I learned an important lesson today. Well not exactly, the significance of the lesson was lost on me that day. It came back to me years later, a sudden snake rising out of the mud, eyes yellow with realization. It’s cliche, but I’ll tell it anyway.
At the Cambridge University affiliated prep school I went to, Sports Day happens once a year, in February. We spend the weeks before it, doing drills and practice for it, carefully carved between periods. We never had gym, or extracurriculars of any sort, so Sports Day and the EYP (End of Year Production, where we put on a play) were revered days in the school calendar.
It’s the one day we all wear uniforms. Cambridge’s non-official uniform, only worn during Sports Day and on field trips, was simple: all white. We were fitted for white shirts with our badge emblazoned on it proudly. Underneath was up to us, white shorts, pants or a skirt. White tube socks, white sneakers, Keds. It seemed martial, but there were ways to dress it up, if you knew what to do. I didn’t know what to do, but when we all gathered on the field, I spotted cute bracelets and caps and sunglasses. One of the girls in a grade above us, Eashani even had a soft pink scarf tied around her waist. There’s plenty of photographs of Sports Days through the years, me and my sisters always in our starched white shirts and baggy shorts with skinny legs sticking out.
Sports Day is ninety percent fun and ten percent public humiliation. The day is planned out to the last minute by our geography teacher, Mrs. Ghalia, a woman who would do much better as a sergeant in the military than the teaching head of a private school. The principal and vice principals make their brief, scheduled appearances, but much like regular school days, Mrs. Ghalia operates under absolute and total power. There’s two parts to Sports Day: the dance/march/drill whatever you call it and the actual races. Every single grade, from first all the way to the twelfth graders all participate. It’s mandated, and very difficult to get out of (I’ve tried multiple times). Each grade is taught their dance by our biology teacher Ms. Mandra, who is musically inclined. She always picks Queen songs for us, so I can’t listen to ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ without thinking of twirling on a bright green field in front of a big crowd of parents armed with cameras.
The drill isn’t so bad, it’s the races that keep me up for days both before and after it happens. The younger kids get to do fun stuff. They have three-legged races, they hop around in bean bags and crawl through ball pits and go backwards and blindfolded and whatever else. Fifth grade upwards, it’s just a sprint. No buffers, no mercy, just you and the other girls in your bracket, in front of parents, god, and the universe.
Sure, the girls, we don’t care so much, not so much as the guys do.
We all report at 6am sharp. The morning is cool and bright and we shiver as we line up in place. With every grade competing, the day is going to be long. But the waiting parts are fun. We all gather under our assigned tents, or do practice races across the tracks. The field is big and the grass is slightly damp from the morning dew, which means if you fall you will stain yourself badly with brown mud. Every so often a teacher will come by and order us to practice our drill or do a lap. Famously known for being the rowdiest batch, we were never far from sharp eyes.
The boys spend this time doing stretches and hitting and trash talking each other. The girls drape ourselves lazily across the blankets and lick popsicles and chat with the teachers we liked. It was always a party when Mrs. Mandra, Ms. Shirley or Mr. Shen were on duty. They were our favorites, and not so different from us, we said.
“I don’t want to do this,” I wail, lying on my back and holding my hand up to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun. It’s 11am and already unbearably hot.
“I don’t either,” groans Shree. “Why do we have to put ourselves through this every damn year?”
“Yeah, only people that want to should do it,” I say.
Adilla points to Anu, who is out there with the boys, teeth bared. “Anu definitely wants to.”
“She can do it, for all I care. Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if she totally flames those idiots,” is my opinion.
We agree. Anu is by far the shortest of us, but has the determination of an angry street cat. She wears her long hair in a tight braid down her back, her navy blue cap pulled low on her head, as serious as possible.
“They really should let guys and girls race each other,” I say. “Somehow it’s more humiliating to separate us.” I’m awfully competitive, but only where I have a sporting chance. I won’t send my troops out to battle unless I know they’re mowing everyone else down. My goal is the same as any other year: just not dead last.
Shree sits up to take a strained sip out of her metal water bottle. “Ugh. Where’s Barbie? I want to get to see if Save You Tonight has updated.”
We grin and dive into the world of fanfiction immediately. Barbie is the only one of us who’s been blessed with a phone. We fight tooth and nail for it every chance we get. We are at the very height of our One Direction obsession and life is wonderful. Barbie’s gallery is flooded with thousands of snapshots and edits of the boys. Our favorite fanfics get updated every week and we sob over them, tear them apart and read the most explicit, depraved sex scenes out to each other. Nobody finds this abnormal.
The guys hate what they can’t understand. They can only find one insult, they’re gay! To which we reply, gosh we hope so, because we ship Harry and Louis. The complex implications of imposing fetishsized gay fantasies on stranger celebrities isn’t something we think about until years later, when we reminisce over video calls across the Atlantic and say, wow we were nuts. What the hell was that?
The imagined situations, relationships and tropes were often more real to us than the hot gossip happening in the real world, all around us. Ishan and Eashani are rumored to be coupled up. Rowan’s affections are completely unknown, random and mysterious.
“You know what, though?” I say as Adilla paces around the tent impatiently. “The fact that Shree, you’re always being teased with Rowan and I’m always being ragged about Sajal and Shawn, are like real life ships, right? Am I right??”
We howl with laughter. Sajal and Arvin come in just then.
“What are you dumbasses doing?”
A usual greeting.
“Literally nothing. It’s so goddamn boring.”
“Did you know Ms. Mandra just told us she graded the tests.” Sajal’s smugness makes my heart sink immediately.
I cringe. “What’d she say? Who got what?”
Arvin plops down on the grass and takes Shree’s water bottle. “Won’t say.”
“God, you guys are the worst,” I groan.
“You can’t get some simple fucking test scores out of her?” challenges Shree.
“You think you can?” exclaims Sajal.
I grin. What would the all supreme, His Majesty Sajal say if we got those scores? Then again, maybe I didn’t want to know. Sajal was smug, but it could be a front. I think back over my answers. There was that one stupid drawing of the lower intestine that wasn’t my best work. I purse up my lips.
“Want us to go find out?” I say.
“Oh as if,” returns Arvin with his patented eye roll.
I get to my feet immediately. “Come on, Shree!”
“I’ll believe it when I see it!” shouts Sajal after us as we march off. Adilla doesn’t look up from her book. I could never tell when she was in competition and when she wasn’t.
As Shree chatters in my ear, I’m boiling, and her words are darting above my head. These stakes were worse, much worse than the races or drills or any of that nonsense. That biology test was our last big test before finals. Year after year, Sajal and I are in hot, furious competition over the title of first place. Every single test score counts, every quiz grade, every homework piece, every nod of approval from every teacher in every subject. At the end of each year, the teachers compiled some mysterious algorithm to run us through, razor sharp and final. Then during EYP, during the prize ceremony, the first, second and third places in each grade were announced before the audience. It was the single most defining point of every year.
Those who were named, were basically the kings and queens for a year, epic bragging rights that lasted for as long as anybody would listen. We’d watch high school movies about popular jocks and cheerleaders ruling the school, throwing nerds into lockers and we’d look at each other in amazement. In real life, in our private little international school with its five figure tuition tags and direct feeds into Cambridge University, things were quite different. The academic superstars, the apple of the teachers’ eyes, ruled all. It was easy actually, to rebel, and declare yourself free from that chain of command. All you had to do was not care. Not care about your grades, or your future, or what the teachers thought. Few people managed to do it. We banished them from our kingdom and laughed in their faces.
Our class was divided comfortably into two social groups, one of which had significantly more power and resources than the other. The first was the academically inclined, with an emphasis, an obsession with getting good grades, at least on paper. The teachers’ beloved. We had parents who would implode at the sight of a B, we went to private tutors, knifed each other over the rankings and carried textbooks around like talismans. The other group, the degenerates, had loose and free parents that didn’t even know when the PTA meetings were happening. They just signed the checks and sent supermarket brownies in the packed lunches. The second group had no curfews, no rules, and deep down we were mad with jealousy. I know we were. We watched them ignore phone calls from their parents, sit in the backs of classrooms, making paper planes and talking back and and for all our swaggering and airs, wished we had the audacity to do the same.
Somehow helicopter parents and absentee parents produced the same fucked up kids. The mathematics of it is baffling. My best friend in college, Ian, was barely parented, and he was as mentally ill as me, with intimacy issues and trouble processing feelings.
We didn’t have rules in the house in so many words, but most things were met with a no, do your homework. Even when there was no homework, there was homework. Crack open an encyclopedia, listen to Mozart, solve Sudokus, read some Shakespeare, build architecture Legos, read ahead in the textbooks, do extra credit work. We had no curfew because we weren’t allowed anywhere. There weren’t locks on our phones because we didn’t have phones. We were never given dinner with the nice parts left out as punishment, because there was never soda or sweets in the house. Cake was a birthday only thing, so thank goodness for the Ferrets.
So yes, the biology test mattered, more than anything else at all on this day. Shree’s better at chilling out than I am, so she skips as we walk towards the teachers area.
“Ms. Mandra!” we call at her.
She breaks away from the gaggle and strolls towards us. Ms. Mandra, as always, is tall, cool and dissolute, like an elegant cat with a very fluffy tail.
“What’s up, girls?” She smiles at us, flashing dimples.
I nudge at Shree furiously. She’s better at this kind of thing than me. Shree launches into her spiel. Ms. Mandra laughs at us. Her short curly hair is as tossed up as usual, oh so casually. She’s dressed in her regular kurta with dark jeans combo. She always looked just in place, whether it was in the middle of a dusty field track, or sailing down the school corridors.
“Well you know, I can’t tell you that. You’ll have to find out on Monday.”
“Oh but you told Sajal and Arvin,” I say suddenly.
She looks at me and I melt under her gaze. “No I didn’t.”
I lick my lips. “They said so. They’re such liars, right?”
“Right.”
Me and Shree exchange glances as Ms. Mandra looks down at us, chin crinkled thoughtfully.
I try another angle. “Alright, we just wanted to know because we need something for today. These races are making us miserable. You know I can’t run at all,” I say, half turned towards Shree.
Ms. Mandra laughs her tinkly laugh. “I know, I know. But aren’t you excited for your dance?”
“Ugh, I am, but I’m very bad at dancing, haha, you know this.”
Ms. Mandrusha can’t help but smile. “But I’ve seen you try so hard! You’ve been coming along nicely!”
I swallow some caterpillars, trying not to picture Ms. Mandra waltzing around the courtyard like nothing on the planet mattered. Sure, like any of us even dreamed of being able to move like that.
“Alright, alright,” says Shree. “We only want to know if it’s good news, ya know.”
Ms. Mandrusha holds us under her sunny gaze for a few seconds, before she gives in. “Fine, fine, but don’t even tell Mrs. Ghalia I told you, yeah? You know what she’s like.”
“We swear!” we breathe together.
Ms. Mandsuha takes out her phone and opens up the scores. “Okay, okay, fine, Shree, you got a 96-”
“Yes!” whispers Shree.
“Continue!” I gasp.
“Rushtri, you got a 98.”
I widen my eyes. This could be damning or the best news ever, depending on what the next words out of her mouth were. “What about Sajal? What about Sajal?”
She takes a small breath, like she was mentally running scenarios through her head. “Remember you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
“Okay!”
“Sajal got a 97.”
“Yes!” I squeal, unable to help myself.
Ms. Mandra is sympathetic to my eternal struggle. Most of the teachers were. I think they actually sort of relished the nasty, all consuming rivalry I had, both against Sajal and against Ferret One.
“Arjun got an 85.
Shree asks for some others, but I don’t hear her. Life is good. I’m on top, as of now. Finals season is almost upon us, and it’s good spirits. Shree and I flounce back to our tent. Some of the others have joined, huffed out from laboring under the white hot Indian sun. They turn to us expectedly, a hush falling over. Shree reels off the scores and the tent falls into chaos.
Sajal’s eyes gleams. “Alright good job on this one.” He’s better at pretending than I am.
“What got you?” I ask.
“That fucking intestine drawing, I’m sure.”
“Ugh, me too.”
We don’t speak to each other for the rest of the day. Most people forget the scores as soon as our names are called for our turn. We do the silly dance, neatly placed out in rows as ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ blares over the speakers. It’s not so bad.
The races commence in full speed sometime after 1pm.
When they call our names, we follow Mr. Shen out onto the field. I can feel hundreds of eyes on us. Our bracket is us and the two grades above us. Hardly seemed fair, but there was nothing doing. We all line up on the line of chalk, breathing out clouds of dust and vibrating anxiously. Shree is on my left and Eashani is on my right. She’s taken her scarf off and tied her hair into a high ponytail. Eashani and I have always had a cold kind of mutual understanding, like two plants drowning in the same pot. She’s one of the prettiest girls in school. Her hair is naturally wavy, like magazine wavy, and her glasses are round and fashionable. She’s taller than I am and has skin clear as the night sky, perfect nose, and teeth that don’t need braces. Of course Ishan liked her, who could blame him. Of course, being a girl, she was victim to the same merciless teasing we were, more so, because she wasn’t in the group. I didn’t understand how none of the others were shocked by how she looked, in her tennis skirt and icy smile on her face. We don’t speak as we stand there, waiting for the fatal scream of the whistle.
It happens very suddenly. Mr. Shome blows a piercing shrill across the field and off we go. I pump all of me into my legs. I’m barely breathing as the wind whips in our face. The finish line is a red blur in front of me, never getting closer. We kick up dust and red clay clouds in our faces. I can hear the audience screaming and cheering, streaming by me with the snap of air. I can’t feel my body. The red blur becomes clearer and clearer, and for one glorious second, I can feel the other legs pumping slightly behind me. My eyes curve to see the breathy, red faces of the other girls next to me. And just like that, several of them rush by me. I grit my teeth as every muscle in my body squeals in pain and suddenly it’s over. I bend over myself, hands on my knees, puffing and gasping, tears in my eyes. I look around to see Anushka jumping in victory and Eashani laughing and panting. They’d won. Eashani by a slight smirch. She just had longer legs, there wasn’t much Anu could do. Adilla and Shree are laughing too, glad it’s over.
I go off to the sidelines, blood rushing in my face, heart racing, to go find my water bottle. At least I’m not last, I think in irritation.
Later on, my father tells me, “you know I saw you, I saw you ahead of everyone at the beginning. You were doing so well, and then you glanced, you looked at everyone else and that’s when they got ahead. You can’t look at the other people ever.”
Almost a decade later, I’m sitting at my desk at work, waiting for a message back from my boss. It’s almost 8pm in New York and I had just sent him the final edition of the new media layout for an insurance ratesheet. On reflex, I open Instagram and scroll through absently. Then I see it: Sajal’s post. He had just gotten his license. He’s officially a doctor. Just like he always said he was going to be. I allow myself to lose my mind a little before, a voice kicks in, at twenty-three?? I do some research. Apparently in India it only takes five years of schooling to become a doctor, unlike the twelve here. That’s pertinent information.
My eye twitches and I remember that stupid race with Eashani and remind myself, stop looking at other people.
Schizoposting 
