Life in a Boarding School

chillibreeze writer — Anisha Bordoloi

My best friend in school was Betty. In many ways, after 24 long years, she still is. Bettina Craxi is her formal name. She has a four-year old daughter now– as old as Betty was when she and I were enrolled at a boarding school in a hill town called Ooty amongst the blue hills of the Nilgiris.

Betty was one of the few Westerners to have joined that year. She seemed to have tried her best to extend her friendship to kids with funny faces and clumsy smiles, and to make herself comfortable in her new world. I cannot think of any other reason why she chose to be my friend when there were a good many others.

She spoke Italian; I did just okay with Assamese and rudimentary English. Betty went on to be called ‘IDU’ that reads ‘I Don’t Understand,’ because of her limited capacity for understanding things that were not explained to her in black and white. That she is blonde is a coincidence.

Well, a friendship blossomed in all its innocence. She eyed my frilly woolen cap with maroon and yellow designs. She wanted to wear it every night for dinner. She loved to run against the wind so that the frills of the cap would flutter.

We’d share our chocolates and cookies in strict fairness and keep an eye on each other lest any bully come in the way. There was another thing we enjoyed doing everyday - stomping the wooden floors of our school to make as much sound as we could with our shoes. Betty perfected this art in less than a week.

Betty and I got to become very good friends before the onset of winter and also more confident in our unintelligent pranks. We loved to think that we were a deadly duo, but only after a good twenty years do we realize that we were perhaps the dimmest clowns who worked so hard at being clever!

Hostel life and its disciplinary tactics had a boring ring to it. There were the likes of us who wanted to make controversial headlines for that little zing in our otherwise good and holy lives. Betty and some of the more animated girls like me managed to sneak into the teachers’ rooms under the pretext of drawing charts for the classroom and other such self-appointed duties.

Even today, after all these years, we find it hard to forget our famous booty of ‘fried channa’ and how we eventually got caught because of our very foolish attempt to mask our ill-gotten treasure. It happened one winter’s evening when Betty and I spotted a sack filled with fried channa in the granary next to the teacher’s room.

We exchanged quick glances and the deal was struck. The dinner bell rang at 7.00 in the evening. The dormitories, filled with the usual chatter, would suddenly become quiet as we filed into queues to enter the dining hall.

Betty and I chose this hour to come off with our loot. We crept into the room quietly and made a successful exit with two handfuls of the unmistakably tasty little pellets. We headed for our dorm and hid our treasure under our pillows and as we did that, we heaved sighs of relief at the surprising simplicity of the apparently difficult task of stealing things. We dashed off to the dining hall on time after the victorious exploit.

With dinner out of the way, it was bedtime. The night prayer rang out loud as we heard ourselves murmuring its lines with one distinct voice. As we were tucking ourselves into bed, we both thought we heard our names being called out. The lights went on all of a sudden.

Betty and I were called out and asked to explain the visibly obvious trail of the same ‘fried channa’ right from the granary to our beds. Blimey! We squirmed as we realized we had left this great evidence that led to the shameful discovery.

The teachers were shocked at the stuff we’d stolen because there were so many other goodies that we could have made off with. What got us to choose lentils of all things baffled them to no end! As if the trail was not enough to ensure that it was us and nobody else, we began to throw the handfuls from under our pillows.

It was evident that we were nervous and had lost every shred of common sense. Within seconds, suspicions were confirmed and we were caught red-handed. We did not know whether we should have cried or laughed or simply apologized as the whole dorm burst into peals of laughter at our brave plot.

Betty and I must have made our minds up never to steal again as we never got together to carry out such crimes. We still remained the best of friends at the time, and maintained we were smart but in no hurry to prove that to ourselves.

Those were days of true friendships and innocent undying promises, generous at an age when we could have been selfish and cried over every small thing, and most of all, the simple faith that we would grow old under the same roof till we died…

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—About our writer:

Anisha, a proud Chennaite for now, is considered worryingly funny by her husband, a description that ought to be strictly reserved for comedy gods, Dylan Moran, The Pythons, and Bill Hicks. Her strengths, she says, lie in her unhurried sense of compassion and her self-effacing humour. She claims to be the planet’s biggest QI (Quite Interesting) fan, and forgives you if you dismiss it as pure exaggeration. Unpretentious intelligence, Anisha emphasises, is in short supply, but that doesn’t worry her too much. A quietly growing collection of books, music, and films keeps her busy. That and a bit of writing, painting, and playing the fool.

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