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.