Saturday, February 28, 2009

Kinda like Harry Potter, but not...

I remember my first day at GNFC very well. We arrived at lunchtime, after a grueling train, bus and taxi ride up to Mussoorie. They were serving Rajmah Dal, chapatis and rice in the upstairs, well-lit senior dining hall. The food was good - I made burritos out of the beans and chapatis and thought, if this is school life, it aint so bad. Then we got our school numbers and house assignments - this was all very foreign for me, as I was only familiar with US public schools. There were Nalwa House (gold), Ranjit House (sky blue) and Attari House (maroon). The next year, Ajit House was formed, and was navy blue. I remember being psyched because someone told me I was in Attari - who wouldn't want to be in the house named after the videogame!

In actuality the houses refer to Sikh heroes/martys: Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Hari Singh Nalwa, Shaam Singh Attari and Sahibzada Ajit Singh... snooooze...  and, well, I did not end up in Attari house. But whatever house you did wind up in, the kids in other houses always seemed to have more fun, be more together, get more food, less beatings, etc.

Here's how I remember it breaking down: Ranjit house had all the goody-two-shoes, clean kids. Attari House had all the aggro athletes, but not as many smart kids. Nalwa had the brainy kids, but not much athletic clout. And Ajit house usually came 4th in everything, but somehow turned losing into solidarity for one another.


Attari House at PT competition.
For this most ridiculous "sport", we had to get up early and practice every single day: Dung, tak-tak, Dung, tak-tak, Dung, tak-tak...

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Don't Nettle



This morning I was chatting with someone about nostalgia. It's so hard not to get a bit nostalgic about India when confronted with cute kid pictures, mostly of us posturing or posing and having fun, or like the silly one above. But still, the letters of the not fun times come in to me steadily enough to be reminded of the fuck-upness of it.

What also is being revealed slowly is a current between 2nd generationers' patterns of recurring dreams having to do with India. I myself have a recurring dream. Often times in the dream there are a classmates who possess more enthusiasm for the program in India, and currently remain in the community. In my dream their persona and behavior is overbearing, and I am feeling marginalized and stressed out by it. I think they represent the overly fanatic dogmatic side of 3HO, and the message that one was a failure by not "getting with the program".

Some of the ones in my dreams are in reality to this day saying "Speak for yourself, but I was never abused". Lucky them to feel that way, but they are wrong and they are actually just attempting to invalidate others' experience by negating or denying their own. There were some that were given the opportunity to be henchmen or a cronies, and have since developed habits that embrace and even perpetuate authoritarianism and militancy.

If even one kid gets hit or assaulted by an adult - it's an abusive environment! Bottom line. Is the dirty sock picture not proof enough?