On August
If July was about adapting to waves of chaos, August has been about beginning to control the tide. I am finding my footing, gaining my balance, and confidently wandering off on my own. Around the mid-way point of the month, I felt time dragging its feet on me, but as I write this I’m amazed that it’s already September. Two months of Chennai in the books.
On bringing home with you:
It is so easy to love Chennai. It is vibrant, restorative, unforced. But when asking about the city’s reputation in the larger subcontinental consciousness, with all its ancient metropolises, I’ve been told on more than one occasion that to those outside Tamil Nadu, Chennai is not regarded as a place where very much happens. It is passed over frequently for its shinier, northern counterparts like Mumbai, Delhi, or Goa. In a moment of ironic sentimentality, the comments reminded me of… don’t laugh… Richmond. Now, I can hardly call myself an authority on Richmond nowadays, having left a while ago with no plans on returning permanently. I didn’t know where it was coming from, this feeling of… defensiveness? Pride? Bewilderment at the inability to see a special place when it’s right in front of you? Certainly an underdog mentality into which I was now absorbed once again.
These two places, my gateways to their respective countries (one by birth, the other by chance), do share some basic similarities. Two cities in the South, overlooked and underestimated by outsiders, perceptibly traditional but glimmering with a subversive culture from within, and a deep communal pride and sense of hospitality. In the same way I see the beauty of the universe when crossing the Adyar River at dusk, on the way to Alwarpet for sushi or Nungambakkam for imported cheeses (you read that correctly! I found the cheese!), I see it crossing the James on the way to Dogwood Dell or the Museum District. Maybe a sunset is a sunset no matter where you are, but I’d like to think it can also be a bit of home that you bring with you. A realization that, though I thought of Richmond as a place of my past, I had actually been carrying it around with me this entire time, searching for it on some subconscious level, whether I wanted to or not.
It’s true that home has been on my mind more than I expected. This is all the more confusing since I don’t spend much time missing the United States at all, simply just the people living there. It’s more of an opening, an awakening of the senses that isn’t possible when you’re still in the place. Not seeing the forest through the trees sort of thing. Now that I am The American before I’m anything else, I lay awake at night trying to parse through what that means exactly. Reading books like Suzy Hansen’s Notes on a Foreign Country and Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son (we are all just note-takers here) has both sharpened my perspective on the homeland and deeply disoriented my relationship to it, a relationship I thought to be unyielding and clarified. Anyways, because this is my essay and I can do whatever I want, I’d like to put a pin in this idea. I suspect I’ll have a better scope of things towards the end of my time here. But I hope you enjoyed the preview!
Already I am breaking my promise to you by speaking so little of Chennai and so much of home. Let’s change that. The most significant update to come out of August-- teaching!
On being a real-life teacher:
In India, coming to school in August is a real treat (don’t look at me like this is a no-brainer, they started back in June)— the month is stocked with all sorts of holidays and celebrations. Within the last 30 days, I’ve not only gotten my feet wet as a middle school English teacher, I’ve also gotten to celebrate India’s 75th Independence Day and my school’s 56th anniversary, a day they call Annual Day, with my students. I’ve enjoyed (see: been completely befuddled by) a sporadically changing and chaotic schedule that’s accommodated a variety of Hindu Pujas (days of ceremonial worship, aka no school), exams, and rehearsals for the above holiday’s school celebrations. These extravagant programs put on by the entire school included performances of Bharatnatyam, a traditional Tamilian folk dance, by the older girls, a full scale production of The Giving Tree by the primary schoolers, complete with realistic costumes and a misty-eyed Jordan, and even a historical reenactment of the Sepoy Mutiny by the high school boys (nothing like giving adolescent boys explicit permission to pretend-fight each other on stage).
In all the excitement/chaos, I think I’ve taken pretty well to the role of teacher. I see what everyone means when they speak of emotional reward; the light in my kid’s eyes when they’ve learned something new and cool, when something has finally clicked— now that’s addictive. I spend a majority of my days answering questions about America, flying at me from both teachers and students. “Do Americans have exams?” (oh, do we), “do students ride yellow buses to school?” (sometimes), “is your favorite Marvel character Captain America?” (certainly not). Though born out of a curiosity that I love, the daily questionings often leave me feeling strange, a mix between disingenuous and sad and embarrassed, like I’ve accidentally stumbled into a role as Promoter of All Things American. I always try to turn their questions back onto them-- “which Indian holiday is your favorite?” (most say Pongal or Diwali), “what is the best food to eat in Chennai?” (my ears split with shouts of ‘BIRYANI!’), “Who is YOUR favorite Marvel character?” (I had no idea the allegiance Indian middle schoolers took to Tony Stark). It’s an easy way to get mini lessons on the cultural elements of Chennai that a 13-year-old would care about.
Furthermore, the school itself is a natural marvel. Located inside the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (the MIT of India), it is a three-building compound in the middle of the jungle. The land was carved out of the Guindy National Park, a protected tropical forest that boasts extraordinary flora and fauna. Not only does this mean that the temperature is on average a few degrees lower than the rest of Chennai due to the layered tree canopy, it also means that we coexist with some pretty amazing wildlife, all of which have their own attitudes towards the humans that continually invade their turf.
Some encounters with the wildlife:
The friendly chital (a species of spotted deer) graze in and around the school, completely indifferent to the rowdy children. To my extreme surprise and pleasure, in fact, these creatures lack the same evolutionary fear of humans that Virginia’s white-tailed deer have had to develop. They will trot right up to you, stare into your soul for a beat too long, make you wonder what secrets they are keeping, and expect a little scratch on the forehead before being on their way.
The bonnet macaque monkeys, less friendly, stalk the grounds in gangs and always look like their about to beat some kid up for their lunch money. In fact, my school has employees whose job descriptions include chasing monkeys away with sticks. Unpredictable and mischievous, they thrill at the opportunity to climb up the walls and reach through the monkey-proof, barred windows of the classrooms to test their luck at grabbing someone’s snack. Speaking unfortunately from experience, there are few things more humiliating than being bullied by a monkey.
Finally, my brief, wild-west-style standoff with a rather ambivalent tarantula the size of my fist, who gave me a judgmental up-down in the teacher’s restroom and communicated through body language alone a cold but polite request to leave immediately. I promptly did and my bladder continues to suffer.
On women taking care of me:
In terms of my human interactions, the middle school staff room proves to be a fascinating environment, where I sit like a wallflower, reading my books, planning my lessons, and listening to the teachers’ debates, grievances, and jokes in a sort of “Tam-lish” that is difficult to comprehend but entertaining to witness. Many conversation topics are what I imagine to be universal echoes of every teacher staff room in the world— overbearing administration, trouble-making students, and, of course, the million-dollar question of how to catch these kids up to speed after two years of questionably effective online learning. Their concern over me too is both comforting and a little embarrassing, as I find it weird being so fretted over. “Have you called your mother this week?” they ask, “Why didn’t you eat breakfast this morning?”
They seem to instinctively sense when I’m having a bad day too, even if I think my presence to be consistently quiet and unimposing. On these days when I’m struck suddenly with homesickness or foreigner fatigue, instead of probing me with questions about my emotional state, something that neither party seems to be quite comfortable discussing yet, they will simply plop homemade food down on my desk and insist that I eat. This happens every time without fail. Their eyes will laser into me until I do it too, watching me take each bite as if they don’t believe I’ll eat it otherwise. When I’m finished, they give me more, again insisting, and when I can’t possibly have a third serving, they spoon one more scoop of boiled peanuts or coconut rice onto my napkin. “Eat, you will feel better.” Only then are they satisfied, resolved that they have fixed whatever silent problem is ailing me. Many times, they are right in this assumption. For in their act of extraordinary care (feeding me), I tend to forget that I’m so far from home, so exhausted by the heat and the novelties, and take comfort in the realization that these steely, overworked women would sooner skip lunch than ever let me be sad on an empty stomach.
Finally, beyond my teacher friends, I have made the cosmic and comical discovery that actual family resides not too far away, in my very neighborhood in fact. Well, family’s family. Painfully aware that she might read this— the humiliating experience of being perceived never subsides— I cannot end my notes on August without mentioning Nithya aunty, the aunt of one Naeha Ganesan (college friend and loml) and suddenly now my literal neighbor! How the universe continues to astound me. I’ve spent two afternoons with Nithya, one at a cafe nearby and another in her home that sits 10 minutes away from my apartment, a place that felt sacred knowing a baby Naeha had once toddled around there. Nothing prepared me for the dissonance of sitting in Chennai, India and being unpromptedly asked about memories of Charlottesville, my college friends, or my experiences with life and grief. It was as if I’d managed to teleport home for a few hours. Disarmed of my official Fulbright facade, it was cathartic to lament about missing the mountains in the fall with someone who’d been there before or discuss the geopolitical complexities of our not-so-different countries openly or ask questions about Indian culture that I was too shy to ask anyone else. A strange and wonderful thing, to be standing on the opposite side of the earth from every person who truly knows you and to meet someone who makes you feel like those people are right there beside you. Here, I often feel like a tiny island, containing the entirety of my life in a sealed-off privacy. Upon the meeting of my new neighbor, however, suddenly there was someone wishing to visit, someone interested in listening and sharing with me as well. It was, indeed, the highlight of my August
What does September have in store? Finally some travel!
Until next month, happy full moon!