Die With Your Boots On

Students worked on superlatives this past week. They made graphic organizers describing which school subjects were 'easy', 'easier', and 'easiest' for them.





Some girls hard at work.








Boys showing off their handiwork.





With two weeks to go in our time at JM, I have become more reflective. I think often of the things I will miss about the school and this experience (as well as the things I will not miss, such as the potato-tomato-onion-okra masala we concoct every day for lunch).

I feel it is a guarantee, for instance, that conversations like the one I had earlier this week with a Class X boy will not occur very much once I am back in the US.

Student: Where are you from in America?

Me: Texas. (I have found it easiest to say ‘Texas’ when students ask this question because a) they are more likely to have heard of Texas and b) they have trouble pronouncing ‘Missouri’; it comes out like “Misss-er-y”.)

Student: Ah, Texas! Is it close to New York City?

Me: No.

Student: Is it close to San Francisco?

Me: No.

At this point, I grabbed a piece of scratch paper from the student’s notebook and drew a blob shaped roughly like the United States. I put dots on each coast, marking New York and San Francisco. Then, I put a dot in the triangular protuberance of the US’s underside which is Texas.

Me: Here. Here is Texas. You see? The US is very big.

Student: How far? Texas from New York?

Me: I don’t know. More than 1,000 miles.

Student: One thousand miles? Whoa! Big!

Me: Yeah, big. Do you know Texas?

Student: (shaking head) No. Not really.

Me: Texas…ummm…oil? George W. Bush? Cowboys?

Student: Cowboys? I love cowboys! Do you have a horse in America?

Me: Uhhh….no. No horses for me. Some people do.

Student: Can you ride a horse?

Me: Not really. I mean, I rode one once.

Student: How do you get around?

Me: Uhhh…most people in Texas drive…a car.

Student: Yes. Yes. Cars. And horses?

Me: Yes, some people ride horses.

In India, an American can pass himself off as a cowboy if he is from Texas. Or a movie star if she is from California. Or a rap imresario if they happen to hail from New York City. Such are the simplified but oddly charming stereotypes the students at JM have about Americans, culled from the random bits of pirated pop culture they have received from TV and the Internet.

A word of advice, then: If you ever travel to India and are from an unknown backwater like Missouri, well, just tell an Indian you’re from Texas.

Get Up, Stand Up

A socially minded group of JM students marching thorugh Tirur Wednesday, voicing their anti-drug sentiments.







Members of the India Scouts marching through Tirur's main square.

Students chanted slogans in Malayalam against drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. Roughly translated: "Leave drugs alone! Say no to drugs!"

This boy seemed very happy to be in the march. Maybe he was just glad he was missing school.

Students brandished homemade signs. This was one of the few in English.









The day was hot but the students seemed unbowed by the weather.









I knew something was up during first period Wednesday when students began massing in JM’s courtyard carrying placards, banners, and picket signs.

Most of the signs were in Malayalam but a few had accompanying pictures—a skull and crossbones, a brown bottle crossed through with a red ‘X’, a skeleton smoking a cigarette. A few teachers ambled down to the courtyard. I asked one of them what was going on.

“Rally against drugs. No smoking. No alcohol,” she said,throwing her gaze over the dozens of students who were gathering into a neatly ordered line. Most of the students were wearing the blue and purple uniform of the Indian Scouts, the youth service organization modeled off the American Boy Scouts. The scout leader—who doubled as one of the gym teachers—was barking instructions through the school’s PA. About 100 students dutifully fell into rank, hoisting their signs over their heads.

Another teacher came over to Jenna and me. “You should participate. Rally against drugs and alcohol. No drugs. No smoking. No alchol.”

In my mind, I told myself: Well, I don’t know if I should. I mean, I’m for alcohol. But the expectant look in the teacher’s eyes made it clear what I should say.

“Sure. We’ll come.”

The march started a few minutes later. In the tradition of their forebears Gandhi and Nehru, the JM students were using a rally to make a social point. As they exited the gates, the students began chanting slogans in Malayalam. Throughout the line—which snaked back nearly 50 yards—handpicked students led the chorus, shouting rhythmic lines like drill sergeants. The other students around these ‘cheer leaders’ then echoed the lines in cadence.

“What are you saying?” I asked one of the ‘cheer leaders’ as she sucked in a big gulp of air to shout anew.

“Leave tobacco alone! Smoking causes cancer!”

The line moved at a military clip through Tirur’s back roads and emerged soon on to the city’s main thoroughfare, where the students had to contend with screeching buses, honking lorries, and puttering auto rickshaws. As they walked, pedestrians stopped to listen to the students shouting. Workers came out of their offices to gape and stare, possibly more interested in the white man flitting along the flanks of the rally snapping pictures like a frenzied wedding photographer.

A few students exited the line to pass out pamphlets to passers-by. One student approached a group of men huddled around a motorbike. He quickly shoved the pamphlets in each of their hands and walked on. The men quizzically stared down at the rectangular piece of paper, printed in Malayalam with a picture of a skull smoking a sick-looking cigarette on the masthead.

The line reached Tirur’s main square and then did an about face and proceeded back down the main road, then entered a side street that took us back to the school. By now, the ‘cheer leaders’ were getting hoarse and a few new ones had stepped in to relieve them. However, one girl—Khadeeja, one of my Class VIII girls—kept at it emphatically. Her voice broke and cracked but she sucked in air in gasping heaves and tensed her diaphragm for each new call. Her shoulders pitched back and her spine straightened and she looked towards the sky with each recitation, summoning all the spirits of India's political past into her full-throated yelps.

Here, I thought, was India’s next Indira Gandhi.

The rally returned to school an hour after it had started. The late morning sun beat down on the dirt courtyard relentlessly. A group of teachers had prepared lemon water as refreshment for the students. After a final shout and some half-hearted clapping, the students discarded discipline and sprinted towards the lemon water stand. They gulped down cups of the hazy stuff as eagerly as they had chanted their anti-drug slogans.

As I reached a spot of shade, I thought: I could use a beer right about now. But that sentiment, I thought, was better left unsaid.

Serve...Set...Spike!

American men of a certain generation (that is: mine) cannot play volleyball without a bit of irony, thinking of the famously incongruous scene in the movie Top Gun where Tom Cruise and his buddies spend a few uncomfortable moments playing sweaty, shirtless beach volleyball, whilst grunting and diving all over each other.

Safe to say, the boys at JM have never seen Top Gun, or if they have it has not affected the gravity with which they approach the sport. On Thursday and Friday last week, the Class IX and X boys played in a surprisingly competitive volleyball tournament. Four teams, round-robin style. An ultimate victor crowned in the final game Friday afternoon. The entire school let out of class so students could crowd themselves around the courtyard in hushed, anticipatory groups to watch the action, letting out high-pitched vibrating screams whenever a good play occurred.

I snapped a few pictures during the 'championship' match on Friday.

The game, viewed from the second-floor balcony.

Students intently watching from the second floor.

Students packed into the front patio to watch the game in the courtyard.

Students dragged benches out of their classrooms so they could be more comfortable watching the match from the patio area.

Teachers announced the lineups and the score over teh PA system and handed out trophies after the tournament.

A red flag suddenly appeared moments after the 'red team' won the championship. Students--many of whom had not played--mobbed each other like the Berlin Wall was falling down again.

Three Amigos...Minus One

View the pictures and read the entry that follows.

The Netway Boys: Nahas, Shaheed, and Mustapha.

The farewell party.

At dinner: Mustapha, the 'man of the night', is in the foreground.

Nahas ordered grape juice, which had us puckering our lips it was so sweet. Peeled white grapes floated in the syrupy mixture.













The boys chowing down.






No dining experience in India would be complete without a misspelling in the menu. Though this one is rather memorable.




Mustpaha, Nahas, and Shaheed grew up together in Tirur. They went to primary school together, played football and badminton together. They all attended Calicut University and all got Bachelor’s of Commerce degrees. (“Be-Comms”, they say with delight.) Last May, they went into business together, starting a small Internet café and computer repair shop at the Payannangadi junction in Tirur.

The three have been inseparable. Until now.

This weekend, Mustapha is leaving for Kuwait. He will be gone two years. It is a common enough story here in Kerala but one that has a little more resonance now, at least for Jenna and me.

On Friday, Jenna and I along with our roommate Jaime attended a ‘farewell dinner’ for Mustapha at a Tirur restaurant. Nahas and Shaheed were there, of course, along with several of their friends from Calicut University, all of whom had gone into business around Tirur and spoke with the confident, avuncular manner of businessmen.

The mood was light and Nahas ordered several rounds of food—beef and chicken shawarma, chicken 65 (Indian fried chicken), pickled cucumbers and carrots, roti bread. He looked pleased to play the role of dinner host.

Mustapha arrived last and the long table of guests erupted into spontaneous cheering when he walked up, a broad smile on his face. The other diners in the outdoor patio area where we were sitting looked over curiously for a second then went back to their own meals.

Conversation was sparse and mostly in Malayalam. The men spent most of their energy grabbing bits of chicken or dipping roti into one of several sauces that had been laid out. Though Mustapha would leave to go halfway around the world the following day, there appeared to be no sadness or reflective melancholy in the group. The men all laughed, joked, and took dozens and dozens of pictures. The flash from various cameras punctuated the shadowy dimness of the patio every few seconds.

I had asked Nahas a few days earlier whether he was sad Mustapha—his best friend—was leaving for a country so far away.

“No, no, no,” he said earnestly. “I am used to this. My father goes to Gulf for many years now. My brother goes to Gulf. Other friends go. Mustapha goes now. Not sad. Happy for him.”
"But you really must be kind of sad?" I pressed.

"No, it is common. Very common," Nahas replied, grinning broadly.

Nahas was not being coy. He was simply stating facts of life in central Kerala. Nearly every family in Tirur seems to have at least one male working in the Gulf. They go to be construction workers and drivers in the UAE, accountants and office help in Kuwait, computer technicians in Oman. They make more money than they would in Kerala and send remittances back to their families. You can see signs of their success very visibly in the houses their families build—two and three-story estates made of concrete, marble, and burnished teak, opulent by Kerala standards.

Nahas’s family lives more modestly in a one-story bungalow at the end of a winding jungle path just outside Tirur. But the money his father earned working more than 20 years in the Gulf helped put Nahas through private primary school and a well-respected university.

Many of the students at JM have a father or an older brother, an uncle or a brother-in-law working in the Gulf. A teacher, who is the mother of two children under 10 years old, has a husband who is in the Gulf. Young men, in fact, come into Nahas's internet cafe (Netway Computers) all the time brandishing resumes and applications for positions in the Gulf that they need copied. (One of the first questions on these applications usually asks what languages the applicant speaks.)

Mustapha, then, is just the latest in a very long line of men from this area who have left to find wealth (modest or otherwise) in the Middle East. His brother-in-law is working in Kuwait now as a driver and will put Mustapha up in his apartment there. Mustapha has yet to secure a job but seems confident he will find one.

“Why?” I had asked Mustapha a few days prior to this night. “I mean, your business here seems to be going pretty well. The Internet café is good now. Why move so far?”

Mustapha had smiled and, honestly, he may not have understood my question completely. But he responded, “More money.” And he pointed to a vague far-off point in the distance, meaning the Gulf.

The dinner broke up quickly and the men started to go their separate ways. A few more pictures were taken and Mustapha started to receive hugs from his college friends. Shaheed and Nahas lingered on the edge of the group.

One of their friends volunteered to drive Jenna, Jamie and I back to our flat in his car. As the car pulled up to the curb, Mustapha said goodbye to each of us. He shook my hand and then brought me into his embrace for a hug. A long, formal hug where you quickly peck each cheek of the other man with a light kiss. It was the first time all night where I got a little sad.

“Good luck,” I said. “Be careful.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling, his arm still draped over my shoulder.

At that moment, I could only imagine if Mustapha had been my best friend or my brother or my father, and I was saying goodbye to him for two years. I glanced at Nahas and Shaheed and tried to guess what was going on inside their heads.

JM Life

I'm taking the easy way out today. I've just posted some pictures I have taken around JM School the past few weeks. Enjoy!

Republic Day: students looking serious as they line up for a brief Republic Day celebration in JM's courtyard.

The Republic Day singers: this group of Clas VIII girls (13-14 years old) sang the national anthem and the school's daily prayer as part of Republic Day celebrations. Their blue and purple uniforms mark them as India Scouts. The girl on the far right Khadeeja will also sometimes read headlines from the English-language paper The Hindu over the school's PA.

"Classroom technology", India style. Chalk and a chalkboard.

Scene from "PT time", or gym class. Boys love to play soccer (like kids in most parts of the world besides America) but volleyball seems to be the most popular sport. Most of the boys simply play without shoes.

Some Class X boys (15-16 years old) playing volleyball, gearing up for this week's JM School volleyball tournament.

Boys mugging for the camera.

Lend Me Your Ears

The Indian flag flying over the courtyard at JM Higher Secondary School. Check out the pictures from the school's Republic Day celebration and read the post that follows.

At ease: students holding the 'parade rest' position while they follow the Republic Day ceremony.

The 'guest of honor' raising the Indian flag.

Speaking at a Republic Day event in India has never been on my ‘bucket list’. But if it had been, I would have been able to check it off today.

I found myself Wednesday morning suddenly and quite unexpectedly giving a patriotic pep talk to about 100 JM students, most of whom probably understood very little of my rambling, two-minute oration since it was in English.

JM and all other schools in India had the day off Wednesday to celebrate Republic Day, the national holiday in India that commemorates the signing of the Indian Constitution in 1950. All the state capitals hold big celebrations, and the national capital Delhi conducts a massive parade of all the armed forces down the Raj Path—that city’s version of the Champs Élysses. Likewise, there are more modest gatherings at schools and public buildings across the country. Such was the intimate ceremony at JM Higher Secondary Jenna and I attended.

We arrived not knowing what to expect. The headmistress the day before had told us attendance was voluntary. When we asked if we could come to the Republic Day ceremony anyway, she gave us a look that said, “Why would you want to?” but then said, “If you like.”

A smattering of teachers showed up and maybe 100 students, most of whom were members of the Indian Scouts—a co-ed version of the American Boy Scouts—dressed in their blue and purple uniforms, boys with cloth berets and girls with sharp two-piece suits belted tightly at the waist.

We stood around the courtyard with the other staff members while more students slowly trickled onto the campus. At 9:30, the Scout leader—a young teacher who I had seen around campus but whose name I did not know—called the assembly to order. He called over the other teachers, and gave swift, clipped instructions in Malayalam for the students to line up in front of the flagpole.

He walked over to me and took my arm. He said in a low voice, “You are a guest of honor here. Would you please help hoist the flag?”

A simple enough procedure, I thought. I had done it plenty of times as a Boy Scout myself when I was younger. The Scout leader guided me to the flagpole, where I lined up next to him and a few other staff members in front of the ordered lines of students. They all came rigidly to attention when the Scout leader barked a sudden command.

“Attention!”

The students straightened their backs and thrust their arms down to their sides, their fingers pointing to the ground. A look of grave seriousness overcame their faces, their lips pressed together, their brows furrowed.

“Prayer!” the Scout leader commanded. A group of five girl scouts, huddled in a semi-circle at the front of the assemblage, sang quickly through the school’s prayer, the same one that is sung at the start of every school day.

“At ease!” the Scout leader ordered after the prayer. The students collectively put their hands behind their backs and parted one leg to create the position of military parade rest.

The Scout leader spoke a few guttural words in Malayalam. Some students nodded and all followed him with their eyes. A few boys at the back peered momentarily up at the bright golden sky overhead.

I heard the Scout leader mutter the words, “English teacher-ah..." in the midst of his speech, which drew my attention. I saw him flick his head in my direction, then he glanced down at his palm, which had my name written on it in black ink. “English teacher-ah…Kyle,” he said. My name came out sounding like: “Kii-eel.”

The Scout leader glanced at me, nodded affirmatively and began to undo the rope at the bottom of the flagpole. A group of students had already connected the flag to the hoisting rope, so all I had to do was grasp the rope and pull the slack end so the flag was pulled to the top. As it rose, the Indian tri-color unfolded to reveal the bluish circle of the spinning wheel, the symbol for India’s Independence struggle.

I remembered my Scoutmaster’s instructions from when I was a boy, “Slow going up, fast coming down.” I made the effort to raise this foreign flag with all the deliberateness I could muster with 100 pairs of eyes staring at my back.

When it reached the top, the Scout leader tied the rope off. Then he patted me on the shoulder, “You must say a few words.”

No I mustn’t, I thought. But at the same time, I felt refusing to speak at a patriotic rally when I was the ‘guest of honor’ would be like turning down tea at a British manor. Possible, just very rude.

I cleared my throat. I looked out at the small congregation of students, still at ease in their orderly lines. I began uncertainly.

“You all know me. I’m Kyle…the Spoken English teacher. Some of you know my wife Jenna,” I motioned to Jenna who was standing off to the side, in a vain attempt to get her to join me. She smartly demurred.

“Um…we are very happy to be here and to share this special day with you,” I said, trying to keep my sentences simple and short. “This is an important day. This is a holiday. I hope you enjoy your holiday. And think about all the people in India who have come before you. Think of all the history about this day. Think about what made this country what it is. I feel very lucky to be here, and we are very happy to be a part of this. Thank you for letting me put up your flag on this special day.”

Not exactly the Gettysburg Address but not bad for being off-the-cuff either. I nodded to the Scout leader that I was finished.

“Now: clap!” he commanded, and the students broke out into a rhythmic series of claps that pierced the quiet windy morning. Clap! Clap! Clap-clap-clap! Clap! Clap! Clap-clap-clap!

Another teacher sang a traditional Hindi song and the event ended with the students and teachers together singing the Indian national anthem Jaya Hind.

As they sang, the flag I had helped raise flapped soundlessly in the breeze, its orange, white and green bars unfurling over the sight of Kerala palm trees. I peered up at it and mentally edited my 'bucket list'.

A Good Student

A picture of Jesni's class. She is the one at the back making 'bunny ears' over two other girls' heads.




When Jesni asked me the other day whether I had been a ‘good student’ in school, even if I had not been one, I felt I would have had to lie. Because Jesni is the type of girl you don’t want to disappoint.

“Yes, I was good,” I replied honestly. “But I don’t think as good as you.” Again, with all sincerity.

This made Jesni smile, which is a beautiful sight, for she has a finely drawn mouth with elastic lips that seem to stretch nearly to the corners of her eyes when she cracks a grin. For a 14-year-old, she carries herself with a rather regal bearing. Her English is nearly unaccented, and you can see her mental gears shifting and turning whenever she is enunciating her words, as if she would be mightily disappointed in herself if she made a mistake.

“Sir…thank you, sir. I hope…that I am…good,” she said with a startling gravity.

Our conversation had started because I had seen Jesni the previous Saturday at the Tirur bus stand. It was a little past nine in the morning, and I was on my way to buy a newspaper. I saw Jesni as she was boarding a bus and she happened to glance back and see me.

“Where were you going Saturday?” I asked the next week at school.

“To my home.”

“What were you doing in Tirur?”

“Tuition classes. Special classes I take in the morning from seven to nine.”

“Every Saturday?”

“No. Every day but Sunday.”

“Every day?”

“But Sunday, yes. Hindi. Social Science. English. Maths. Biology. Special classes so I can get more knowledge."

“Where are the classes?”

“In a building near the bus stand.”

“You are a very good student.”

Again, the smile and Jesni blushed. “Thank you, sir. I want to be a civil engineer. I must take lots of classes.”

“Well, your English is very good.”

“Thank you, sir. But it can be better.”

It turned out, though, that Jesni’s English was far better than my Malayalam. She blanched when I revealed the pitiful state of my Malayalam.

“But how long have you lived here, sir? Three months? And that little?” she held up her index finger and thumb in the international symbol for ‘tiny’.

“How about the numbers? One…two…three…” she said, with the desperate air of a crack teacher.

I shrugged my shoulders.

Jesni held up her index finger rigidly. “One…own-ay. Two…rand-ay. Three…moon-ay.” Her fingers shot up with each new number.

I tried to repeat: “Ow…Own-day-“

“No, no…own-AY. Own-ay.”

“Own-ay.”

“Yes! Yes! Now: two…rand-ay.”

We went on like this for ten more minutes until I had mastered the numbers 1 through 10 to Jesni’s satisfaction. “Now, what are they?” she asked, stiffening her nostrils and arching her eyebrows.

“Own-ay…ran-day…moon-ay…uh…nahl-ay…anch-ay…uh…a-ray…eh-lay…ate-ay…om-paw-tay…uh…and…pa-tay.”

“Very good, sir! Malayalam is easy. So easy.”

I thought maybe if I had the good fortune to have Jesni as my teacher, indeed I would find Malayalam easy.