Column: Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now

Gather around for a blast-from-the-past #FlashbackFriday version of this column, in which I tackle old memories. Specifically: dating in boarding school.

 

I came to think of my boarding school the other day when I read an article about a former headmaster. I only went to this school for two years-- “tourism” scoffed my more committed friends—and because I had always wanted to. Blame it on a steady diet of Enid Blyton as a child. I imagined midnight feasts and doing well at sports and having a coterie of close female friends, all those magic things that I didn't have back in Delhi.

Sadly, none of those three came to pass. Midnight feasts were impossible with “tuck” strictly forbidden (even though we snuck it in and ate it behind the lockers), my sports skills did not magically improve just by a change of geography, and the girls were nice enough, I suppose, but only one stuck as a “kindred spirit.” However, it had one advantage over St Clare's and Mallory Towers---it was a co-ed school, and so, among my classmates were boys, boys we lived with, boys we went to classes with, boys who at fourteen, fifteen and sixteen began to look a lot more appealing than they used to.

 

Unfortunately (or perhaps just as well) for any romantic dreams we might have harboured, the school's admin watched us with gimlet eyes. Where the girls were was a little boarding house on top of a hill, close to where the younger children lived. Across the path that led up to our hill was a barricade guarded by a fierce man. The barricade went down after games, at around 6. After that, not a man, not a boy, not a whisper of the male sex was allowed in. Our virtues were hotly guarded, but being teenagers, we found ways around it anyway.

 

One was to join as many extra-curricular activities as one could, those not being restricted by gender. I did everything in those two years (and only partly because of the boys) from joining the school choir to the editorial board to amateur dramatics to debate clubs, even philately, which turned out to be the most boring hobby ever invented—my fellow members were twelve-year-old boys and a teacher with a passion for stamps.

 

The dramatics gave us the most opportunity to flirt, we'd show up in the boys' section of the school after hours, already thrilled with this gate pass from our warden, and under cover of the wings of the stage, all sorts of eyelash-batting and banter went on.

 

There were some school-sanctioned mixers as well, large dances that happened once or twice a year. These were called “jigs” and we prepared for them months in advance, bringing our best clothes from home. The evening before a jig we were given time off from the dreaded sports, and there was a rush to de-hair, scent, shampoo, while girls passed around lipstick and eyeliner.

 

Then we'd set out en masse to the auditorium where the dances were held. There was a rather strange system to these dances—the school would bring in food from outside (little chocolate tarts and what not) but only the boys got coupons to buy them.

 

If you were popular, someone would offer to buy you a bar of chocolate, these we never ate, only collected, and at the end of the evening would compare our stocks like ladies in old England compared their fan cards for dance partners.

 

But when there were no dances and no plays, we still found a way to interact. Note sending was all the rage (this was way in the pre-cellphone nineties) and anyone could palm across a note for you through other girls, till it found its way to behind one of your textbooks, where you opened it up with great anticipation. I sent quite a few back as well, and for a long time, had correspondence with several boys who I wasn't even that friendly with in real life. I still have a little box of those notes somewhere.

 

Read more by the author: Other People's People

 

Now while all this was going on for me, others got more daring. Couples hooked up, people smoked, drank, all the usual teenage stuff that's going to happen whether you're on a hill station far far away or the middle of New Delhi. I only learned of all this many years later, when meeting with old school friends. “You did that?” I always ask, incredulous at their daring and my own very virginal experience.

 

I can't say that I'd have preferred their way after all.

 

Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan is the author of five books, most recently a YA novel about divorce called Split and a collection of short stories about love called Before, And Then After. The views expressed here are her own.