I'm Sorry

I’M SORRY…

I had promised myself I would write about it, and here I am.

While I was talking to my friend on the phone, he said jokingly “you are struggling so much for a PhD to go back for the job you quit, in Kerala”. When I told him I wouldn’t mind doing that, a flood of thoughts came back to me.

I quit the ‘permanent’ job (I don’t know how anything in life can be permanent, anyway) as Assistant Professor at Christ College, Calicut University, within six months of landing it. The decision was the most difficult one I had to take till date, to quit a comfortable government job for the uncertainty, very new for someone who has always played it safe. But this is not about my decision to quit but about the experience I had in going to my native place after having seen a bit of the big world out there.

I have had so many times the cab drivers in Hindi say ‘bahut padhe likhe log hai na aapke state mein.’ And that is what set the thought moving, ‘haan, padhe likhe tho zaroor hai’, but what is that education mounting to!

Contrast this to the first day of my job, I was told on signing my joining papers, ‘your JNU ways won’t work here.’ I stood transfixed pondering what exactly that meant, but decided to give it a go than fret over it.

Every single day was a struggle as I had to endure numerous gender stereotyping, questioning my freedoms, my ideology and what I stood for and worst of all self respect. I tried to overcome all this by telling myself, I was born here, raised here and so I should fit in here.

The first of my freedoms were taken away when I was told that all female profs had to compulsorily wear saree, while pssss…. male profs didn’t have to wear saree. I love saree, no doubt there, but I like my freedom to choose to not wear it on a hot sweltering day in Kerala. And guess what the reason was, because female profs are difficult to identify from students if we wore anything else (well the only other option imaginable was salwar). I did not want that kind of respect, where I was respected just because I wore saree and stood distinct as a prof, I did not want that hierarchy, I wanted respect for who I am, for what I do and for my teaching. I did not mind the occasional flirting my students did with me, be it in saree or salwar or jeans (I was grown up enough to deal with it myself), because that was the biggest reason cited for making us all drape a saree. Worst of all my freedom to drape the saree as I wanted was also questioned, numerous times being told to pin it up neat. I had done my share of prim and proper uniforming for 14 years of school, I did not want that anymore and when I get on the podium to address a class of 50 I wanted the confidence in me and focus on my job. By the time I was resigning we had won the right to wear salwar kameez with dupatta and a blazer, in the 30 degrees Celsius plus humid Kerala. I thanked God for all his blessings he had showered on me while my head cried, probably they should blindfold male students instead of making us wear blazers as the presence of guys made it necessary for us to wear blazers. Isn’t it equally their fault that they have eyes? We were successfully making our kids think perverted when they probably weren't and even if a few did have such thoughts, doing this just legitimized it was not their thoughts, that were wrong.

Numerous times I was asked to change my hairdo (as I preferred tying it up in a bun), apparently my hair was not becoming of an Assistant Prof, even colleagues I was meeting for the first time decided to give me a friendly advice as to how I should mold myself better, indirectly hinting at how I might not be a good influence on the students. My patience was tested the time when someone took it to themselves to set me right by reporting to my grand mom (who lived close to the college), because my case needed immediate intervention. Little did they know what my grand mom told me was leave the place if I can’t fit in (she was so good at teenage obstinacy well into her late seventies). The way I drove, the way I spoke, everything was frowned upon or sometimes looked at with alien curiosity.

During this period, I also stayed at the hostel for women, so I could save on some time. Forget the fact that I was treated like a student and not as a responsible adult, by my colleague there, but I was appalled at the greatest discrimination I could see. While in the boys’ hostels, boys were allowed a mobile phone, in the girls’ hostels, there was a ritual after the daily roll call of handing them the mobile phones for an hour from the safe custody of the warden. I was aghast at this ‘so on the face’ inequality. Apparently, the parents were also in on this because they wanted their girls to have lesser opportunity to talk to human species of the other gender. Girls had no outings allowed from hostel, while boys didn’t have to be ‘in’ the hostel. I heard it oft repeated in a very crass way, well you see girls are the ones suffering so girls should be the ones paying. My mind kept screaming WHAT! I spent the better part of my life trying to show men and women are just as good at anything, I felt humiliated that I spinelessly listened to all that in order to maintain whatever little was left of my good girl image. We are talking about the most literate state of the country and 18-year-old adults here. Well if you are really worried about their safety please be equally worried about your sons too, the world is just as bad to them. Sigh… Leash your sons just as much as your daughters, better still, unleash them all. Tell them, to be free is to think, to be free is to have the independence to choose the right and wrong. Set them on the path to be able to choose the right.

I used to proudly state how there was no evident form of discrimination on the basis of caste from where I am. I had drawn a curtain around me when I failed to realize that using the caste names ‘pulayan’ and ‘parayan’ as abuses was the thick dark soot of a feudal system that had settled deep on the society. My oblivion on this was shattered when I heard twice in the course of four months that as long it was only students under scheduled castes and scheduled tribes category who failed, the institution has 100 per cent success. In which world!! For a Christian institution, the Lord did not create Scheduled Castes and Tribes, the Indian constitution did, for an equal society. Yet again mutely, sacrificing all my JNU morale (where my professors taught me to think for myself and to stand up for what I believe in), I listened to that outrageous claim, in the presence of a Scheduled Caste professor. To this day I wonder did he suppress his emotions and anger like I did or does he agree with the views, I never had the courage to ask him.

I felt claustrophobic on campus, it was the time I was trying so hard to work on something I was writing and that is when I realized I could not think in the environment. I felt scared about the generation we were modelling, in that abode of education. They were just degree holders but not educated, no one can think or create in such a closed space, we were clipping the wings of our students to make them fit in, we were only enabling them to earn livelihood, I was party to creating a non-responsive generation for the bleak future. I would have no right to complain a few years later about the plight of the society, I helped make the future where enduring all wrongs to fit in, was the model I was setting, only secretly revolting, not having the courage to shout out THIS IS WRONG, I HAVE HAD ENOUGH.

As an economist, I know I shouldn’t extrapolate, but as a human being I know this is the hypocrisy of the high literacy state of Kerala (we are just better out of the bad lot). Women are not treated equally, societal norms are iron clad, degrees are for employment only, we frown down upon the scheduled castes and tribes in our own polished, educated and Mallu accented English way.

The only part I enjoyed was the teaching and my interactions with the students. I had heard so much that how my students weren’t as good as my classmates in Stephens’ and JNU from my fellow teachers. Of course not, they were no CBSE, ICSE or school toppers, but I learnt they had the same zest for learning. Each time I talked to them, I felt bad that they were so oblivious to what they were missing, to what they didn’t have, and hence never did their mind revolt. My dears I did not have the courage then, to instill that fire in you, to make you see what you didn’t have, to make you realize the world as it is. I failed miserably as a teacher, every single day of those six months. I hated myself for it. I could not give you what I received, I did not have the courage to tell you hierarchy is not what we want but, to be able to break free, because if I did tell you I would have been the biggest hypocrite.

I have not reached anywhere great in life or done anything great in life, but I know I want to go back there once as a TEACHER, in all its sense. So yes Zenden, ‘all this for the job I quit, the job I couldn’t fulfill, I want to go back empowered to be able to stand up.’