First Day at School

I remember my first day at St.Mary's so vividly, I just love telling this tale.

I joined St.Mary's Girls School in the sixth standard, and I was all new and shiny like a pair of freshly polished boots. I think Mama scrubbed me really hard to get that effect.

This was my first school in India (yes, till I was in the fifth standard we were in Muscat, Oman)and I was not looking forward to it. I remember that Mama bought me a new pencil box that looked like a Cadbury's bar, the chocoholic I am I probably wanted to eat it then. In the box were Nataraj pencils(you know the black and red ones) all pointy, a new eraser and a pencil sharpener.
I kind of missed my previous fancy pencil box which had a magnifying glass, magnets to both the doors (yes, a two-doored pencil box), in-built pencil sharpener and little slot for the eraser to go in; I can't remember the other useless attachments it had but it was pretty and pink and smelled of strawberry. Oh yeah, poor little "my-earlier-pencil-box-smelled-like-strawberry girl".

I went to school in an auto-rickshaw which worked on a pool system. There were kids everywhere, some spilling out of the rickshaw, some inside who were jammed, some sitting and some standing in that two feet of space.

The great pearly gates, oh alright I'll stop exaggerating; I stood in front of the huge iron gates of St.Mary's Girls High School very sceptical of stepping in. I spotted a statue of Mother Mary at a distance and the good Catholic girl that I was immediately went there and asked for blessings on my first day of school.

I asked around and finally found my classroom which was on the first floor of the building. The teacher asked me to sit next to a girl; someone who I don't remember now.

Everyone was quite excited or so it seemed then, to have a new girl in the class. The girls already had their own groups and best friends and I wondered if I was ever going to fit in. My neighbour asked me, "Are you a foreigner?" Yeah, I used to get that a lot in India. I just can't believe it now, terribly brown skinned that I am (and I am proud of it)

"No, I am from Mangalore."
People thinking I was and calling me a foreigner annoyed me, always. I am proud to be an Indian.

"I am Indian. I was born in Mangalore." I had to convince some of the girls who had gathered around me.

During the break the girls took me out of class, to get some fresh air. And there was a swarm of blue and white (our school uniform, white shirt and blue pleated skirt) in a matter of seconds.

There were girls pulling my cheeks. "She's like a doll, so chubby and so pink."
Some were poking my hands. "She's so fair man. So nice no."
I really didn't know what the big deal was. It was just weird. And I won't deny it, in a way it felt good to get all the attention and not sit in a corner and worry about not making friends.
No one ever swarmed me in my previous school. I wasn't the cool girl or the pretty girl. Suddenly I was in a moment I had probably sub-conciously craved for and now that it was here I didn't know how to handle it.
So, I just smiled, extremely embarrassed, and told people that I was Indian and that my parents and whole family right from the start of the family tree, was Indian.

I had confused some who thought I was lying about being a foreigner and they thought I was at least Anglo-Indian, there surely had to be some English blood in me.

So my first day was a hit and I went back home, again in the bursting auto-rickshaw, waiting to tell Mama about my new school and confused new friends.