional. My reactions to news, good or bad, is more often than not understated and controlled. Very little in life fazes me - scandals and idle gossip least of all.   

I attribute this reserved behaviour partly to genetics but also in part to starting boarding school at such a young age. I had to learn to deal with personal aches and pains on a day to day basis. Headaches and stomach gripes were dealt with arbitrarily without any fuss. Cuts and scrapes were unsympathetically daubed with Mercurochrome in the infirmary, and I wandered around with splotchy red knees and elbows most of the time. A runny nose was wiped into the sleeve of my sweater and a sore throat ensured a gagging swab of iodine throat paint. Periods came and went with the accompanying cramps and discomfort and I would sometimes walk with a strange gait because in those days the sanitary pads I used, badly chaffed  my inner thighs!
I remember being cruelly teased for my Pinocchio nose and because my father was from Hungary, which meant I was always HUN-GA-REEEE! I recall reducing someone to tears chanting 'Fatty Fatty Bum Bo Latty'. Some of us formed 'gangs' and would not talk to girls from another group. There were known 'tattle-tales', 'teacher's pets' and 'tuck friends' who were scorned and  avoided. In hindsight all this seems so innocuous and stupid, but at the time was cause for much tears and heartbreak.

I do realise though that in those early years we knew nothing about each other. Somehow we never spoke about family problems or confidential matters. I think boarding was a completely different life from the one we  left behind and there was absolutely no connection between the two. Intrinsic details about classmates are  only now being made known and I find myself so often exclaiming " I had no idea!"
All companions faded away in memory after leaving school and it was only when I got onto Facebook that many unremembered names from the past cropped up again. It has been wonderful to reconnect and we do chat over the phone sometimes, though have actually only met up with a few individuals who are in and around Delhi. This is entirely my fault as I have become a bit of a recluse and don't like to travel, so prefer to keep to myself unless absolutely necessary.

 A couple of years ago I was in Calgary, Canada and was stunned when Maryse Monteiro drove down to see me all the way from Seattle, just for a cup of coffee. When my daughter got married, dear Marie D'Souza, now the famous food critic Marryam Reshii, generously offered to help with the wedding cake. Loretta Furtado has been urging me to come to Goa and Kukki Mohindra's infectious laugh has not changed over the years. Gopa Vohra was passing through Delhi a couple of years ago and I went to pick her up at the airport, where we promptly fell into each other's arms, forgetting the nearly forty years since we had last met. The unexpected strength and depth of past friendships, made so many years ago in the environs of boarding school, never cease to surprise and amaze me.