We were nine years old. At least, I must have been that age, for we were in a classroom in a recently opened school in the Pendjab, a hundred miles from the Pakistan border.
One of the boys is in trouble, having neglected to bring his textbook. The teacher has made him stand up.
“You forgot? How did you forget?”, he asks mockingly.
The boy looks miserable and says nothing. We too are silent in our rows and columns of white shirts. It is an unequal battle and a tired one. Nothing new can happen.
The mustachioed man continues. “How you anyone forget something so basic? Maybe you should go home now and get it?”
I recognize the threat — to be made to leave school in the middle of the day all by oneself and traverse the city.
“Where do you live?”
No answer is made.
The boy is evidently not providing adequate amusement: The teacher’s tone becomes stern. “Tell us! Where do you live?”
The boy mumbles something. The man raises his voice, “What? Speak up! What is your address?”
“I don’t know”, replies the boy morosely.
This delights the teacher. He has found his joke du jour.
“What! Look at this! He does not know the address of his own house! Can you imagine? Someone not knowing their own address? Maybe someday you won’t remember your own name!”. Chortling, he motions to the boy to sit.
The boy sits. Our expressions have not changed. Or has a girl giggled nervously? The education of the race continues.
What had happened? Did the boy truly not know his address?
Not all dwellings have straightforward “addresses”. In Australia of the wide spaces, there probably exist cabins that are on unnamed streets. Swiss villages sometimes confuse even mapping software, which must often be the case in haphazardly expanding urban centers.
Or, the boy’s house had a proper address, but he had never bothered to memorize it. Why should he? He had no deliveries to organize or tax returns to file.
Maybe the boy knew his address, but was ashamed of exposing it to the entire class. Neighborhoods have degrees of appropriateness, and children can be cruel.
Or maybe there was some other reason to remain silent. He had brought his book but a bigger boy had not and size had decided to rectify the imbalance. He had spent the money for the textbook on expensive fizzy drinks. He had not understood that he had to bring certain things to school.
He might have invented a tale. He might have admitted the lapse frankly. Wept.
There is variety in how humans respond to even similar situations. Their perception, their ambition, their values, their patience, their courage, their resentment, their knowledge — who knows what shapes our actions?
We act in ambiguity, haphazardness, confusion, blessed hope, and in reaction to our environment through ways that we may not always be consciously aware of.
It is something that I hope I recall occasionally. For instance, when we encounter accounts of domestic assault, bullying in the workplace, or sexual harassment in public transport, it might come across as incredible that the victim continued to fraternize with the aggressor after the act.
Could it really have happened, or have been that bad, if the two had dinner together afterwards, or posed for a common photograph, or made no fuss for weeks?
Yes, it could have happened. To deny that is to assert, “I can think of absolutely no set of events and beliefs that could lead to this choice”, especially given that there is not always certainty of cause and effect when it comes to human thought.
Memory is unreliable, and shame and fear and greed and love and a personal sense of justice might all influence testimony, or even change it once given. Even then — it could have happened. May or may not have, but certainly could. Even simpler things, like omitting a name from a party invitation accidentally, or a crucial telephone message not being delivered, and all the vast rest.
What happened to that boy, whose face I have forgotten? I do not know. Maybe he was one of those who had spread the rumor that I had cancer, based on a discoloration on my cheeks. Perhaps he too can recall the incident. It does not matter. But it happened.
