“This is the third time you have come unprepared to class,” the teacher said sternly. “Come to the front.”
The student slowly stood and trudged to the front of the room.
“Bend forward,” the teacher said.
Frowning, the student leaned over, his arms dangling near his toes.
“Now put your arms through your legs and touch your ears.” We all watched anxiously, yet curiously, thankful we were not in his position.
The boy bent his knees so that he crouched awkwardly, his rear end sticking in the air. He grimaced as he stretched his arms as far as he could through his legs, finally latching on to the tips of his ear lobes. Several students snickered. The murgha (chicken) pose is one of the more humiliating punishments the teachers used. If the student lowered from the position even for an instant, the teacher would strike him with a long stick on his rear end.
After school, I helped my father in his shop, which adjoined the back of our house. The wooden shelves held stacks of beautifully woven, vibrantly colored fabrics. My father would greet the customers and ask what they would like to drink. Then I’d bring them either lemonade or hot tea. The drinks made the customers feel close to my father, and they would not bargain too much.
A thin woven rug covered the floor, and on top of the rug, we placed a sheet. My father sat on a round white pillow, signifying he was the owner, and the customers sat cross-legged before him. After an initial greeting, the customers would tell him what sort of cloth they were looking for (blue shirt material, perhaps), and then my father would order me to bring several bolts of cloth for the customers to examine. Once they made their choice, my father measured and cut the cloth before passing it to me to fold and wrap in paper. On weekends, I sprinkled water on the dirt road in front of the shop to keep the air free of dust. When the shop closed, I helped my father count money until 7:30 p.m.
My father was strict, well-built, and hard-working. He managed his income wisely, spent frugally, and never wasted a rupee (Indian Currency). At times, he exhibited a demanding character. For instance, if my mother did not prepare the food to his taste, he would dump the meal on the floor and chide her. With the help of my paternal grandmother, she would prepare the meal again. I couldn’t bear to see my mother upset as she bent to pick up the food, mumbling under her breath and crying to herself.
My mother was kind and hard-working. Every day, she rose at dawn while everyone was still sleeping so she could make our hot tea and pump water for our baths. Afterwards, she prepared food for the water buffalo. While we washed ourselves in the tepid water from the pump and drank sweetened black tea, mother cooked a breakfast of prantha, whole wheat bread layered with ghee, yogurt, and potatoes cooked in spices.
My mother held a special place in my heart. She personified love by placing grain on the ant hills after it rained so they could eat too. Most days, she fed three of six young sisters who lived nearby. Their parents did not feed them much because they could not carry the family name as a son could. The girls came to our home, and my mother snuck them chapatis and sabzi behind a door where no one could see them. My father and brother guessed what was going on and were not happy about it, but my mother continued to help the girls anyway.
My mother also fed a crippled man who would come to our house around 2:00 p.m. every day. He sat, squatting on the balls of his feet, and used two wooden pads to drag himself across the ground. The man said kind words to my mother and my siblings. “One day, you will be a big man,” he told me. “Cars will be all around you.”
At that time, cars were prestigious, not common luxury at all. If someone owned a car, he was respected and considered rich. I couldn’t imagine how his prediction would come true. Later, I learned that a man gave my brother’s classmate a similar blessing. Soon after, my brother’s friend moved to New Delhi, where he became a traffic policeman. Cars were all around him, but he did not own any. I hoped his prediction would not turn out the same way for me.
During my last year of high school, the National Board of Examination became my primary focus. There were only two years of schooling at my village high school, and the teachers spent the entire time preparing us for the exams we would take in March of our second year. These exams were our passage to better education, and if we did well, we qualified for college pre-med and pre-engineering programs. If the exam scores fell within the middle range, students qualified for degrees in liberal arts. However, if a student failed even one subject, that student had to take the exam again as many times as he needed.
The National Board Exams began on March 1 and ended on March 23, 1956. My father arranged for me to stay in Mandi Ahmed-Garh, the testing center, with a family I did not know. Mandi Ahmed-Garh was considered a small city, thirteen miles away from Malaudh. At that time, I felt a mixture of excitement at being in a new place, as well as apprehension about taking the exams, hoping I’d do well and not disappoint my family by failing.
The exam results declared three months later in June 1956. I walked into the chemist’s shop and asked to see The Tribune, an English newspaper the chemist purchased and brought to Malaudh. If we passed, our ID numbers appeared in the paper along with our total score on
