That was a surprise. Last year, Amir was my biggest competition for first rank. Usually if I got first, he got second, and if I got second, he got first. I think it’s because whenever Amir gets worried or upset, he wants to study. It takes his mind off of everything else. If he isn’t doing well, then something is seriously wrong.
“Look, Sarojini, even if he had a million new friends, no one in his life could compare to you,” Farooq said.
Hearing Farooq say that felt wonderful and terrible at the same time. In one way, it was exactly what I wanted to hear, because I still wanted to be friends with Amir. But it was also what I didn’t want to hear, because it meant that what I had done to Amir was even meaner than I realized.
One of Farooq’s friends came and tapped him on the shoulder and told him break was over. After he went back inside, I just stood there for what felt like a long time. Then I walked home. No way could I see Deepti after this. I had too much to think about.
I made a short list of questions, just like really good detectives do when they are choosing their next move. Here they are:
Are Amir and I still friends?
If we are not still friends, should I try and make us friends again, since I think I’m the one who made us not friends, although I’m not sure?
If Amir doesn’t like his school, will he come back to our school?
If Amir wants to come back to Ambedkar School, should I keep trying for a seat at Greenhill?
If I get a seat at Greenhill, will we both feel better? Or worse?
As you can see, Mrs. Naidu, I am very confused. I have decided that I am going to spend the afternoon thinking about all of this, and then, when I know what I want to do, I’ll go meet Deepti.
All the best,
Sarojini
July 21, 2013
Dear Mrs. Naidu,
Remember how I told you yesterday that I was confused? And how today I was going to decide on my next move? And then I’d go see Deepti?
Well I made a decision, Mrs. Naidu. And it’s an important one.
I decided that it’s time for me to become a fighter.
Just like Amma.
Just like Deepti.
Just like you.
When I went to see Deepti at the construction site, I thought it would be quiet, because it’s a Sunday. I was totally wrong. I couldn’t tell at first whether she was there or not because it was so busy. There were a bunch of men around this big drill and all I could hear was rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat. Plus there was dust everywhere, partly from the drill and partly from the women walking up and down with pans of rocks on their heads. I didn’t know if any of them were Deepti’s parents because I’ve never met Deepti’s Amma, and I had only heard rumours about her Appa – and most of the rumours made me not want to meet him at all.
Finally, I gave up and decided I’d stop by on my way to school tomorrow. Since it was a nice day, I took the long way home, through the pretty, quiet neighbourhood with the houses with lots of bedrooms and flowery gardens. As I was walking, guess what I heard, Mrs. Naidu?
“Oy!”
You know who makes that sound, don’t you?
At first I was confused. I looked left and then right. I looked in front of the house and across the street.
Then Deepti said, “Up here!”
You’ll never believe where she was, Mrs. Naidu. She was halfway up a tree in front of a mansion that had three floors and at least ten rooms. It even had an iron gate with a sign in English and a brick compound wall. Deepti was balancing on her heels and plucking these tiny, five-petalled white flowers from the tree and putting them in a plastic bag. It looked like she was collecting stars.
“Deepti!” I said – or actually, whispered kind of loudly. “Isn’t that stealing?”
Deepti rolled her eyes. “The tree is outside the compound wall. It’s not on their property.” She didn’t whisper.
“I don’t think that matters,” I said, between my teeth so the neighbours wouldn’t hear.
“Fine,” she said. “I was done anyway.”
She looped the bag over her wrist and came down. From the way she moved, you could tell that she had climbed a million trees before.
“Why do you even need those?” I said.
Deepti shrugged. “Amma says these are powerful for puja.”
“Really?” I said. “Maybe I should take some.”
“Oh come on,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Flowers don’t change things. People do.”
I thought about that for a second. Well, actually, I said a tiny prayer in my head and asked God not to strike us down.
I thought I was being subtle, but Deepti rolled her eyes again like she knew exactly what was going on inside my brain (and my heart). But instead of saying something else that might bring us bad luck, she said, “Speaking of people, did you meet that lawyer lady?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s why I came to find you.”
“Then we need to talk. And we can’t do it at the construction site. It’s too loud.”
“I know. Don’t you get leave on Sundays?”
Deepti looked at me, hard, and then said, “Sarojini, you have a lot to learn.”
I shrugged. “I know a place we can go.”
She nodded and fell into step beside me.
(‘Fell into step beside me’ is something else I learned from detective novels. Actually, from one novel, that was about both crime and romance. When you ‘fall into step beside’ somebody, you walk next to them, but it’s more than that. It’s when you go at the same pace and it feels easy and comfortable. Romance is gross, but falling into step beside someone is not.)
As we walked along, I told her about what happened with Vimala Madam. About how the private schools in Bangalore have reservations but are trying to keep kids like me and Deepti out. Then I told her how in Karnataka, we were too old for reservations unless there were extra spots that had not been filled. I was just getting to the part about the other sections when Deepti started complaining.
“Where are you taking me?” she said. We were going through a thick bunch of coconut trees that had lots of bushes and thorns growing between them.
“You’re from the village,” I said, “you should be used to this.”
“I’m not even wearing shoes.”
“I thought you were tough.”
“I am,” Deepti said, shooting me a mean look. “Ow!”
“You can stop fussing now,” I said. “We’re here.”
The special place (which is what Amir and I call it) is this big patch of grass surrounded by coconut trees and flower bushes that’s halfway between our homes and the main road. The flowers smell so good that you can’t smell the sewage from the hospital or the petrol from the road. Sometimes you can even hear parakeets and mynahs.
“Wow,” said Deepti, “it’s so… quiet.”
I sat on a fallen tree that stretched through the middle of the grass like a park bench in a rich neighbourhood.
“How did you find this place?” she asked, settling down next to me.
“I didn’t. Amir did.”
“Who’s Amir?”
Which just shows you how weird things are, Mrs. Naidu. Nobody ever used to ask me who Amir was because, usually, he was standing right beside me.
“He’s my best friend,” I said.
“If he’s your best friend, how come I’ve never met him?”
“Because I’m not sure if we’re friends anymore.” It was the first time I had said it out loud. It felt scary, but then, considering how much scary stuff I’ve been doing lately, it was really just one more thing. “He goes to another school now. Actually, he goes to Greenhill.”
Deepti turned and looked off into the distance, and said, quietly, “So that’s why you asked for a seat.”
I nodded. “I thought he liked it there. But now I’m not so sure.”
“Of course he doesn’t like it,” Deepti said, narrowing her eyes at me.
(I’m starting to understand Deepti’s looks. This one meant, ‘For a city girl, you sure can be slow.’)
(She gives me that one a lot.)
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“His life may be different,” she said. “But he’s not different. Those rich kids, they can always tell who the poor kids are. We’re the ones who build their houses and sweep their floors. They’re used to ordering us around or ignoring us, not being in class with us.”
It’s not like I didn’t notice this before, Mrs. Naidu. It’s hard not to notice the invisible wall between kids like me and kids who go to Greenhill. I see the kids from the houses where Amma works getting on those bright yellow school vans pretty much every day, when I’m walking to school. I know they see me too, but we never wave.
“Who cares about the students,” I said. “At least he has better teachers than us.”
“Are you kidding? The adults are worse than the kids. When I went to St. Augustina they wouldn’t even let me put my brother down on the floor. Like some four-year-old kid is going to tear the place apart?”
“It was the same at Greenhill. The secretary put this weird cleaning stuff on her hand after Amma touched her. It smelled like a hospital or something.”
“Not that we’re any better,” Deepti said. “I’m sure plenty of people told you not to be friends with me because we live at the construction site.”
I thought about Hema Aunty. “Not plenty of people. But some.”
“See?” Deepti said. “Annie Miss isn’t like that though. She cares about all of us. That’s why she’s always saying all that stuff about believing in us. And same with Abhi’s anganwadi teacher – I saw her buy eggs for the kids when the rations didn’t come.”
“Our old headmistress was like that too. Once she saw my fancy dress was too tight and she bought me a new one. She told me it used to be her daughter’s, but the price tags were still on it.”
“No one at Greenhill would do that.”
“They might.”
Deepti shrugged, but I could tell she didn’t think so.
“Besides,” she said. “I like the kids at our school. I don’t see why we have to go somewhere else.”
That’s when I had a breakthrough.
(In case you don’t know, Mrs. Naidu, detectives get a ‘breakthrough’ before they solve cases. A breakthrough is when all the clues come together and the detectives figure out who did it, and the best way to catch the criminal. Deepti and I aren’t catching criminals here, but we are working on a case: the case of how to fix my life our lives.)
Here is what I figured out in my breakthrough:
How to get Amir to be my friend again.
How to get Amir and Deepti to be friends, so all three of us can be together.
How to make sure we all go to a good school so that when we grow up we can live in the same neighbourhood, which will be a nice neighbourhood with roofs and water and people who don’t think we’re dirty or diseased.
“Deepti,” I said. “I need to tell you about the rest of RTE.”
Do you remember what is in the rest of RTE, Mrs. Naidu?
In a good detective story, the detective doesn’t reveal the answer to the questions right away. Annie Miss told me that in English, it’s called ‘leaving the reader in suspense.’ So I’m going to leave you in suspense.
(I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Naidu.)
All the best,
Sarojini
July 22, 2013
Dear Mrs. Naidu,
Well, Mrs. Naidu? Did you review the evidence? Did you draw any conclusions?
I think you probably did, since you are a genius (but not an evil one). Just in case you didn’t, I’ll tell you what happened at Child Rights Club today.
Remember how at the beginning of the last meeting there were five of us? This time there were just two: me and Deepti. When she saw us, Annie Miss sighed and said, “I wish the rest of your class cared as much about rights as you two.”
Deepti made a kind of snorting noise, which I think was the sound of her pushing a mean laugh back down inside of herself. I tried to drown it out before Miss could feel bad.
“Actually, we wanted to talk to you about them,” I said. “Our rights, I mean. If that’s okay.”
Deepti rolled her eyes but Miss said, “Of course, Sarojini. You can talk to me about anything.”
(Why do adults always say that?)
Deepti made that noise again, except this time she pretended to cough, but that didn’t work because she sounded like she was dying of some weird sarcastic laughing disease, so I said really loudly. “We want to talk about RTE.”
“No need to shout, Sarojini,” Miss said.
I stopped shouting and Deepti stopped laughing-snorting-coughing-dying-eye-rolling and we told her our idea. And when I say ‘we’, I really mean that.
We sounded like this:
“I went to see this lawyer, and she told me that RTE is more than just section twelve –”
“Section twelve is reservations. But there’s this whole other part about government schools–”
“It says they’re supposed to have playgrounds and drinking water –”
“But also, teachers aren’t supposed to hit us. It’s called corporal punishment and it’s not allowed –”
“And we’re supposed to have classes for out-of-school kids who are behind –”
“Stop,” Miss said. She was smiling, and her eyes were kind of shiny. “One at a time.”
Deepti stopped talking so I could tell Miss about going to see Vimala Madam. Then I stopped talking so Deepti could tell Miss about how we decided that we like our government school (or, actually, the people at our government school) better than any private school (or, actually, the people at certain private schools). So instead of using the law to get seats somewhere else, we wanted to use the law to fix Ambedkar Government School.
“What do you mean by ‘fix’?” Miss asked.
That started us off again, tripping over each other’s words.
“Repair the hole in the gate –”
“Build a playground – ”
“Redo the compound wall – ”
“Slow down, slow down,” Miss said. “Let’s make a list.”
Here is the list we wrote after we slowed down:
Repair hole in gate
Clean up and paint compound wall
Build a playground
Get drinking water
Hire someone to help kids like Deepti who haven’t been in school for a while
Get training for teachers on discipline (Miss added this – she says it’s so teachers will stop hitting us).
When we were done, Miss’s eyes were even shinier. She put down her pencil and took our hands and then kind of stared out into space. I looked at Deepti and Deepti did her special eye-roll that means, “Ugh, another just-and-beautiful-world moment.”
“Girls,” Miss said, in a voice that was low and scratchy, “I believe in you. And I believe in us. I believe that together, we can do this. But it’s not going to be easy. There will be many obstacles in our way and many people who will discourage us.”
Then Miss put our hands in the middle of the table and folded her hands over them and stared at us with these wide, serious eyes like an actress in a Kannada serial who is totally overdoing it.
“Are you ready to struggle?” she said.
At first we didn’t realize that she wanted an answer. But when we didn’t say anything, she kept that whole daughter-in-law-in-a-serial thing going, so we both spoke.
“I guess so,” I said.
“Sure,” said Deepti.
“Even if we don’t succeed, think of how much we will learn together,” Miss said, sighing and looking out the window. She kept gr
ipping our hands, and I really felt like I was on TV.
“Students like you are the reason I became a teacher,” Miss said eventually, and her voice was all squishy and wobbly and full of water.
“Thank you, Miss,” Deepti said. She didn’t roll her eyes, but I know she wanted to.
(To be completely honest, Mrs. Naidu, so did I.)
“What’s our next move?” I asked, partly because I wanted to know, and partly because it’s how detectives talk.
We decided that I’d go back to Vimala Madam so we can start getting all the items on our list. (Or “so we can begin our struggle,” as Miss said.)
It’s not exactly pushing the Britishers out of India, or getting women the right to vote. But it’s still my first fight, Mrs. Naidu, and my first time being a fighter. I hope I do alright.
All the best,
Sarojini
July 26, 2013
Dear Mrs. Naidu,
After the Child Rights Club meeting, I was excited.
I was excited about the plan I made with Deepti and Miss.
But I was also excited about the secret plan I made with myself.
(In case you couldn’t figure out my secret plan – which I think you did, seeing as you are one of the smartest women people ever in history – I’ll take away the suspense. The secret plan is to make Ambedkar School so great that Amir will want to come back. Then, Amir will meet Deepti, and all three of us will be best friends together. This is even better than my original plan, because I will have two best friends at my school instead of just one.)
You know what I was not excited about?
Seeing Vimala Madam again.
I know, I know. Last time things went pretty well.
(Okay, maybe not pretty well. Maybe more like, not so bad.)
But do you think Vimala Madam stapled her eyebrow in place?
Do you think she got out a big bottle of Fevicol and attached her glasses to her nose?
Dear Mrs. Naidu Page 7
