CHAPTER 6

COMPOUND INTEREST AND BAGGY BLOOMERS

Reaching the age where a girl takes tentative steps towards maturity I came to see the nuns as a funny bunch who didn’t make us laugh. Far from it! If anything, they were a mass of contradictions. Their expressed intention was to provide a morally and spiritually flavoured education for all girls regardless of caste, creed or financial status. With learned skills, a girl would have more chance of climbing out of poverty – a poverty where even little girls have no choice but to sell their bodies in order to feed themselves and their families.

The secondary intention appeared to be to tout the marvels of Catholicism.

The Order was from Germany, having arrived in India in the 1850s. By the time I attended the school only the older nuns were German, while the younger ones were South Indian. There was a fierce hierarchy among them, evident from their attire. The Reverend Mother was always dressed in crisp, clean garments while the youngest postulant, who had no power at all, had to make do with clothes that had obviously seen better days.

In summer they were covered from head to toe in the traditional white habit that hid numerous side pockets for essential items like rosary beads, classroom keys and off-white hand-kerchiefs. Only their faces and hands were visible as even their feet were encased in white socks and black flat-heeled shoes. Though it was the decade following the Vatican II Council when dress codes for nuns were liberalised, their whole image was still androgynous, hermaphroditic.

I’d always considered the nuns’ mode of dressing ridiculous and one Saturday in late April made the mistake of voicing my opinion. Seated at the lunch table after school was over for the day, I scoffed, “You should’ve seen Aloysia today. She was sweating like a pig.”

My mother’s response was immediate, sharp and effective. “If you are referring to your class nine teacher as I assume you are, than please show respect – to her and to me. Use her title and don’t refer to her in that rude way.”

The silence was fraught with sulky rebellion. My mother added, “If you insist of being rude I’ll refuse to listen. Please understand you’ll be talking to yourself. I simply will not be involved.”

I knew from experience my mother’s threat was no idle one. If I persisted in misbehaving she would skilfully look through me, indicating my behaviour, and therefore I, wasn’t worth acknowledging. There is nothing more diminishing than to be ignored. It’s an effective way to control behaviour.

I hesitated, but not for long, as the words simply wouldn’t sit still in my brain.

“But it’s true, Mummy. Sister Aloysia stayed under the fan all morning but was still sweating and sweating. She couldn’t stop wiping her face.”

My mother sighed with exaggerated weariness. “She is probably facing that time in a woman’s life when her threshold to heat is hormonally lowered. You should be compassionate. One day it will happen to you.”

No it won’t. I gritted my teeth and resolved to prove her wrong. It was beyond my comprehension that parts of my life would be beyond my control. At twelve years old, empowered by emerging hormones, the world’s at your feet – if only the adults would recognise it and get out of your way.

“They’re mad to dress like that.” The weather was gearing up to the great heat of summer so people had changed to lighter, cooler clothing but the nuns were still covered in their multi-layered thick cotton garments.

My mother’s manner became one of patient explanation to a subnormal intelligence. “You know full well their clothes reflect the style that was appropriate for working among the poor when the Order was founded. Besides,” she warmed to her point, “you ought to admire their commitment to their vows. They always, uncomplainingly, wear those clothes even when the temperature’s in the fifties.”

My mother was right. There was never a word of complaint. Wordless, accepting obedience taught us by example, traits of fortitude, mental strength and self-control. Fortunately, it did nothing to induce us to imitate their style of dressing.

Or enter the Convent.

In contrast, the uniform for the girls was liberal for the times. It consisted of a knee-length navy blue pleated skirt with a white blouse, short or long sleeved, depending on the season. White socks and black shoes and white rubber-soled canvas shoes called Keds for sport were the norm. A navy blazer with school badge embroidered in gold thread on the breast pocket, a navy cardigan and a blue striped tie were added in winter.

Our sports uniform, however, was plain stupid. To preserve our adolescent modesty during running and jumping, we were required to wear something known as divided skirts. These were knee-length culottes in thick white drill.

Above our normal underwear were extra undergarments: baggy bloomers bound by tight elastic at waist and thigh. It was not uncommon for schoolgirls to line up in front of a nun while she, in a totally asexual way, put her hand up our skirts to check the length of the bloomer.

“Jump higher!” snarled Mrs Lawrence, our sports teacher. “How can we consider winning competitions if that’s the best you can do?” But my bloomers were so voluminous they weighed me down; my waistband so constricting I was almost chopped in half and the elastic around my thighs so tight my legs were in imminent danger of auto-amputation.

“How do you manage?” I asked Sarita, one of the Indian girls in my class, as she sailed through manoeuvres with apparent ease.

“Oh them!” Sarita’s focus was on the sports field. “I line up like everyone else, then when the teachers aren’t looking I go to the bogs and take them off.”

I gaped at this duplicity, especially from one with such an innocent gaze, who was held up to me as a role model. Still looking at the field, Sarita added, “We all do it!”

While my mouth hung open she laughed without humour. “You can’t do it. You argue with the nuns all the time so they expect you to be wicked. They’re so busy watching you, they can’t watch us. After all,” her reasoning was sound, “there are many more of us than them. They can’t watch all of us all the time.”

Never were the differences between my classmates and me so apparent, never had I felt so alienated from my school friends. Having gained admission to an elite school from which most of their parents had been barred, my classmates focused on education as their path to a prosperous future. Theirs was not to reason why – whatever their individual inclination.

On the other hand, because of our religion, the nuns were stuck with me, a Catholic girl caught in the trap of a Catholic school. In my life it was the only place where every move had the potential to be recorded as a misdemeanour rewarded by a refined form of punishment. And it was the nuns, those terrestrial brides of Christ, who owned and controlled a whole array of punishments.

Their power lay in what was supposed to be adult maturity and wide experience of life, which they took as the right to control me by constant criticisms and dire predictions about my future. To further demonstrate their authority I was often locked away for lengthy detentions, which I turned to my advantage. I soon found Shakespeare and Milton gave me the best quotations to clinch arguments with the nuns.

Challenging the status quo was my burden not my choice. Poor logic always sat uneasy with me, forcing the compulsion to question.

As an institution, the nuns espoused feminist views way ahead of their time. In the 1960s when opportunities for girls were restricted to household roles, they were role models of working women who demonstrated a belief in higher education. They provided science and humanities courses to a university entrance standard and without actually saying so, imparted the belief that hard work would achieve boundless ambition. The school motto, emblazoned on badge and blazer, read Nihil Sine Labore – nothing without labour.

Even the domestic science course had a commercial approach with the underlying premise of efficiency. Students were taught budget and staff management, the production of meals using minimum resources and appreciation of household furnishings. The attitude was, if any of the girls didn’t pursue a profession, if she ended up “just getting married”, these skills would help her run an efficient home and be an attraction for a “good” husband.

Discipline, self-control and hard work were the dictums promoted to achieve the prize of success. That “success” was never defined went unnoticed. That success was confined to a narrow track of academic achievement as measured by marks from annual examinations for all classes, meant girls who had the ability and inclination to regurgitate from prescribed texts excelled. Those who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – conform were severely disadvantaged. Analytical thinking, original ideas, artistic flair, those were skills and talents that would be valued in a future era.

This rigid mould worked well for most students of that time, including me. I was lucky. With a good memory I could parrot – sometimes word for word – whatever was required, and publicly demonstrate I had imbibed words of supposed wisdom. There is nothing more flattering than to be quoted back to oneself. It gives the false impression of actually influencing someone. So most of the time, I performed to high acclaim. Other times nothing could induce me to conform, prompting the nuns to say with obvious sarcasm, “Oh-ho! I see your personal friend, Satan, is visiting today.”

In actual fact it was the sheer futility of some subjects that made me rebel. The reproductive habits of amoeba and hydra were boring and knowing the difference between mushrooms and toadstools made no sense. The only fungi I’d ever seen were of the brightly coloured pictorial variety that grew in picture books where fairies lived. And when the history syllabus changed three times in three years so that I repeatedly studied the Mogul Period I found imaginative ways to disrupt the class.

Even though I could flawlessly recite the entire poem Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore, the fellow who’d never shut the door², I was bewildered by the hand-wringing and hair-tearing that young Master Gore evoked by his habit. We lived in a hot country where the play of air through the house was essential so doors were never shut, except external ones for safety.

“Why do I need to learn how sulphuric acid is made?” I asked during one chemistry class.

“Because it’s in the syllabus and you’ll be examined on it.”

Another time, “What’s greengage?”

“It’s fruit,” and to pre-empt further explanations, “Ask your mother. She’ll tell you.”

That evening, “What’s greengage?”

“It’s a type of plum that grows in England.”

“How do you know?”

“In Agatha Christie books Miss Marple makes greengage jam so I looked it up in the encyclopaedia. It doesn’t grow here so I’d never seen one.” I’d read the same books. “She also makes elderberry wine.”

Inevitably, “What’s elderberries?”

But my mother wasn’t playing that game and if I persisted I was in for a long haul with the encyclopaedia.

I was itching to show off my new-found knowledge at school the next day but inexplicably failed to attract interest. It took me ages to realise that attention seeking, look-at-me behaviour is so unattractive. Learning comes from all sorts of places, academia is only one source.

On the other hand, understanding the impact of Loo winds on plant, animal and human life was relevant, as was its interaction with monsoonal rains. Respect for these climatic phenomena was crucial to our survival.

I loved the sheer logic of basic mathematics and spent long hours proving geometry theorems and corollaries. However, I baulked when I was required to calculate the amount of material needed for wall-to-wall carpeting. Carpet in a hot, dry climate is a magnet for dust so wall-to-wall floor coverings were ridiculous.

The difference between simple and compound interest in the prospective growth of my pocket money kept me entertained with many hours of fantastical calculations. I developed the habit of watching interest rates, a pattern that stood me in good stead in my adult life.

What I didn’t understand was that the system of education was developed when pink was the predominant colour on a world map so the syllabus and school life were a close approximation of a prestigious English girls’ school. The pronouncement, “If you study hard and behave with decorum, you’ve got every chance of growing up to be like a cultured English lady,” was a pronouncement thrown at me at regular intervals.

The German nuns visibly supported this concept and without indication of any incongruity promoted the firm conviction that all things English, all things European, were totally superior to anything Indian. From there it’s a miniscule step to an equally firm conviction that all English people, all European people, all white-skinned people, are superior in every way to all dark-skinned people.

Siblings with the same parents but different skin colour experienced this discrimination. Slightly lighter skinned brothers were indulged over their darker siblings. It was as though the smallest suggestion of “white” blood, even though it was merely a quirk of genetics, made a person superior to his darker counterpart. Apparently, there are shades of black.

That this belief held no logic was beside the point. Skin colour swamped any intelligent reasoning.