Tingaling

There were two new things on the horizon as I straightened my sheets, collapsed my mosquito net, put on Mishra Kafi by Nikhil Banerjee, and emptied the dishrack. I also made the morning ginger lemon honey tea with just a spoon of Darjeeling for three people, taking out cups and mugs (some of us like a cup, some a mug), the nimbu (sounds better than limes) and the honey we are endlessly experimenting with, trying to find the one genuine honey, and rolled out my yoga mat as the sitar warmed up. Mishra Kafi is a beautiful raga very delicately and even teasingly rendered by Nikhil babu (he has come to my house and I knew him). I can do all these things together because I live in a room which is, from south to north, the bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, my bedroom, my study, and my dressing room. To go from my dressing room to the bathroom and back, I traverse some 100 metres, or at least 50. I keep trim. I love this extraordinary room, with its eight windows, six of them 12 feet high. Can you imagine the curtains I draw closed and open?

Having enjoyed Nikhil Banerjee and having thought fondly of when we met him in Delhi and when he came to our house in Chicago, I put on Andres Segovia. This brought to my mind Bridgeport where I had first discovered him. Chicago was in the eighties and Bridgeport in the early seventies. Some say you should not live in the past but I don’t understand how you can’t. The ‘past’ is one more level of living, as rich as Kafi and as glutinous as the honey on my teaspoon.

Meanwhile Samira had entered from the next room which is hers and her parents’. She habitually does not greet me in the morning. When she was smaller I had taught her to say namaste and receive my blessings, but it didn’t last. The one thing she does like to tell me at 6 am, or 7 am, or whenever she has arisen that particular day, is what she has changed into. She names the colours she is wearing and demands that I wear the same. I like this system because it takes away the burden of choosing your clothes. She likes pinks, yellows and dark blues, so my life is decidedly simplified.

We were supposed to have dosas for breakfast, meaning that the mixture had been soaked and fermented and was ready to go. Chinta, the cook, arrived late, however. She is such a bright, energetic, happy person, it is difficult to get annoyed with her. As on so many occasions one shrugs one’s shoulders and thinks, “Why not just do it myself?”

So I did. She arrived in time to hover around, set the table, make the chutney, peel the potatoes, and then be complimented as to how delicious everything was.

The children I teach arrive by 9 and we should begin at 9.30, but nowadays they go first to the seed ‘office’ and help soak seeds, get the cups ready to sprout them in, and sometimes transplant them. They are not allowed to water them because they get carried away with the spray bottle and cause havoc. So while they did their seed nursery, I sat and looked at our film, Shankar’s Fairies’ chosen excerpts to go to a certain festival it’s going to. Shhhh….it’s confidential for another few days.

In class, I told them we would do only short rhymes today. So, no “Five little ducks” or “Five little monkeys” or “Wheels on the bus” or “Here we go around.” I don’t mind these. Once we start I am as energetic as any of the children. It’s before we start; I think, “All those verses!”

So we sing, “A sailor went to sea sea sea,” “The bear went over the mountain,” “Humpty Dumpty,” and “I’m a little teapot,” shorter than which no rhymes have been invented.

I realized afresh that my little children sing along enthusiastically but do not understand the words they are singing. I am always reminded of the part in Rabindranath Tagore’ Memoirs where he recounts how there was a rhyme he was taught as a child that went “ting-a-ling tingaling,” and he had been unable to figure out its actual words until his ripe adulthood. (To me it was always obvious that it was “Twinkle twinkle”.) With my children I spell out the words in each line, and I count the total in each line, and I say, “You have to sing five words” or whatever the number is. They try. They will say things like, “Five ducks go little play.” The only one among them, my granddaughter Samira, who is used to hearing English regularly, gets bored with this spelling out of individual words. For her sake and because it seems such a linear and useless procedure, I always stop having them repeat words almost as soon as I start. I reason that if we just keep singing and singing day after day, sooner or later they will know the rhyme as it’s supposed to be. I mean, I am an Indian too and did not leave Indian shores until I was an adult. How the heck did I learn?

It was 10.30 and time to do Science. The plan was to study the Food Pyramid. They drew and they acted out. They were made into the four groups and collected samples of the foods in their groups. Anurag, a Protein, looked at Samira, a Fats’ ghi and plotted, “Keep it aside for lunch. We’ll spread it on our rotis!”

The Food Pyramid is a fairly boring topic, what with its rice and its lentils, its carrots and its peanuts, nary a chocolate or cake to lighten the day—until I had the brainwave to take out their own snacks and dissect those. We looked at our food and discussed other days’ snacks. We were good with Vitamins (three syllables) and Carbohydrates (four) but weak on the Proteins. They looked sad and worried so I cheered them up with various solutions. The problem I wanted to attack was the white bread and red jam which they bring. I told the older two to read the ingredients on the jam bottle and the bread wrapper and come. “The expiry?” one asked. Many Indians have learnt one word or phrase related to each modern phenomenon, and that one word or phrase is considered by them to be good for anything related to that topic.

I have barely come up to 11 am of my day but I’ll stop now, as I did in fact at that point for my coffee. To be continued, with More Fantastic Tales of Children and Staff, and the Making of the Most Glorious School Curricula under the Sun.