After the friendly Sikh neighbor left, my next encounter with the other supposed Indians was at school in Grade 4. Yes, this in the form of two “gori”* Punjabans, Pooja and Meenu. O! how Clavin & Susie like were my tangled relationships with them?! I can still see those young faces before me, tart Pooja with her high brow and insouciant mouth (she was a debating champion, and I was then a painfully shy, glasses wearing nerd, who hated public speaking) and sweet Meenu with her very delicate aquiline face and twin plaits.

And these two girls were designated enemies of a gang of boys I was a part of. Apart from a "Lord of Flies" meanness young boys can display towards girls (I leave speculations on power & relationships between sexes at a young age to more qualified folks), Pooja and Meenu got the enemy status because we perceived them to be the unfairly advantaged outsiders. They were both teachers’ pets, and I intuitively ascribed this to their "fair" skin color, and generally more "cuter" appearance. I think there are some formal studies around that show a positive correlation between how attractive someone is and his or her performance at school.

In hindsight, I now think some of this was also because of their mothers, wives of Indian Army officers, who taught in the same school. But apart from that, in the eyes of those “provincial” boys, they were also perceived as putting on airs; this because they sometimes came to school in chauffer driven cars (this was just a perk of their fathers’ army careers), lived in a trendy area, went to “parties” etc – you know, just regular vanilla envy that comes, as the Christians would have it, from our fallen state. So that school year was spent in attempts to take these two girls a notch down.

The boys did this by being wantonly unruly when a teacher was absent, and Pooja, who was the class leader (Yes, she was also perceived as power hungry! And patriarchies don’t like powerful women), was policing the class. And soon after got caned because Pooja always dutifully “snitched” on us. Recently, my sister also recalled how our gang of boys invaded her class on Teachers Day – a day when senior students become teachers to junior classes, and teachers officially goof off – that was being presided over Pooja, and induced chaos. How my chest swelled in pride on hearing that early 'manly' exploit!

I, as the smart boy, also keep the flag of revolt flying by beating them in class quizzes – I still remember one of those winning quiz answers, “Vladivostok” – and trying to attain that elusive first rank. Alas! In that latter abmbition (my mother's as much as it was mine) I was thwarted again and again by Sonal, a beautiful and quite (how we desi men, even at such a young age, prefer our women to be demure and quite!) Sindhi girl, on whom I think I had a minor crush. So, in such a fashion that year of “Punjabi-Madrasi” wars came to an end. Subsequently Pooja and Meenu left town when their fathers were transferred out, and in a class shuffle, Sonal and I found ourselves in different sections. And now, nearly twenty years later, sitting in the memory's laybrinth, I wonder where these former enemies of mine are, what they might be doing, and if they remember me as I remember them?

*Take a look at this blog post for some outsider observations on the desis' “gori” prejudice.