School free ... yay!

I never really enjoyed school in Kerala - the chooral canings, standing on bench or just 'standing' (on our feet on ground, on the bench or outside class) punishments, homework and the verbal abuse of teachers. Come to think of it, my first school which had Anglo Indian teachers wasn't so bad. 

College in contrast was chill (in new gen language) especially after I left Kerala's borders. College lecturers in the Kerala women's college I went to were not very different from the school ones chiding me for not standing up while they lectured to me or banishing from class for some reason or the other.

Being a parent of school-going children was no great fun either though in the initial years we were more excited or keen about their school activities. Both my kids started in Union Christian Matriculation School in Chennai, a mediocre school with mediocre teachers Vinod chose because it was a Xian school and if ever the kids fell in love with a classmate, it would hopefully be a Syrian Xian (although the school had children from all major communities and states). 

Ash with his skin condition which began just as he started KG, was bullied and abused by classmates and in the school van, and he gave them back good - often giving them a black eye which warranted V's trips to the Principal's room. But many of his class teachers were kind and caring - Jyoti in KG1, Sapna in KG 2, and Annie his CT in Grade 5 (can't remember the other names, and he disliked only one of them). Mira was not so lucky, and got some indifferent teachers including a churchmate who decided to not include her for the school anniversary program because she often had a stye in her eye that year. School anniversaries always tried to include all children, and Ash despite his ill health always had a role to play. He had such a sweet voice that he was made to sing a song by Don Moen -- "God will make a way where there seems to be no way" -- in front of the school assembly one morning. It seemed very poignant going by his condition those days.

And God did make a way for him. V decided to quit his job when HCL transferred him to Delhi, and crossed the shores to secure a job in Dubai. To a Malayali, Dubai is nearer than Delhi :) And it was home in other ways - we could get anything and everything we got in Kerala, which was not the case in Chennai. The UAE is a mini-Kerala, be it in its population or the restaurants.

Ash's skin began to improve in UAE weather - he wasn't sweating and scratching himself as much anymore, though the lichenification and hyperpigmentation (making him look darker than most other Indians) of his skin invited ridicule and physical abuse in his new school, Elite English School. Ash retaliated fiercely and once V was called to the Princi's room because he had given a hefty Afghan boy who had bullied him a bleeding gum. Ash told us there was no point in complaining to teachers, so he had decided to take the law in his own hands. Curiously, despite his puny figure - probably caused by the chronic skin problem and food restrictions and consequent undernourishment - he was able to defeat boys much bigger and stronger than him. He was an average student but made friends easily.

Mira, like me, is not very sociable and did not make many friends. Her communication skills in English were poor, she told me, nor did she like the north Indian girls in class. I was surprised - I had assumed that a Chennai education was a sure passport to chaste English-speaking skills like many of my MCC classmates (I suspect the ones who conversed in chaste urban English were educated in residential schools in the hills like Lawrence and Bishop Cotton). She made a couple of close Malayali friends after she changed her second language from Hindi to Malayalam (for that, she took tuitions with a Malayalam teacher for nearly a year).

Ash continued to grapple with his Hindi lessons despite tuitions with a Kashmiri lady I met at the gym. In Grade 9, we shifted him to what is rated one of the best schools in the country - DPS Sharjah. Seeing him struggle with Hindi, I convinced V and the high school headmaster to allow him to shift to French. The head of French dept agreed to take him if he practised French during the two-month summer vacations and cleared a diagnostic test in the next term. Both kids took lessons from an AF tutor in Bangalore through an online learning platform.

While Ash passed and shifted to French in Gr 9 in what was an unprecedented step for the school, Mira used the opportunity to change schools in the second term. Malayalam with its 52 alphabets was not as easy as we thought for someone who spoke colloquial Malayalam with a Tamil accent. Aspam, a relatively new school with bright classrooms and small class strength, was her haven for the next two terms. The teaching wasn't great, the fees was high and parents complained to each other but the school ensured a flurry of activities that were as silly and pointless as the frequent mails from the dean. The snobs in class made M extremely conscious of her clothes and accessories, and she rushed to malls on weekends hunting for branded clothes. The many parties the girls were another drain on our purse.

V had enough, and decided to shift her to Ash's school. Although she was excited to go, the groupism among girls made her a loner. The two Covid years came as a relief, but 12th again was a trial by fire academically and socially. While Ash reluctantly took Humanities stream with his favourite subject Psychology as optional, M went for Commerce on V's prodding. Theory subjects weren't her strong points, but accountancy did not interest her either.

Today, Ash is happily attending B.Sc. Psychology at Curtin University. Mira will soon join a uni in Bangalore for a course in Visual Media and film making after dilly dallying with entrance exams for  economics and BBA Finance. So happy to have put school behind us, and the early morning rush to catch the school bus.

But if you ask me which of their schools I liked the best, I would say EES which has only an "acceptable" KHDA rating. Set in a lovely and quiet area of Dubai, the school is neat and has children from other nationalities even though it is an Indian curriculum school. The fee is modest, and it celebrated most events like Dubai schools do - be it Onam, Christmas or Diwali, the fitness month of exercises in November, and school anniversary on chilly February nights. Ash was part of the choir, while Mira sang or danced in an Arab gown or a Mohiniyattam costume. Shivering in the cold, we watched them with pride and wonder at their transformation. Elite also took them out for excursions to water parks and the like, though Mira often complained everything is boring. I hope some day she will realise what fun it was - it definitely was to me as a parent.

DPS, probably because of its sheer size, never invited parents to their annual day, and it remained an event for each grade as was their assembly. Interactions with teachers was minimal except M's first CT, who bonded well with her students. Luckily she was Ash's CT too, and it made the Covid year easier for us.