Free Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy

I taught in Timmins. I had them for history and literature, so sometimes it was twice a day for the arts girls. They were a smart class, much less aggressive than Shobha’s ninth. I was somewhat embarrassed at the thought that they might have heard parts of my conversation with Miss Nelson. The girls poked their heads into the office.
    â€œExcuse us, Miss Nelson, may we please come in for a minute?” said Nandita, a portly girl who sat at the back of the class.
    Miss Nelson had an open-office policy; anyone was free to go in with grievances. Grievances were taken to the principal only under extreme circumstances, and Nandita should have been as nervous as the rest of the girls. But she was not. She turned her head and gave me a smile as she walked in. It was a small and measured smile, but for some reason I felt it was the first real smile I had received in that bristling school. It was appraising, but it was frank. I walked on feeling somewhat better.
    Flamboyant Shobha and prosaic, portly Nandita, they became my two pillars of the schoolroom. I thought of them as my two stances—resistance and assistance. Throughout my time in Panchgani, while Shobha mocked and strutted, I felt that Nandita had my back. I felt that when the girls gossiped about me, Nandita took my side, and later, when she saw I was in trouble, she leaped without looking.

Six
    Lifting Latches
    L ater, I understood that we were so drawn to each other, Merch, the Prince, and I, because we were the outsiders. Merch, who was called the Mystery Man, was a watcher. He was a tall gangly man of quiet brilliance. He was a Panchgani character, a recluse who lived in two rooms above Dr. Desai’s dispensary. Merch rarely spoke to anyone, and so, when we stayed up and talked all night, his unused voice sometimes dipped and swirled without pitch.
    I see the three of us on a beach. I am walking at the water’s edge, getting my toes wet. The wind curls my hair and tickles my body. I long to go in, but I am waiting for a miracle to transport me. Merch, the wise man, sits at the shore, gleaning the world’s wisdom from the sea. He is averse to action, and will not go in. And the Prince, our surfer, waits only for the excitement of the next wave. She plunges in and is transported back to the shore, to fall at our feet, angry, or laughing, or bruised. She is reckless and giving. And for that, we love her, we fear her, we fear for her.
    But I know now that we were the shallow ones. There was no deep-sea person among us, not a swimmer, a fisher, or a diver.
    I had been in Panchgani for three weeks, or forever. We became friends, the three of us, starting on the night of my twenty-first birthday. It was the fourteenth of June.
    Word of my passage into adulthood had been passed along among the teachers, who sang “Happy Birthday” to me at lunchtime. I received a card from my mother with “To Our Darling Daughter” in curly gold letters, and Miss Henderson gave me an embroidered tea cozy. It was Friday, and the Sunbeam teachers had invited me for dinner. They said they were going to cook. I heard they had ordered a cake from Lucky’s Bakery. I was excited. I wore a pink silk kurta, made a luxurious, loose plait, and tied four small silver bells into the end of it.
    The monsoon had weakened, and we had had no rain for four days. But the air was soft and sweet, and my hair tinkled along as I walked under the rows of swishing silver oaks and saw through them an orange sunset. The bazaar loudspeaker was playing an obscure Hindi song, which now echoes often in my head. It was the first time I felt happy to be in Panchgani.
    There were five teachers in Sunbeam: the ever-smiling Malti Innis whom I had met that first day in the staff room; her childhood friend Beena Keval; the Misses Mathews and Jacobs; and Miss Prince. Malti and Beena, both twenty-four years old, were friends from Allahabad. They were going out with two young Anglo Indian