100 and 0

Since the Shatabdi Express rolled into the New Delhi Railway Station from Jaipur on Sunday night, I've been ricocheting from one extreme to another like a volleyed ping-pong ball.

On one side of the table lie a series of quasi-successful classes, both with the older boys (unforgotten homeworks! extra compositions! parts of speech!) and with the younger set ("what is your name?"! "how many ____?"! the days of the week! singulars and plurals!). English is a breathtaking -- and breathtakingly difficult -- language, both to learn and to teach. My students seem to be on board for the scenic (if bumpy) ride, and that's a joy to see.

We have an unusual relationship. I've written about how I'm a big sister as well as a teacher: so much of their growth seems to depend upon adults (or slightly older children, like me) paying attention to them for decent stretches of time. They have several adults already taking care of them, of course -- the dorm supervisor (for the older kids), and a couple of other teachers. Whenever I show up, there are precious few of these grown-ups around. In the mornings I might see a supervisor in the dorm office, or another teacher in the giant hall that serves as a classroom. In the afternoons, I see the kids' head teacher sitting around reading the newspaper, and the (overworked, sweet-tempered) assistant teacher taking a much-needed break. Add boredom into the mix: my three 18-year-olds have nothing to do in the mornings, an early afternoon computer class three days a week, and nothing to do in the late afternoons or on the weekends; the contact point kids, most (if not all) of whom are not living in SBT dorms, have nothing to do after 2PM every single day. Someone smiling and laughing with them makes a huge difference, even if it's at the expense of a "productive" English class.

Which is a good thing, because I really have no idea how to teach English anyway. Readers, please: I welcome suggestions, tips, and book/Website recommendations!

The students' (understandable) need for positive attention often ends up in total clamor, with many little bodies vying for the affections of my eyes, ears, and hands. This is just as true of the older kids as it is of the younger ones, though it manifests itself in a different way. The Three Musketeers fight to hold and read from whatever book we're studying together, while the Connaught Place kids just shout and grab: their antics are distracting, but I can't deny how flattering they are, too. After playing and laughing at the beginning of each class, it's hard for me to draw back and become a Teacher again. I'm still working on how to fuse the two personae.

On the other end of the table lie several memories, big and small, from the past few days. One haunts me in particular: a seven-year-old student in my afternoon group whose face showed the horrific signs of being blinded as a younger child. Although there is a sprawling, blood-red scar where his left eye used to be, R.'s right eye (engorged to twice its size and covered with a heavy gray film) still functiona a little. Unable to learn with the rest of the group because of his disability, R. crawled around my feet and clung to my ankles all afternoon, shouting for my attention. At the end of the class, I gave him 'Goodnight Moon' -- a kids' book I had been reading with the other students -- to look at. He held it up close to his right eye and a sort of peace came over him. I won't forget R.'s confusion (minor desperation, even) about who I was, and what I was doing with his friends in our makeshift classroom. I won't forget his infatuation with 'Goodnight Moon'. I certainly won't forget his face.

Something of a more daily shock (can I even say that? Is it still a "shock" if it happens daily?) is the experience of walking down the street in my neighborhood. For almost my entire life, I have nothing less than * relished * my daily commute. Going to high school in New York City, that meant a love affair with the Subway and the M-86 crosstown bus. In Cambridge, it meant taking twenty minutes to get to a classroom five minutes away. (The town’s ridiculous layout makes this relatively easy to do, often unintentionally.) In Pune, my favorite parts of the day were the bumpy rickshaw rides to and from the Deccan College campus. Paharganj is a different story.

Logistically, walking is not easy to do in this neighborhood: there are no sidewalks. You either cram yourself into the tiny space between the jumble of parked cars and the storefronts, or you walk in traffic. The entire Main Bazaar of Paharganj, for that matter, is under construction -- its ground surface is often nothing more than rocks and mud-sewage-sludge. But what really bothers me are the men.

The journalist Anita Jain writes that there are “around 930 women to every 1,000 men according to recent census data, the vast discrepancy a disturbing result of infanticide and sex-segregated abordion.” (2003, p.50) On the streets of Paharganj, this figure might as well be 50 women for every 1,000 men. It’s entirely possible that I will walk the thirty minutes to work every morning and see no more than ten – TEN – women. Ten. Perhaps I’m more aware of these things than I need to be, but let me tell you anyway: it’s scary. I may be in absolutely no physical danger, but still I feel vulnerable and preyed upon. These men’s stares, low whistles, and whispered comments pick and grate at my dignity, not to mention my sanity. Throughout my entire walk to school, I can’t afford to look up * even once *: meeting a man’s gaze is considered a sexual come-on, and only a prostitute would be so bold as to stare back.

“So-called ‘eve-teasing’ is a common phenomenon in India,” says Jain, “perhaps due to the disconnect created by the realtive visibility of women in the public sphere – as opposed to in certain parts of the Islamic world – even as gender relations are still largely circumscribed. Men see, but they are not allowed to touch, leading to pent-up frustration.” (86) I’m nowhere near as sympathetic to these men. (And, for the record, men on the streets of Syria and Jordan practically ignored me when I was there last summer.) Staring, I more than understand: I’m a foreigner, after all, and white skin is unusual here. Staring is fine. But I’ve witnessed enough Indian men being perfectly polite to me that I cannot tolerate leering and commenting from the others. Media be damned: these young men have no excuse for treating me like a low, dirty, sex object.

Excuse my rant.

And so it’s been a week of highs and lows. A few short hours can take me from the grunge of Paharganj to the luxuries of dinner at the Taj Hotel with a family friend, and from the chaos of the classroom to the peace of curling up in bed with a novel. It’s all part of what makes India so exciting, I guess. It’s part of what makes India, India.