Here’s how to survive in 46 acres surrounded by ancient hills, overlooked by pastel skies and flying parrots, filled with girls who spit venom as easily as they breathe:
You enter the school doe-eyed and full of awe. This is important. You will reference this in the graduating speech. You will think of this child every time another cruelty crashes against your stomach to take away your breath and to sting your eyes with hot tears. You stand clutching your father’s firm hand, inhaling the scent of your mother’s sweetest, most expensive perfume and ignore your sister’s sniffles. When they leave, you fall into the open arms of the ten-year-olds awaiting you in the dormitory and realise they smell like roses.
Roses become your new favourite flowers. Gulab-Jal bottles are stacked in every cupboard and you spray it with your friends as if it is a prayer, a plea. You make those ten seconds of silence, of the rosewater on your skins, eyes closed, scent rising upwards- a religion, you make an entire religion of bottles of rose-water being sprayed on your face and you follow it diligently.
You will giggle at night, with nutella smeared on your mouth and pass the bottle with sticky fingers. You will eat the chips, throw the packets under the bed, you will pass out with ten others, limbs tangled but breathing co-ordinated on the cold tiles between two beds.
Covid will interfere. You will forget about the religion you cherished. That is why you will be stuck in a hospital bed and text your friends a picture of the drip punctured into one of the veins of your right arm. You will make a meme out of a pandemic that came close to killing you. As you drift off, in the hospital bed, cold and clean, you softly ask your mom for a bottle of rose-water.
It's covid. There is no point in risking your life for rose water. You will forget about the rose-water, now you will close your eyes at three in the morning and feel rose-lush-ice hit your face softly. You will not be accustomed to it- thorns, but thorns are what your friends are made of, petals now lessening but they are home, home, home. So you stay. You google. You learn to pretend the gust you feel on your skin is a kiss, just softer. You convince yourself that it smells the same. It is the same. It is still your religion. Covid changed the world. You are fifteen now and that changed your world. What is something that never comes back down? A friend asks. Life, you say feeling the gap your grandparents left. Age, your friend shrugs, close enough. You echo that then, you echo that now. Close enough.
You leave the dorm when it happens now. You avoid your religion despite the fact that last time you did so, you ended up on a hospital bed. You think a trip to the hospital sounds better than the painful hammering in your chest when smoke burns your eyes. You fear someone finding out, you fear your lungs collapsing like your grandfather did the day he hunched over, hand on his chest, heart done with work. You remember the confusion when he did not open his eyes, the tears. You met Death for the first time. You tell your friends now. They laugh and say, it will happen to them later in life. The net says 30, you argue. Perhaps at 35, your friend lays her head on your lap, will you miss us? You deny it then but a year later, you truly will.
You find out that the Prefect in tenth grade will become the vice-captain who will then become the captain. You want it. You can not say it aloud. Your friends think it's between M1 and M2. You will begin to fall in love with the person who will hurt you so much that there will be nothing but pain in, even, the crooks of your being. You will ignore the little voice inside your head saying that you should not love her. You do, because she does not think it is between M1 and M2. She makes you believe that it can be you. So you work. You work for it. You work for her.
You become the Prefect.
You will be vice-captain next year, captain the year after that. You cry the next day. Prefect- S House. Your name. Your name. Your name. It echoes in your sleep for a week after you get it. You feel the cool metal on your skin every moment you spend awake. On the tips of your fingers, under your finger-nails, against your lips. It used to be someone else’s. Legacy. My sister used to cry a lot after she got it, A says and you nod, understanding her pain within the twenty-four hours. You tell her you like it. She looks at you in silence. She knows and you know she does. Love grows in your chest. It begins to bleed into your words, your actions, the tangled limbs, the casual affection. You remind me of my sister. Love, love, love.
Thin-lines. Finelines. You must remember that. Love and hate. Both extremes. They leave you sobbing for three hours on a cold floor. They leave you alone for months. A subject of mockery and nothing more.
So you stop. You avoid the masses. You hide out. The dining room becomes hell and you’re allergic to it anyway. Allergic to this place. All of it. You hear the giggles and tears burn your eyes. You hate yourself for still loving. Even after the humiliation you suffered. Even after the hate. You still can’t believe it. Sometimes you wake up forgetting that you’re not friends with A anymore, that they hate you and when you remember, it crashes against you. Much worse than a double decker bus.
She hates you. You find yourself incapable of doing the same. You pretend.
You wonder if this is all there is to life. You wonder if this is all that friendships are. You wonder if heartbreak ever heals and you wonder all this for months. That is all you do. You listen to your name said- dunked in hatred, you know you are treated as a thing of disgust, you know it is not true but repeat things enough, all those dictators shout, and you will be believed.
Unworthy. Unwanted. Undeserving.
There is a break. Your sister is here now and she sprinkles colour into your life. You are walking sleepily to eat breakfast one day. You look at her and think, I’d die for you. You are scared about this because you know you mean it with all your heart.
You find new friends. They are nice. They’re not loud like your old ones. They don’t kiss you or hug you all the time like your old ones but you like them regardless. Very much. They’re here and you love them. You like them. You love two. Almost three. You fear they’ll end up hating you one day. The school counsellor says, it doesn’t matter once you become captain but it does and you know it with every fibre of your being.
You confess that you once told God that you’d give up the very friends you miss so much now for the badge you hold. Deal sealed, you chuckle at the end. Your new friend only stares in hollow silence.
Drink litres of coffee; more caffeine should be in blood than your WBCs.
Work all the time and every breathing moment. Become worthy, wanted and deserving. They will never think so but they don’t matter much.
Become friends with your family friends and once a month, when the school lets you out for twenty-four hours, sit with two obnoxious boys you call your brothers now and howl with laughter until the sun rises. Say you love them. At least, one of them will say it back. Promise.
Remember that the months of hell were only bearable because of your parents.
Sit down and look up at the sky until three A.M. once a week. Listen to music that your father and brother love. Think of your mother. When you go back to sleep, look at your friend’s face for a minute and let the gratefulness about her presence wash over you.
Here’s how you survive in the most prestigious school of your country: You enter full of awe for the school, you leave full of awe at your own survival. Accept that religions change. Remember you may die. Let the pain paint your insides- it makes for better writing and remember, if you stick around despite all the pain, it will end and you will once again be twelve at seventeen, listening to ABBA, giggling with your friends. Girls spit venom here, all you have to do is grow antibodies. Scent. Thorns. Trust me. Fine-lines.
