Picture: JM Higher Secondary School, a shot of the main campus from the main courtyward. It may not look pretty but it is full of life.
I write this on Halloween day and ‘Trick or Treat’ is the furthest thing from my mind. The routines and customs of Tirur are now so regular—so commonplace—as to supersede thoughts of anything I might be doing in America.
Updates on the midterm elections in the US reach us haphazardly, sometimes appearing as a blurb in the deep recesses of an Indian paper (usually with some end-of-the-world angle about the rise of the Tea Party). Football scores come to me distantly and after-the-fact, immediately taking away the sting of a defeat or the joy of a victory. I forget sometimes that the World Series is even happening and I now see the ludicrousness of it being called the World Series.
What matters now most is the here and now in Tirur—the shimmering heat, the violent and sudden rain squalls that signal the tempestuous end of the monsoon season here, the buzz of traffic, the five-times-a-day drone of the muezzin, the incessant honking of buses and rickshaws and motorbikes, the fluttering crown of palm trees that hangs over everything.
Our school matters, too. The caking of chalk dust that permeates our skin, our mouths, our fingers, our notebooks, our clothes. The dependable, reassuring chime of bells—signaling commencement of another forty minutes that seems to end before it has really begun. The clomp of hundreds of adolescent feet going up the stairs, down the stairs, to the courtyard, back to class, through the hall, towards the toilet. The parade of high-pitched voices saying “Hello sir, how are you” and “Good morning”, “Good afternoon”, “Good evening”.
These sounds and these sights, sometimes I think with no small amount of amazement, are now our lives, forever leaving an indelible stamp on our character and memories. The old saying is appropriate now more than ever: who would have guessed in a million years? I realize that sometime later, when we are back in America, Tirur will have locked itself someplace deep in our hearts never to be taken out. And that, certainly, amazes me, too.
We sometimes feel the clenching pain of homesickness—a thickening of the throat, a peach pit dropping in an empty stomach. Tirur is now Our Home. JM Higher Secondary is now Our Calling. But we can’t help but miss our real home--America. That is, after all, where there is beef and beer and (after more time to think) our friends and family. We feel it keenly on Saturdays and Sundays, with little else to do but lay around our apartment, reading or napping or watching bootlegged DVDs rented from a nearby market.
Our American pursuits have left us—cable TV, high-speed Internet, rec league softball, visits to the gym, barhopping on weekends. (You can’t barhop in Tirur because there is only ONE bar. One hop and you’re back home.)
Yet, we know once we’re back in America and we have all those things again—the cable, the Internet, the gym, the social life—along with a few additional things like grad school, jobs, steady incomes, and bills, we will want to get on the next plane and fly back to Tirur and blissfully attain the simple life again.
Missing Halloween, then, turned out to be not such a big deal. We cooked lunch, bought a new frying pan, watched Wolfman with Benicio del Toro and read the last of the books we brought with us from the US. After a time, we realized the day had passed us by and it was almost November. Plenty of Trick-or-Treats in our future, no need to bemoan the loss of this one.
Missing the MU-Nebraska game, also, is probably good for me, too. Since the Internet cafes were closed here Sunday I found that Mizzou lost nearly two days after the game ended. The Pony Express or a carrier pigeon possibly could have informed me sooner. Yet, a great competitive stress is relieved when I have to read the final score in a hot, crowded, noisy Internet café where the other patrons have never heard of a Cornhusker. It makes my life that much simpler being forced not to care about such things.
All I care about at the moment is the heat and the rumbling promise of rain in the sky, the chance to make dinner with my wife, and the knowledge that tomorrow I will be back to tasting chalk and teaching at JM Higher Secondary.
Updates on the midterm elections in the US reach us haphazardly, sometimes appearing as a blurb in the deep recesses of an Indian paper (usually with some end-of-the-world angle about the rise of the Tea Party). Football scores come to me distantly and after-the-fact, immediately taking away the sting of a defeat or the joy of a victory. I forget sometimes that the World Series is even happening and I now see the ludicrousness of it being called the World Series.
What matters now most is the here and now in Tirur—the shimmering heat, the violent and sudden rain squalls that signal the tempestuous end of the monsoon season here, the buzz of traffic, the five-times-a-day drone of the muezzin, the incessant honking of buses and rickshaws and motorbikes, the fluttering crown of palm trees that hangs over everything.
Our school matters, too. The caking of chalk dust that permeates our skin, our mouths, our fingers, our notebooks, our clothes. The dependable, reassuring chime of bells—signaling commencement of another forty minutes that seems to end before it has really begun. The clomp of hundreds of adolescent feet going up the stairs, down the stairs, to the courtyard, back to class, through the hall, towards the toilet. The parade of high-pitched voices saying “Hello sir, how are you” and “Good morning”, “Good afternoon”, “Good evening”.
These sounds and these sights, sometimes I think with no small amount of amazement, are now our lives, forever leaving an indelible stamp on our character and memories. The old saying is appropriate now more than ever: who would have guessed in a million years? I realize that sometime later, when we are back in America, Tirur will have locked itself someplace deep in our hearts never to be taken out. And that, certainly, amazes me, too.
We sometimes feel the clenching pain of homesickness—a thickening of the throat, a peach pit dropping in an empty stomach. Tirur is now Our Home. JM Higher Secondary is now Our Calling. But we can’t help but miss our real home--America. That is, after all, where there is beef and beer and (after more time to think) our friends and family. We feel it keenly on Saturdays and Sundays, with little else to do but lay around our apartment, reading or napping or watching bootlegged DVDs rented from a nearby market.
Our American pursuits have left us—cable TV, high-speed Internet, rec league softball, visits to the gym, barhopping on weekends. (You can’t barhop in Tirur because there is only ONE bar. One hop and you’re back home.)
Yet, we know once we’re back in America and we have all those things again—the cable, the Internet, the gym, the social life—along with a few additional things like grad school, jobs, steady incomes, and bills, we will want to get on the next plane and fly back to Tirur and blissfully attain the simple life again.
Missing Halloween, then, turned out to be not such a big deal. We cooked lunch, bought a new frying pan, watched Wolfman with Benicio del Toro and read the last of the books we brought with us from the US. After a time, we realized the day had passed us by and it was almost November. Plenty of Trick-or-Treats in our future, no need to bemoan the loss of this one.
Missing the MU-Nebraska game, also, is probably good for me, too. Since the Internet cafes were closed here Sunday I found that Mizzou lost nearly two days after the game ended. The Pony Express or a carrier pigeon possibly could have informed me sooner. Yet, a great competitive stress is relieved when I have to read the final score in a hot, crowded, noisy Internet café where the other patrons have never heard of a Cornhusker. It makes my life that much simpler being forced not to care about such things.
All I care about at the moment is the heat and the rumbling promise of rain in the sky, the chance to make dinner with my wife, and the knowledge that tomorrow I will be back to tasting chalk and teaching at JM Higher Secondary.
Good morning Jenna! Happy Birthday to you! Hope that you can do something special for your Birthday. I think of you almost every day. And thank you for the Birthday card you sent me. You look much better on the pig than I did. :) I sure enjoy reading your blog. Take care. We love you.
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