First Day of School
Sabina washes her waist length hair and is letting it dry in the sun. She pops inside, vanishes for five minutes, comes back outside with her hair combed and clipped at the back. She has a tika between her eyebrows, and a thick red potey around her neck. She’s ready for her two-year old son Aakash’s first day at school. A new set of duties await her: get Aakash ready for school; take his lunch and feed him; then pick him up from school and help him with homework. “I’ve seen this happen to others, now it’s my turn,” she says in disbelief.
In the morning, she was relieved when her son didn’t cry on the way there. Now she packs a bag of pappad, a tiffin of bhaat, daal, and taruwa in a red plastic hamper. Sabina and I walk to the chowk where she calls on Malati, a fellow mother, whose son also went to school for the first time today. Her son, unlike Aakash, had wailed and sniffled all the way to school that morning. Sabina is nervous but Malati is frustrated. “I feel so old doing this all over again”, Malati says. “My daughter’s in class five and I had Shardul after a long gap.” At the school, Sabina, Malati and I wait outside the gates next to the ice-cream stall. The bell goes for lunch. A small metal gate opens and a group of I hustle inside with a group of mothers. Sabina lets out a laugh as she spots Aakash behind a huge speaker, barely holding on to it with his little fingers. She hides behind me to create suspense and peeks from the side. Aakash grins at her as she pushes her phone forward, taking video clips for her husband to see in Malaysia. He has been wanting to see a live video of Aakash going to school but the morning rush makes her forgetful.
At two, Aakash is considerably smaller than any of the other kids in the school. But he can speak so send him to school is the advice she got from those around her. At the tubewell at home, another mother was defending her decision not to send her own child to school. “She’s too small. She’ll be ready at four,” she says. Aakash waddles towards his mum, who holds him and leads him inside the classroom. Inside, all the mothers are seated on benches with their child, lunch hampers on the desk, tiffin opened. A mother at the back of the classroom sits with her elbows on the desk, chin resting on her clasped hands. Her daughter pushes small spoonfuls of rice into her mouth neatly. Malati makes small of haluwa with her hands and feeds Shardul. Aakash is not interested in the food. He turns his face away from his mother’s hands and spreads his haluwa on the desk and starts breaking his pappad into pieces. Sabina checks his bag. “He’s eaten the two packets of bhujiya, no wonder he doesn’t want this,” she says. She let’s him be.
Then Aakash waddles outside into the playground, wandering on his own, with no care for the big boisterous kids running near him. They skip past him like they’re in an obstable race. Sabina follows him out of the gate straight towards the ice-cream man. Sabina buys him a white popsicle. It looks heavy in his small hands but he holds it strong nonetheless, sucking at it fiercely. We go inside again. Aakash plays on his own, holding on to a bamboo pole and walking around it. Sabina stands at a distance from him, almost afraid to trigger something in him that might set him off. A teacher approaches us and says, “Kasto gyani tapai ko chora, bunu. Rokai chaina hau.” Your son is so obedient, he hasn’t shed a drop of tear. Sabina grins with pride about this but she seems pensive taking videos of her son to send to her husband in Malaysia. “He’s reminding me so much of his father today,” she says. “You know, I met him in grade six. Before we became girlfriend/boyfriend. He had moved school so he had no friends so I went up to him and said let’s be friends.” My eyes water at this. She continues, “We were tiny when we met, and now our son is going to school.” The bell goes again. It’s time for the mothers to head home.
Sabina tells an older child to carry Aakash to the swing. He sits on it licking his ice-cream which is now dripping between his folded fingers. Malati places her son next to Aakash on the swing hoping he stays put and she can quietly slip out of the gates. Sabina and I sneak away. Behind us we hear Shardul wailing as he gets peeled off of his mother from two teachers who grab him on either arm as he screams. Malati, distraught but relieved from the teachers’ help, runs up to the gate and joins us outside the school.
