Remember Me

India is a country of 1.2 billion souls, crammed into a landmass roughly half the size of the continental United States. Crowds are inevitable, even in a place like Tirur, which is considered a remote backwater by Indian standards.

To put this is in perspective, consider that JM Higher Secondary School enrolls more than 2,500 students. Yet, JM is one of more than a dozen schools—both government-run and private—in the Tirur city limits. All the schools have similar enrollment figures.

Or consider the state of Kerala: with a population over 30 million, it is nearly six times as populace as the state of Missouri, and there are five cities in Kerala (most of them places Americans have never heard of, Kannur ring a bell?) bigger than my hometown of Kansas City.

If you are an Indian, it is hard to stand out in the crowd. Maybe that is why a boy named Hare Krishna has tried so hard to stay in my consciousness.

Hare Krishna attends MES Higher Secondary in Valancherry, the school I teach at twice a week. The third day I taught him, he came up to me after class as I was waiting for the bus to take me back to Tirur.

Like a lot of young Indian men, Hare Krishna is lithe and long-limbed, awkwardly elongated, as if stretched by a taffy-pulling machine. He has shaggy brown hair (light for an Indian), tossed over to the side like a rock star. His teeth are snarled and painfully formed in his mouth, yet he smiles unselfconsciously, in a way that makes you like him immediately.

“Sir,” he said to me as he walked up tentatively, followed by a group of his friends—equally long-limbed and awkward-looking. “Sir, do you know my name?”

It was an impossibly hopeful request, considering I had taught his class for a total of an hour-and-a-half and had yet to even glance the roster of more than 60 student names.

“I’m sorry. No I don’t,” I replied.

“Hare Krishna,” he said. And I thought he was joking, the name bringing to mind for me the image of men with shaved heads wearing saffron-colored robes dancing and banging tambourines in American airports.

“Really?” I said, the men still dancing and chanting in my head.

“Hare Krishna,” he said again proudly. “You know: the prayer?”

And from somewhere deep in my memory, I remembered reading the prayer in a book, Hare Krishna, Hare Ram! Hare Krishna, Hare Ram! It is a Hindu votive to the god Krishna, heroic avatar of the deity Vishnu, who made a memorable appearance in the ancient epic The Mahabharata.

“Yes, I do: Hare Krishna, Hare Ram!”

“Wonderful! Wonderful! My name: Hare Krishna,” Hare said, doing a little dance and clapping me on the arm. He gave off the appearance of Scrooge on Christmas morning at the end of A Christmas Carol, jigging through the streets of London.

“You will remember?” he asked, suddenly serious.

“Of course,” I replied, befuddled. At that moment, my bus came. I waved to Hare Krishna as I got on, and I promptly forgot his name.

A week later, I saw Hare Krishna again. When I saw him, I knew that I recognized him, and I knew that he had told me his name, but I blanched when he strode up to me and asked: “You remember my name?”

My embarrassed shake of the head crushed Hare. “Oh, sir. Please?” He pointed to himself, pleading with the rigidity of his index finger narrowed in on his chest.

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember,” I said.

“Hare Krishna,” he said gasping, like those frustrated contestants on the $60,000 Pyramid used to do when their partner could not spit out the correct word.

“Ohhh, Hare Krishna! Hare Krishna, Hare Ram!” I said.

“Remember: Hare…Krishna. Hare…Krishna,” he intoned.

The next week, I saw Hare Krishna, and this time, I was ready. He came up to me, a circle of his friends crowding around me: “What is my name, sir?”

“Ummm…” I said, faking as if I had forgotten again. Hare Krishna leaned forward expectantly, his fingers unconsciously twitching in front of his face. Almost got it, his eyes seemed to say.

I enjoyed extending the moment a bit more. “Well….let’s see…it was…uhhh…”

His friends began to chuckle. Hare Krishna was still all business, “Yes? Yes?” he leaned forward some more.

“Was it…Hare Krishna?” I said finally.

“YES! YES! Wonderful, sir! You are wonderful! You do not forget me!” And then, Hare Krishna hugged me.

Hare Krishna’s indefatigable efforts aside, most of the students’ faces at both MES in Valancherry and JM in Tirur, pass me in a revolving haze, as if they are all stuck on the same carousel and are passing me while I stand on the ground below desperately trying to recall a name before they round out of sight.

It is like those times I crammed for an exam in college. The facts and numbers and statistics and quotes hovered at the edge of my consciousness, vaporous and evanescent. I knew I had to write it out in my blue book before it all escaped me. In Tirur or Valancherry, I see a face and I know I know it, yet I cannot quite get the name. I am doing good if I can remember what class I see that face in each day.

But the likes of Hare Krishna stick out, for their personality and their tenacity at bursting themselves into my life. There is a 9^th standard girl at JM—a Muslim teenager named Resla. I know her name because one day this week she gave me a small golden flower, picked off a withering bush in the school’s courtyard.

“For your wife. From Resla. My name: Resla. Remember,” it was not a question but a demand. Later in the week, when Resla passed me in the halls, she would stop and give me a questioning look.

“Hello, Resla,” I would say. And Resla would continue walking with a giant smile on her face.

In a galaxy of more than a billion cramped stars, one has to be especially bright to stand out.