Slow Dancing

original

This school dance is serious stuff, there’s even a rehearsal.

MomComm: But what about electing Miss Woodstock? Do they not do that anymore?

My own class of ’81 failed to do so, actually. We voted three times, and each time reached a three way tie between Tina, Vinita, and Reem. I think this was because each represented a "faction": Tina for the missionaries, Vinita for the Indians (though her parents were also missionaries), and Reem for "everyone else".

Our solution? We decided to have three Miss Woodstocks. Then, just to keep people on their toes, we elected Durjoy "Mister Woodstock."

Indian Schoolkids

original

Yesterday I tried running again.

The Indian children in this area find us extremely interesting, us big white girls.

If there’s a camera, it’s the end of the world. They can hold that smile for up to an hour, but then they attack you and surround you because they know that (in 99 cases out of 100) you have a digital camera and they can see themselves in the photos immediately!

There’s a cook who knows me by now and every morning I go over my Hindi lesson with him. I have to put down my tray and put my hands together to salute him, “namaste” – it’s not complete without the gesture.

MomComm: I wonder if this cook recognizes me in my daughter. All the staff have phenomenal memories, and when alumni return they are proud to introduce us to their sons, now serving Woodstock themselves. At our class reunion in Mussoorie last November (I wasn’t present), one of the bearers said to my classmate Durjoy: “Sahib, you have all grown old and fat!”

Dorm Colors

Rossella

Lean on me.

red and pink curtains

Certain habits, like red and pink, one never loses.

MomComm: A few years ago, Midlands, the girls’ dormitory, was rebuilt from the ground up, though in the same “footprint” it had always occupied, including the bizarre “bell tower” which has never contained a bell. Two floors were made into three, and the open roof of what used to be the senior floor was enclosed to keep out the rain and the monkeys. The thick, old stone and concrete walls gave way to thinner modern materials – no more deep, romantic window seats. And no more view of Witches’ Hill: the trees have grown up so high on that side of the building that you can’t see much out the windows even from the third floor.

The new rooms have color schemes: yellow, pink, green, blue, both on the walls and the plastic-laminated furniture which is attached to the walls and cannot be moved.

It’s new, modern, sparkling clean. And kind of sadly sterile. We liked being able to rearrange our furniture. Senior year, my roommate Lauri and I were considered kinky because we pushed our beds together in the middle of the room. Junior year, Ginny and I shared a small room that was usually a single. We put our dresser-and-wardrobe unit in front of the door so that Dham Singh, seeing it for the first time, remarked: “This looks like a railway ticket office.”

Indian feast

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia