“When I grow up I don’t want to get married,” says Geetha. “I want to read a lot instead.” We are standing on the roof of New Creation Bilingual School in Auroville, a settlement close to Pondicherry, in Tamil Nadu. We’re staring at the sky during a meteor shower, trying to spot shooting stars. In this part of India, there are many stars to watch.
Coming to New Creation has been a pilgrimage for me. My mother was principal of the school just before she died, three years ago. We stand in the same classrooms she taught in, sleep in the same room that she lived in, and are probably being bitten by the same mosquitos as well.
My mum, a hardened feminist, would certainly approve of Geetha’s philosophy. She has too much ahead of her to be ensnared by a love-rat. At 12 years old, she can speak fluent Tamil and English, and is learning Spanish. She takes classes in sign language. She knows all about the planets, all about the plants and different kinds of birds. She takes classes in all kinds of sports, and arts. She also is trained in woodwork, and embroidery, and pottery, just in case she wants to get one of the surplus manual jobs that are open in the surrounding area. She is also supported by the school’s special needs class, a rarity in India. But Geetha wants to be a nurse and help people who “have no eyes and no ears and,” she covers her mouth with both hands and nods her head.
Gita is an orphan, one of ten or so children who board at the school. Thirty-five children in total, from the nearby village of Kuilapayam come to receive a better education than they could have ever otherwise expected. This afternoon they sit on the grass outside the concrete pod classrooms which surround them (designed by a French architect, and decidedly Star Wars-esque). Inside them are the decorations and displays of a happy Western primary school: wobbly hands drawn around and coloured in, alphabets decorated with apples and books and cows and ducks…The only difference is that here are the curlicued letters of the Hindi alphabet, of which there are just over a hundred.
“It’s important that they learn their own language too,” says Shankar, the headteacher who eventually took over from my mother. He’s introduced a modern system of schooling, and hopes soon to bring in national exams. I remember the words of my editor back in Delhi, who was gently bragging about how many languages he knew. When I asked him if he knew Tamil, he laughed and asked what use I thought that could possibly be. Tamil is a language in a class of its own: one of the most ancient languages still spoken in the world today. Alongside this, children must learn English if they are to do anything beyond the ordinary. And they are all extraordinary enough to do so.
Even those with special needs are trained in carpentry, cookery and gardening, skills that will get them jobs to meet the insatiable demands of surrounding Auroville and nearby Pondicherry. They are also taught pottery, but since the profession is traditionally for lower castes, only the youngest show any interest. The potter’s wheel fell into disrepair long ago.
Outside, the children sit around in a circle with their teacher, the younger ones holding battered little textbooks, repeating phrases in Hindi. Some of the older children have taken the little ones into groups and are sitting in the shade, reading English books aloud as they trace their finger underneath each word. There is a gentle hum of activity. We are surprised to see they are eager, and even more surprised to learn that this is just homework time. They hardly see us as we pass by.
The children are all in uniform - either purple or green – gingham shirts and trousers, or pinafores. The boys’ hair is neatly cut, and the girls have ponytails tied with ribbons and strings of lily of the valley. Cuts are neatly bandaged back up. Gone are the grubby faces and hands of the orphans and beggars of Delhi. Some of these children are washed at school. Their parents are sometimes abusive; at best they are neglected, and at worst they suffer physical harm. A brand new building, recently given as a one-off gift by a Western donor, has been polished until it shines in the sunlight, making it slippery for the bare feet underneath. It is here that the children receive their midday meal and their snacks, piles of rice soaked in yellow daal, scooped up eagerly by tiny sticky fingers. For some, it’s the only food they will eat.
A ten minute walk to their village after the school day, and all of a sudden the second world they inhabit looms into view. A collection of ramshackle huts make up the little estates where the day students live. Outside, a stick thin mother rakes the mud, a small baby tied to her back with a grubby rag, its head lolling behind her. She can’t have been more than 25, but her weary gait would suggest otherwise. Two dogs lie in the middle of the tarmac road, and it takes a closer inspection to check that they are breathing – which they are, albeit slow and shallow. The huge green palms and lush cashew trees which grow around the village seem to ignore these settlements. These come instead in textures of stick and slush, and various shades of brown. But from behind the huts hurtle little purple and green figures, recognising us from the afternoon’s tour. They jump up onto the walls, brandishing sticks they have been playfighting with, demanding that we take their pictures. They jump and shout, full of energy. Looking behind at the tired, bony woman with the baby, I wonder if any of these children belong to her.
But New Creation is short of funds. Janet and Mauna help run the school. They are, respectively, American and Dutch, though they have lived in Auroville for decades. They sit in a sunlit classroom, tin tea kettle before them, and explain that their donors and their donations are slowly receding. The credit crunch has hit hard. In addition, Western donors slink back from an increasingly wealthy India, not realising that there are no regular wealthy Indian donors left to take their place. New Creation is short of donors to keep them in lentils and rice for the next few months. On top of that, though they have funds for a new library, partially paid-for by a fund my sisters and I set up for my mother - they have no books to fill it with. And daal comes first.
Back on the rooftop, after a noisy evening meal with the menagerie – plates piled high, tonight at least, with rice and daal, pasta, tomato sauce and curried egg, seconds aplenty – The rest of the boys tell us their life plans. Against the various chirrups and chirps of the night-time, they shout their aspirations with the enthusiasm of a pantomime audience: Pilot; Engineer; Policeman. “Astronaut!” shouts a boy with his arm in a cast. He’s broken it twice now, flying off a building. As for Geetha, she has decided exactly how her plans are coming to fruition. She is going to grow wings, she says, and fly to London where she will be a successful (and presumably single) woman. She’s going to have a big house and own lots of books. Apart from the wing-growth, and maybe the singledom too, it all seems totally plausible for her: the little girl wearing a jingling anklets and a bindi, who can name each bird and insect in the nighttime Indian chorus, who was born under a thatched roof in a Tamil village.
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