‘In middle class India, one has little room to step off the conveyor belt’

Jenny Pinto Is 48. She is a filmmaker and a paper lights designer based in Bangalore

THE YEAR 2006 was a year of tumultuous change for me. And as changes are wont to do, they made me think. The highlight of the upheavals was my 16-year-old daughter rapidly losing weight over the course of her O level exams in May that year. A physiological cause for a physiological symptom could not be found despite three months of medical tests and visiting doctors in three cities. As symptoms go, all I’d noticed was a sort of “disconnectedness”, a few months prior to the exams.
Diya completed her O level exams somewhat indifferently and school reopened as usual in June. She went to Class 11 a shadow of herself, completely drained, distracted and dull. The school counselor tried but Diya was dismissive of the predictable techniques of counseling so I took an alternative route and consulted an energy healer. Just two sessions with the healer brought a lot of change. She taught her to meditate and told me that Diya would come up with her own answers and that I should just be supportive. So I waited.

One day, six weeks later, Diya woke yet another five kilos lighter and announced that she wanted to take a year off from school. “Why?” I asked. “I don’t really know; nothing about school makes any sense anymore and I need to rediscover the meaning of ‘learning’,” she said, somewhat cryptically. Never having questioned the purpose of education myself, I was bewildered. “What will you do for a year?” I asked. “Travel… I may even work.” For a few days, we argued, discussed until, with some reluctance, but with an intuition that this would lead Somewhere New, I finally agreed.

Diya brightened up the day she stopped going to school. While she traveled for a month, I faced a smorgasbord of reactions from teachers, other parents, family and friends. I faced pity — a lot of it — which really got to me sometimes. But from their reactions I began to see how little room one has in middle class India to step off the conveyor belt. There was always an underlying disapproval from people who didn’t quite get how I could indulge my daughter so. Many looked upon her as a ‘dropout’ and there were even rumours floating around that she was on drugs.

Having been forced to step off the conveyor belt with my daughter, I observed from a slight distance that the race our education system imposes on young adults (and their parents) leaves very little room to breath or reflect, with no scope at all for anyone who thinks differently. Diya traveled for a bit and then found refuge in Hampi with theatre actor and director Adil Hussein, who had set up home and workshop amidst massive rocks along the Tungabadra: a sublime location. They lived in little mud and bamboo huts with none of the urban conveniences of electricity or running water. Just the energy of the rocks and the free spirit of a bunch of eight young actors from all over the world. They trained hard and also cooked, washed, kept house. The five or six months she spent there transformed Diya. She regained her lost weight, motivation, zest for life and confidence. She also seemed to have re-discovered the art of curiosity and the joy of learning.

Diya chose to live tucked away in a little bamboo hut by herself, unafraid of the darkness, the scorpions, cobras, bears and leopards that shared their habitat. Unafraid! Not many 17-year-olds could do that and just the knowledge that she could, and did, gave me hope that all would be well. She returned to school a year later with a new maturity that teachers say is rare in one so young. Her grades have taken a sharp curve upwards but even if they did not, I think that her fearlessness and the courage of her convictions are good enough to take her through life.

A child comes into the world with her or his unique intelligence and it is up to parents and educators to allow children to explore their unique view of the world. Education is not just about gathering information and collecting degrees but also developing, among other things, integrity and fearlessness. That, unfortunately, doesn’t come automatically with a college degree. Imposing narrow definitions of success on our children only leads to frustration, anger, fear, low self-esteem and imbalances.
They inherit a very complex, unkind, unequal world from us and it may just be better to let our children find their own answers. Ours was happy ending, but I know that there are a lot of educators, parents and children out there in similar situations. I can only share my story and hope that they see that sometimes the answers lie in taking that important, timely pause. Dealing with Diya’s situation taught me that it’s important to be able to step back and look at our children for who they are and not as cogs in a wheel.