Look Back in Anger

About eight months ago, on a trip to the city I love, Bombay or Mumbai (you can choose the name you prefer), I happened to stay for two days in Town, or South Bombay, after a very long time. You realise that as you grow older, you can no longer stay in this part of the city because either all your friends have houses in ‘Bandruh’, BKC and beyond, or because any decent place to stay is too expensive. The one exception, however, is Gordon House hotel, whose hard mattress gave my sore lower back much relief.

This particular trip was for a friend’s baby shower that was being held in Colaba, and so a weekend at Gordon House in the middle of the Bombay Monsoon brought back many memories. As I passed by my school, just some 200 metres away from the hotel, I was washed over, besides the humidity, by a wave of memories from the four years I spent there. No, this is not a travel related post, but one about a journey I started in 2001.

If you read the tab “About the Scorpion” on the opening page of this blog, you will find that my heart and soul is in Bombay. But that wasn’t always the case. My first year in the city was hell. We had a matchbox for a home, in contrast to our spacious Delhi flat, located in what was supposed to be a posh locality, but was in fact a cacophonous arterial road in SoBo. But what made it worse was having to survive in the harshest of environments that a quiet and shy child of eleven and a half could have to endure. And I wasn’t the worst off at school, other new girls had it really bad. Being significantly taller than most and having, what is now known in popular culture as a “resting bitch face”, prevented the “mean girls” of the class from saying anything to me directly, but these attributes were also the subject of ridicule and jokes behind my back, that nobody really made any effort to keep away from my auditory range.

I am often told by my peers that on first glance, they find me intimidating, and so over the years as I have opened up to my friends, they have been shocked to discover that I too have been the target of bullying in school. I spent my initial school years in Delhi, where I went from being a cheerful and chubby kindergartener to a reserved, quiet but self-confident middle school child, all the while in the company of friendly classmates.

Which is why my first year in school in Bombay was almost traumatic. Some of the girls (and I say some because most were largely indifferent) treated me like I didn’t exist, made fun of the fact that I instinctively spoke in Hindi (even though my English was as good as any of theirs, if not better), and started rumours about me being a lesbian. I didn’t even know at that age what that meant, and when I discovered the meaning, I was internally horrified, but outwardly stoic, as anyone who had zero understanding of the gender spectrum and sexuality would probably be. Crying at school was not an option, because there was nobody to even console me. One girl asked me one day, out of the blue, “Are you a version?” “A version of what?” I asked in return. She meant “virgin”. That silly girl didn’t even know how to pronounce the word she wanted to deploy to embarrass me. All this in seventh grade.

The way a person looked, whether they threaded their facial hair, whether their hair was straight or frizzy or curly or crimped, whether their top button was open or closed, whether their socks were rolled all the way down, whether their skirt was worn low enough but was short enough in length, everything determined whether you were “cool” or a “loser”. Some of the girls were sweet to me individually, but turned into something else around their gang. One of the girls, who didn’t even belong to the core gang of bullies, one day came up to me and told me that she didn’t want to be friends with me because she didn’t like my face and believed I was a snob. I hadn’t really asked her to be friends. Or was that the problem? In my defence, I was recovering from the shock of being called a snob just because I came from Delhi and was a girl of few words.

Added to this trauma was the fact that for the first time in my life, I could not understand the math that was being taught. A change from CBSE to SSC meant a complete re-orientation of concepts. That was the only time in my academic life, I came close to failing an exam. Never again, I told myself.

Things only began to look up in my second year at this “still new” school. A new subject was added to my course, French, and I finally found something I excelled at. And even THAT was somehow a reason for ridicule. Some girl even went on to tell me how German was a superior language and French was shit. Basically I couldn’t do anything right, even minding my own business was a problem. This pattern of bullying repeated itself in more disturbing proportions with some girls who joined school after me.

But in life, as in geopolitics, to deal with bullies you need to find like-minded friends, and it was this group of kind friends that finally brought me the safe space that I had been seeking in that terrible year, 2001-02. Some of these friends are still among the closest ones I have, and even though the others have drifted away from me, I will always be thankful to them for making me realise that nothing was wrong with me, that my innocence was nothing to be ashamed of.

And yet, the bullying had done its damage. I had grown up to be an under-confident, bitter and pessimistic teenager, and by the time I passed out of school in 2005, I had lost all ability to make new friends.

But as my mother often tells me, I am a lucky person. I went to a college that let me be myself, where my friends looked out for me, and went to great lengths to see my rare smile. And five years later, I was still a pessimist, but had grown out of my bitterness and lack of confidence. It didn’t matter what language I spoke, Hindi, English or French, my friends, and even most of my classmates, made me feel valued. I finally felt “seen”.

When I look back at those nine years in Bombay, I realise what a roller-coster my personality has been. I don’t recognise myself, and that isn’t even a bad thing. The school experience also taught me a few things, for sure. Never doubt your capabilities. Have a thick skin. And most importantly, respond to bullying with stoic kindness and strong friendships.

As I said, I am a lucky person, but many young children are not. They struggle with bullies throughout their school years with no recourse or remedy. But my generation of parents now has the responsibility to make sure that we teach our children to be kind, to stand up to bad behaviour and help those who find it hard to defend themselves.

If I were to share this with the girls who treated my like I was a plague bearing rat, they probably wouldn’t even realise it. Worse still, they’ll call it petty. But having spoken to multiple classmates over the years, I understood that I was not the only one who was made to feel less about themselves.

And so I write this in solidarity with other victims of bullying, no matter the degree or form. You were not alone. You never will be.