By Yashasvini Rajeshwar
When I first
took up the job of teaching at a rural school for children of the local tribes,
I thought it was a fairly informed decision. I had an education in development,
had worked in rural environments on and off, and thought I knew what the
problematic/difficult parts of the job would be. To be fair, I did…sort of.
I knew that
English would be an alien language. I knew that teaching children syntax and
semantics of a language so drastically different from their mother tongues
would be hard work. I knew that English in my village would be like Mandarin in
Chennai – we all know China is going to overtake the world someday and it is
important, but we just don’t see how to go about it. I knew that my shorts and
other more “revealing” clothes were best left neatly stacked in my cupboard at
home, that my preferred brand of sanitary pads should probably be stocked and
hoarded on trips to the city, that I should never let well-intentioned
colleagues and students “look through” pictures of my life from home. What I
did not know is just how much my individual ways of understanding the world
would be questioned or how far my personal identity would be repeatedly
hammered against.
It started slow
– a one-off statement here, a seemingly innocent question there. I was never
sure whether my urban liberal arts education had made me overly sensitive to
things, whether I was “imagining it” as many were wont to tell me, or whether
this barrage of stereotyping and caricaturing was really there. What I did know
was that everyday there would be something new, something sly, something
casual, that made me start a little and wonder who this girl they saw was. It
definitely wasn’t me.
It was my very
first week at the school, and I was getting ready to go to class. In keeping
with a habit I had picked up in hostel during college, I had washed out my
underwear during a shower and was hanging them out to dry, when a colleague
walked out of her room. She saw me and said I was very “dhairyam,” brave. I was
a little confused until she told me I was the only person who dared dry my
underwear out in the open (under a towel!). I asked her why, especially since
it was an all-women living space, and she just told me it was not done. That
day, I became revolutionary for doing my laundry, and I was not sure what I
felt about it.
I love saris.
Over the years, I have gotten rather comfortable draping them (claim to fame –
even with a phone wedged between my shoulder and my ear!) and wear them often
to school. I remember it was a fairly routine day and I was standing by the
kids during assembly, when a colleague walked up to me and said (and I quote) –
“You know how to wear saris and all? And you have your nose pierced! I didn’t
know girls from Chennai could act like that!” I took a second to regain my
bearings and asked her what “girls from Chennai” were like in her head. She
gave me a vague response of “modern” and “not like this” and walked away. I
spent the rest of assembly playing with my nose ring.
My favourite
gender-related shaking up, though, has to be the time I was called an elephant.
Just the day before, a colleague had walked up to me and asked me not to laugh
out loud. It is scary, I was told. Just don’t do it. I have always had a base
voice by average standards of femininity but never bothered being conscious
about it. As I stood on the steps of the lunch hall one day, for one second I
became the adolescent who was bullied in high school, listening to someone tell
me my laugh grated at people’s ears. Two days later, a girl fell during sports practice
and couldn’t put any weight on her foot. Later, we found out it was a hairline
fracture, but that minute, she needed to be taken to the school office and then
to the hospital. This waif of an 8th standard girl was writhing in
pain and there was no way she could walk up the slope that led to the office,
so I did what seemed like the most natural thing to do. I picked her up, asked
another student to get my dupatta off me so I didn’t trip on it, and I carried
her there. At lunch a few minutes later, I was told that “of course you’d be
given heavy labour. If you look like an elephant, you get the work of an
elephant.” I had no idea what to say.
The problem is
this. I know all of these anecdotes are sexist, and some of them deeply so. I
know these would have been the stories we would have rolled our eyes at in
college and deconstructed to death in circles of self-identified feminists. I
know that in the bubble of like-minded, supportive people, we would have
tsk-tsked this away as being “the world”. But a year after moving here, I also
know something else, something else that makes all this even more confusing.
They mean well.
Every soul who
has told me to not laugh, who has tucked in an errant bra strap into a sari
blouse, who has laughed at my loudness saying it will only last till I go to my
“husband’s house,” who has told me to calm down because “who will marry you
otherwise,” who has asked me to enjoy my freedom “while it lasts”… Every single
soul who has volunteered their opinion and given their advice means well.
And this is
where the confusion begins. They mean well. Or do they? Am I being culturally
sensitive or making excuses for hurtful behaviour? Am I adapting to
circumstance or hiding behind defence mechanisms? Even assuming they mean well,
does that benefit of doubt make it okay? And which battles can you truly choose
to fight? Which conversations do more harm than good, or is there such a debate
at all? This is when I stop having the answers.
And then it gets
worse.
Such a barrage
on the way I understand and embody gender is one thing. I, with my privileged
education and background, can handle it. When it really gets under my skin is
when it affects the students in my class, when concepts and opinions that are
seemingly obvious to me are so off-centre for them, they cannot even begin to
comprehend what I am saying. How far can I push the boundaries? How much can I
do without seeming like an outsider imposing my value systems, which if you
think of it is exactly what I am doing?
Recently there
was a situation. The senior kids are temporarily staying at school to
accommodate the very many extra classes they deal with, and the girls were in
their room. One of the teachers wanted the entire class, so sent a boy to call
them. The boy walked up to me and asked if I could do him a favour. I asked him
what it was. He asked me to walk up to the room and call the girls. I knew
exactly why – it was unfathomable for him to walk up to the girls’ room and
even just knock on the door. (A week before, a girl had refused to enter a
classroom because “the boys’ beds will be there, Akka.”) I had a choice to make
at that moment. Given that I was in a position of authority, I could ask him to
go anyway and knock on the door. I could refuse to get up, and he wouldn’t be
able to do anything about it. Yet if I did that, I risked offending
sensibilities, pushing a little too far. Eventually he did go and knock on the
door, but I am always half-expecting to be pulled up for being too “forward.”
Where do you draw the line?
Sometimes,
though, the line is much easier to draw and that much more overwhelming. It was
a day in December, leading up to the school’s exhibition, and we were just
wrapping up all the art and craft work that was going into the English section.
As we were cleaning, I asked a sixth standard boy to pick up the broom and just
sweep up the bits of paper into a dustpan and put it in the dustbin. This tiny
person flat-out refused. To my face. “No, Akka,” he said even as I reeled under
the realisation that his conviction of gender roles was stronger than the
drilled-in norm of not talking back to your teachers. I asked him why, and his
answer was very lucid. “I am a boy, Akka. This is girls’ work.” Right. Ok then.
Now what? I walked him through a series of questions. Did he see rubbish on the
floor? (Yes.) Did he believe it ought to be cleaned? (Yes.) Was he part of the
team that made the mess? (Yes.) Was it his classroom? (Yes.) Then did he not
share the responsibility of cleaning it up? (Yes.) Now that that had been
established, I asked him to get the broom and get it done quickly so we could
all go home. The boy still stood there, hesitant to move. I was shocked.
Ingrained gender roles were still stronger.
Now what? The school day was practically done anyway, so I asked the girls to
leave. Now who would do the cleaning, I asked him. I could see him going back
and forth about it in his head, before he finally swept the room up and ran
towards his weekend.
A whole term
after this incident, I am still unsure about whether I did right by that boy. I
made peace with his logic, saying he had probably only ever seen his mother do
the cleaning in a house with a father and two sons. I pushed his boundaries,
forced him to deal with uncomfortable situations, and finally made sure he
realised there were other ways of being. But did I do the right thing? Was I
too harsh? Was it not my place to begin with? On a day when I was fretting
about the blind faith that this job demands, a friend of mine told me that my
success would lie outside the classroom, many years in the future. Maybe the
day a boy realises that domestic violence does not need to be the norm, no
matter the surroundings, or the day a girl decides she will study independent
of the scene with marriage – that is the day you are working towards. Every
time I worry about the (real) possibilities of some of my students getting
married before I do, I hold on to these words like they are my talisman. Maybe
every time I push, I make a little more of a dent in this systemic wall. Or
maybe I don’t.
I once wrote
about navigating gender in the village. It was a mere three months after I had
joined, and I was fresh from the sensory overload of the experiences. Today,
many months on, they have had time to simmer and settle, and I think I have
become less brash. I understand more, think more, allow for more, and yet, wake
up every morning and choose my battles. Yet today, I choose the small battles,
cognizant that the seemingly “small” ones are still mountains to cross for my
kids and their families. Today, I don’t have any of the answers, but I am
getting less defensive of the questions.
Back in college,
I remember a rather vociferous debate on girls changing their last name. Should
they do it? Was it merely the remnants of a patriarchal society that dictated
that a woman “belongs” to her husband? Given how central to identity one’s name
is, can it be written off as “just a name”? Yet, what if I “want” to? Is that
actually free will or the voice of false choice and patriarchal conditioning?
We went on and on. It was neither the longest nor most “intense” conversation
on the nitty-gritties of feminism, yet somehow it stuck. Perhaps because of how
everyday it was, or how many different reactions it threw up; I do not know,
but it stuck. Today, this is the conversation I turn to when I illustrate the
contrast.
For my kids
today, their last names are the last things on their mind. Instead, they fight
attendance issues because their parents want to groom them to take care of the
home alongside regular schooling. They do not care for the difference between
false choice and free will. Instead, when asked about what they did in their
vacations, my sixth grade boys said “cricket” even as a girl said “I made beans
curry for my parents.” They do not care about whether menstrual leave should be
paid or not. Instead, they wonder about how to ask a male pharmacist for
sanitary pads in public.