‘Back to school’ more harrowing than ‘back to work’?
The other day at Tavola and Jashanmal at Mall of The Emirates — yes, yes, the stereotype is true; in Dubai, we check out malls over the weekends — I was checking out random household appliances, lingering over cookers, cockatoo-printed bottle-openers, heavy-bottomed saucepans and other well-designed gadgets I have no intention of buying (because that would mean cooking). But that doesn’t mean I can’t look and gawp at prices and make my Indian-ness clear, does it? Now, while at these stores, I saw a whole bunch of ‘back to school’ posters and adverts and parents hovering over the tiffin and water bottles section (“pink or blue? blue elephant motif or purple hippo?”). They were deciding on what’s best for their child, and their pockets. I began envying these kids who have it so good, whose parents get them new tiffin boxes and bags and stationery (Borders was nuts on Friday with the back to school offers!) before the start of a term (but also new academic year starting Monday for British, American curriculum schools starting yesterday). And I was thinking, my God, did we get so much importance as tiny tots?
It hasn’t been all that long since I was in school. But it’s already fuzzy. What was it like to go back to school? A nightmare, surely? But I can’t flesh out the nightmare. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. (God, imagine having to go back to school! All those unit tests! The days of terror when the math test results were going to be out and you’d have to get your test copy signed by a parent and you didn’t have the guts that some kids had to forge a signature. Even though now, with an adult lens, you know ‘guts’ then is ‘stupidity’ now.)
I don’t remember the world knowing back to school time. I don’t remember shops thinking of us as a marketing ploy, an audience to be catered to
At the most, my parents must have made the effort to at least get us (brother and I) the new books that freshly daunting syllabus demanded. They must have got us rolls of brown paper (never liked the shiny light brown, always the thick brown), label stickers for all our notebooks, lined registers, unlined registers, text books, besides the extras: scissors, staplers, Scotch tape, though other people called it cello tape and we looked down on them. My brother and I left to our own devices for the day before school I guess, to sit on the floor with a scissor and a ruler and put brown covers on our new note books. We might have got some pairs of socks and a couple of white shirts for the uniform. The claspy belts lasted the whole year even though the nylon threads began to pull. We carried the same proneto-getting-lost Milton water bottle, and pastel bottom tiffin box with the white-ish lid.
But, my point is, I don’t remember the world at large knowing about how it was back to school time. I don’t remember shops thinking of us as a marketing ploy, an audience to be catered to. There was always one school store, one uniform supplier, and we went back there every year. There is also the fact that I didn’t grow up in Dubai. I’m sure even the ones who did grow up in Dubai don’t remember such a hoopla being made of the return to the guillotine.
Looking at all those parents and occasional sad face of a no-doubt schoolgoer, I am thrilled I never have to go back to school. No one can make me take another math test. And the fleeting depression you feel in your first week back at work after a great holiday doesn’t even begin to compare with a double period of math. Have a fun term/year, kids. It won’t last forever.
— nivriti@khaleejtimes.com