I LIKE YOUR BOYFRIEND

Most of the children here own only a few after-school outfits, meaning, perhaps, two. Looking down from the office and into the alley, I see teenage Avishek wearing the checkered loincloth that the men use when bathing at the pump. He carries soap and laundry brush, shirt and pants, to scrub them on the one smooth, clean surface: the steps to New Light’s bathroom. As soon as they are old enough to wash their clothes, the children are always clean.

Babai, another one of my teenage students, is a self-confessed “funny monkey.” Although he seems to be more passionate about football than studies, he has never missed an English class. A strikingly handsome boy despite his constant goofy grin, he looked like he would crack open with smiles the other day when I saw his new T-shirt. Obviously someone's castoff, it read, I LIKE YOUR BOYFRIEND. After class, I joined his friends to ask him what was up with the shirt. He pulled up the bottom hem. The T was reversible—its other side read BOYS ARE GREAT (EVERY GIRL SHOULD OWN ONE). He couldn’t even turn the damned thing inside out.

It is easy to forget that these kids have little materially, as they are so fully…themselves. Individual. Not the downtrodden masses. But when I saw Babai’s T-shirt, I knew that he was in trouble. The following day, I told him I liked the shirt; would he give it to me if I brought him a different one?

Hey, I did want that shirt. Every other person I know in Calcutta is gay (How has India amassed its huge population? I don’t know…), so Sahar, when I told her about the offending T, said we’d give it to one of our male friends. And I couldn’t help but remember my own sartorial nadir, in fourth grade, back when the laundry had piled up by the ringer washing machine in the yard and Mom trawled the bottom of some grab bag for clothes. The memory is still visceral: of sitting in class, looking down to discover that the men’s poly-blend pants, rolled at the ankles and cinched with a braided leather belt, split open at the hip. The gaping tear revealed my grayed underwear beneath. My shirt was too short to hide it. Through hours of class, I sat with my hand clutching my hip. Ditto for recess. Ditto the long bus ride home.

I got over it. Hell, maybe it built character. Even so, it sucked. This, though—a teenage guy having to walk around with a shirt saying I LIKE YOUR BOYFRIEND (presumably the declaration he found less humiliating than its alternative)—this was more than any kid should bear. I found an inexpensive knock-off brand T on the way to Kalighat. When I arrived, I saw that Babai’s smile, Day Three, had become desperate. Uncharacteristically, he was late for class: he had been trying to trace over the words with a pen—blue to match—before giving up after one letter. I yanked the new shirt out of my bag, and as I’ve already seen the boys half-naked at the alley water pump, we made the trade in front of the whiteboard.

When I took roll, Babai was missing. Where was he? Home, his friends answered, to show his mother. He would return in a few minutes.

And he did.

A Love Letter to Kalam: Margins Write

There’s nothing to align your chi like coming home to find your apartment full of young writers drinking tea in a circle, reading their poems.

Kalam: Margins Write is what first brought me to Calcutta; last December I came to work with Bishan Samaddhar, Kalam’s sole employee, and since then stayed in contact with the founder Sahar Romani. Sahar started Kalam to answer a void in the outreach community here: NGOs used the usual suspects—cute kids—as faces for fundraising, taught them to use the arts to talk about their experiences of disempowerment…but few, if any, NGOs taught the arts, letting children write about what they wanted, creating identities much more intricate than simply that of, say, child-of-brothel-worker or slum-dweller.

Now that Sahar and I have ended up as flatmates, we have constant, feisty discussions about The Issues. And despite her fondness for words like “otherizing” and “positionality” and my fondness for making fun of these terms, we are in deep agreement on this: providing opportunities for marginalized persons does not mean assimilation. It isn’t about encouraging them to “pass” as mainstream—how an individual decides to deal with the brutal caste and class system is up to her.

Thanks to Kalam, though, many people will be able to make this choice. Sahar has been working with the same core group of young writers for over three years now; together they have published a literary magazine, staged public readings, and facilitated workshops with newer writers. Kalam currently employs two former youth writers, Nargis and Bina; Sahar’s vision is to make Kalam almost entirely led by those it has served.

Right now Kalam is in a state of transition. Bishan, Sahar’s right-hand man, is working elsewhere. Daywalka, the anti-trafficking organization that has supported Kalam, has folded its Calcutta branch. Now Sahar is filing for separate trust status, looking for a workspace and personnel to act as mentors—and all of this on a beans-and-rice budget.

Sahar and Bina recently interviewed students at a local university. The search for a mentor was fruitless—none of them grasped the issues involved or were on par with the Kalam youth when it came to talking about writing in terms of both identity and art. I thought of Bina, now a college student herself, sitting through a bunch of middle-class students talking about brothel workers. The night of the reading, she had concluded the session with a spontaneous song, then came up to me and gave me a hug, saying she saw me in Kalighat the other day—“That’s where my mom works!”

Now Sahar slumped at the kitchen table, discouraged, but I had to point out, the fact that Kalam’s writers are so much more capable is a triumph to be savored. “Of course, of course they are!” Sahar answered—and it is true, like the kids I work with at New Light, they are years wiser than their more privileged counterparts.

But, I had to say, without Kalam, would these writers have the platform to share their gifts?

Tether

A woman sleeps on the sidewalk next to her son. Head to foot. Faced inward, knees, elbows puzzled together, their backs form a circumference. Tied to the boy’s ankle, wrapped around the woman’s palm--a twist of red cotton cloth, so the child won’t vanish into the universe while they sleep.

Dalit House

Sensing my isolation, I believe, while my students have been engaged in activities with Spanish funders for the past few weeks, Harsha invited me to go with her to the Dalit House. See the children in the pictures below? They are the Untouchables, of the caste made to handle the dead, cremate them and spread their ashes in the waiting Ganges. This group lives within walking distance to New Light. Harsha and I went at night, catching a bicycle taxi since it was raining. The driver took us by the front walkway, the cleanest path I’ve seen in India, beautifully tiled, with painted bas-relief murals lining the walk to the Hindu temple. We stepped down, walked past guards, past three pyres. A new smell for me: burnt dead people. We continued along the dark river to a tin-roofed schoolroom full of children, unrepentantly loud and alive.

Harsha

Harsha has been like that song in the middle of the music album, the one that, once the catchy, pop-inflected tunes wear out, you keep going back to: it is quieter but more intricate, taking its time to build. When I first met Harsha, a social worker/program coordinator here, I noticed her extraordinary beauty, her sculpted features, of course, but only after several weeks did I realize that she was the one who offered me steady, genuine encouragement and mentorship with my teaching, the one I found myself going to for advice.


It is hard for me to write about her. I don’t know much of her story and most of that I’ve learned from a mutual friend, Alison. Harsha has a great sense of humor, but doesn’t toss out quotable one-liners. In the many raucous gatherings amongst the staff, she never vies to be in the spotlight. So here she is—this isn’t the last you’ve seen of her:

Put Your Hands Up!

Spotted in the news after a night of dancing with Liz and the gang, in celebration of my 30th birthday:So what if my picture does look like a still from a deodorant commercial? We're famous!

Thanks for scanning and sending, Bishan. Cheers.

Communion

After several days away from New Light—the children’s lessons have been suspended for two weeks while they prepare for their annual Carnival with a group of Spanish volunteers—I returned yesterday, had to see my babies.

On the way down Nepal Alley, I saw my one of my oldest students, Hassan, at the pump where the men bathe. He greeted me with a huge smile. Then I came across Sukumar, who gave me a wooden bracelet. It was good to be back.

A light rain started falling on the walk home. I’d forgotten my umbrella but enjoyed the cool air.

Sundays are strangely (and blessedly) quiet in the city—almost everything shuts down, but the flower vendors along Rash Behari were open. I bought a 25 Rupee (60¢) bouquet of small yellow roses tied with thread. A few blocks from my apartment, the drizzle turned into a storm. All I could do was walk, try to shelter my cotton bag and notebooks under my arm. A woman with an umbrella came up behind me. She started to keep pace, inched closer until we huddled together, stepping in unison around the puddles. When we had to part, I untangled three roses from the bouquet and handed them to her. “Sweet?” she asked, and unzipped her purse, bringing out a Bengali handmade sweet of curd and sugar. My hands were full, so she put it on my tongue. We stood under the umbrella, laughing, delighted, folding our hands in greeting before we parted ways, me with the sweet in my mouth.