“This is madness,” chuckles Maya, as I gobble another samosa. I gulped, gasped, and groaned. Maya grinned. Two weeks in India, and I am yet to find a samosa that isn’t lava cooked in Saharan zephyr and seasoned with gravel.
Maya and I had been teaching 2nd grade at an at-risk school. We called our class ‘Superheroes’; no crime went unpunished. Except Shantanu’s. With dark pools of menace for eyes and fight-ignited chalk marks for a smile, Shantanu was 2-A’s Joker; his tattered trousers made tables tremble.
This morning, terror struck. Shantanu tore my chart off the crumbling walls, ripped the Batman figure, and celebrated his slaughter. The kids shrieked and our vocal chords wailed, mourning Batman’s death. Maya’s eyes met my raised eyebrows: the adult red alert activated.
We tread to Shantanu’s house through puddles. Lifting our feet, each toe tied to buckets of doubt filled with gallons of guilt, consoling fragments of self-esteem that each step forward would ease the buckets. Or make us feel the weight less.
Delhi has a strange romance with rain. Some days, it’s a crush that abandons her with broken arteries and floods. Today, it’s a serenade; coaxing lovers, thoughts, and the past into naiveté.
A waft of burnt cumin and sweat caught my eye, a stone caught my foot, a puddle caught my startled face. Maya’s guffaws thaw the dilapidated walls of Old Delhi, merging with the icy, smog-fuelled air to shrink itself to silence, mocking our cloaked cheer.
Shantanu’s house greets us with the sweetness of paan stainsand urine. Kissing the parched ground on a dying wire, pastel-hued underwear flirts for attention. They had been rainbow-hued, but the wringing of tired hands and time had stretched them to fit many skins. A Muezzin calls to prayer, his spell broken by Shantanu’s mother, who speaks as if she was racing her words to see which would win.
“So happy. SO SO happy. Shantanu! Water? SHANTANU! Have water some na! SO happy! SHANTANU”
As we wait, I glance at the memory-laden walls adorned with photos, hiding cracks. There, in the rickety left corner of the faded yellow wall, crowning a baby Shantanu’s still menacing-eyes and chalked-smile, I find the ousted Batman. Shantanu’s mother caught me eyeing Batman.
“Shantanu so happy he say he get prize. He so so happy. SHANTANU”
My raised eyebrows met Maya’s eyes: the teacher red alert activated.
Shantanu comes sliding down the railing, sees us, and goes sailing back up, only to be caught by the ear by his mother. His hands hold the snack tray out, and I pick a samosa. Maya grins. I take a deep breath and sink my teeth into the hard shell, hoping to make it to the soft exterior without getting burnt this time. Maybe it’ll sting less this time. Shantanu had stung less this time.
Rewrite the World 