Schooldays of Girlfriend Past

 My first school was Amma. I was taught the English and Malayalam alphabets and numbers and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and some other similar stuff even before I joined school. My teacher in Pre-KG was a total bitch; yeah I don’t even wanna put it gently. She was straight up a monster who would have been thrown into jail for physical abuse had this been any other country. Since Indian parents believe in school teacher’s beating the shit outta their kids, she’s still chilling somewhere. She once pinched me for accidentally putting my water bottle on my food- why does she care!!! And that is the only thing I remember from around that time of my school life.

I can divide my school life into crush-segments. I had crushes on stupid boys, some not so stupid, all along the way- till now. I am a perpetual romantic.

My mother was my English teacher in school; and she was so anti-nepotism that she used to give me more scolding and beats (using a fuckall wooden scale) so that nobody can complain “See, Latha teacher is easy with Arundhathi; because she’s her daughter no.” Literally nobody would say that if she scolded me just like she did with other students also, chumma I got more shit. But I had fun in school, mostly because around the time I was in class 5 or something I made it clear to my amma (and she relayed the information to other teachers) that “I had no greed for marks”. Shit, I could have rhymed it- “I had no greed for grades” and I told her to not expect me to be class first and all just because I was a teacher’s kid. Even then I was supposed to compete in all the school events and win some prizes at least. This heavy participation continued even after I joined a new school and thanks to competency exhaustion I totally stopped participating in anything by the time I reached college. Arts day in college meant more rounds of card game for me (us).

Going to new school was exciting. Bigger school, more students, more friends. And more casual and not so casual sexism. I was always the bad, prone to go astray, girl mostly because I had male friends. Though I didn’t have many fucks to provide, sometimes it bugged me; to know that many teachers thought poorly of me just because I made friends with the opposite gender/sex. And I think fighting sexism 0n a daily basis for, like, 12 years, made me completely out of fucks and tougher.

Our classes were re-divided in the middle of class 9; because someone snitched about the in-class romances. My best friend in school faced so much slut shaming just because she happened to have a boyfriend at those times. (All those people who told her “it won’t last beyond class 10” can shut your mouths now, they are going strong.) Class 10 was fun, it was a girls’ only class and I realised how much fun it was to not have to sneak sanitary pads in and out, if periods started in the middle of class. I could shout to someone “the pad is inside the little pocket inside the second row” and nobody would cringe.

I was determined to join a government school and do higher secondary in State syllabus; but my mother (who’s friends with my Principal- don’t tell me your school life was bad- my mother and principal were/are FRIENDS) felt bad writing “No, I am not interested in sending my ward to ____”. Literally, she felt bad about writing that so I had to do +1, +2 from the same school- CB-fucking-SE, and ended up scoring 50/100 for Maths. At that time, I consoled myself because I had a boyfriend from the same class and we had very cute romance- without getting “caught” unlike my peers. But then, that also got doomed and I felt stranded until I joined my college.

I had met a regrettable assortment of boys from school, including two of my ex-boyfriends, that I had totally lost faith and hope in boys, and Malayali boys in particular; and that would have remained so, had I not met some amaze guys from my Uni.

My school was good, providing-education wise. But I guess I’ll never forgive all the sexism and misogyny I had to experience there; though that also helped me grow, in many ways. There was this time, when my friend and I were called I to Princi’s room because we pulled a scam to meet her boyfriend and got caught, and he asked me to watch Drishyam movie after he completed my interrrogation. My parents still think he asked me, because he wanted us to be careful while showering in public restrooms and to turn to parents if things went wrong. But actually he said that because, “You lie extremely well. I know you are lying, but I have no means to prove it; watch that movie, you’ll understand what I mean.” So yeah, I learnt how to lie without it falling apart, thanks to life.

School, for me, was a series of poor choices- especially when it came to the friends I made and the boys I met (who seemed attractive and out of this world until I got to know them better). But I guess I did learn something- academically and “for life”.