NANDINI’S LITTLE TALES

‘You know, that teacher at my school?’

…Which one? I ask.

‘The one who takes her hair like this from the side and then puts a ‘chimta’ at the back…’, she tells me with a lively movement of her hands describing the hairstyle of her teacher. ‘I don’t know how she does it though’, she continues. She looks up from the drawing sheet she is coloring to find my face unsatiated by her detail.

She continues with her description of the lady who teaches her everyday in the classroom, trying hard to remember her name which I happen to enquire. Nevertheless she is determined to make me form a mental picture of her teacher’s appearance in my head. ‘She puts ‘lalli’ (lipstick) on her lips before going back home in the afternoon and then some person comes to pick her up in a car’.

…Oh! Waah,  I smile at her with an exclamation as she gets busy coloring the house she had drawn with the pencil. A damp smell of mustard oil spreads in the room. Her grandmother must have lovingly oiled her hair in the morning before sending her to school.

‘Paper acche se karke aana – fir hum bahut si parhaaeee karenge aur bahut khelenge’, I hear myself telling the little girl building castles in the air before her, of days ahead full of fun.

Every time I come home, these little kids are excited and they blush and do all sorts of movements to express their love. I know they miss me. I miss them a lot. And then we have a nice little fun class in the park. These classes come to end very soon, as I leave for Delhi everytime, to jump into another world – a fast paced world with lots of deadlines, a place choked with competition and ambition.

At last, I always smile back at myself for short-lived moments like these, at least I could treasure them for a lifetime and see the fruits of a little effort done two years back maturing every time I come back. Nandini is enrolled in an English medium school nearby. Her mother and grandmother work as maids in the colony and her dad is a painter – the one who paints real houses. It had taken persistent and pressing effort to convince her parents about sending her to school. The ladies in the colony had contributed a share in her school fees. Unlike kids of other migrant laborers, her parents have not yet migrated from this place from two years. Settlement has somehow ensured the continuity of her education.