Meenakshi Shedde: Mosambis in your bra

Illustration/Uday Mohite

I was a wretched, goody-two-shoes in school. Harmless masti all year, but pretty muggu in the end. Rarely standing first, but almost always ranking between 2 and 4 in class. It's true that, thanks to our encouraging English Miss "Nonny" - Elba Fernandes - I once won an enormous inter-school elocution shield for our school. But, I could never be properly wicked. At least that's how I remember it. Memory can be an unreliable slave of subconscious convenience: it sometimes forgets things not convenient to remember, and sometimes invents things that never happened that make you feel better - which I realised on watching the superb animation feature Waltz with Bashir. Anyway, I was pretty boring in school - I had two pigtails, used rubberbands to hold up sagging socks, and had a dark band at the bottom of my skirt that mum ‘unrolled' as I grew taller. So, my heroine was always the Naughtiest Girl in School, more un-tameable than Enid Blyton's. I always aspired to be as wicked as her. She was bold and brazen, bunked class, had boyfriends and had nothing but contempt for punishment.

It was great to catch up with my heroine, let's call her A, at a school reunion of St Teresa's Convent High School, Santacruz, last week, after nearly 40 years. A was in full form, and regaled us about the time she ganged up with her schoolfriends and tried on bras for the first time, filling them up with mosambis, and dancing around feeling sexy!

We remembered our teachers. Prime among them was Girija, who taught us Hindi. She was cross-eyed, or "Looking London, Seeing Paris," as A put it. We would wait for Girija to read us the chapter about someone who, at risk to life and limb during a war, "usne bum lekar dushmanon par phek diya" or some such. We could vividly picture someone hurling an unmentionable part of his anatomy at the enemy. Oh, we would all simply collapse in a hysterical heap of giggles, so dire, we could barely breathe in between. I had no self-control in the giggling department - nor do I have any now - but luckily in the 8th standard, we got wooden desks with lids, into which we locked our books - so I would raise the lid and giggle under it until the paroxysms subsided and I could wipe my tears.

These ‘uplifting' desks served another vital function. Now, I had limited pocket money and instructions to eat only healthy fruit like guavas. Naughtiest Girls simply didn't bother with poppycock like parental permission. They would eat the most thrilling rubbish sold outside the school gates - that appallingly red churan paste, jeeragolis, kairi slices slapped with salt and chilli powder, a roll of striped chewing gum pulled off a long pole, buddhi ka baal, and what not. Arlene, Janice, Sudha, Eudora (Eudy) - goddesses of my childhood - would have stashes of these ‘forbidden' goodies in their desks and chomp away, while pretending to look for a book. So grateful to you guys for sharing all that delicious nonsense with me, so I could honestly tell my parents I never bought rubbish.

A said later, when her son came to live with her mother during his college - she insisted he return by 10pm, smelt his breath for alcohol, and whined daily about him. A coolly retorted that if she only knew what A herself had been up to in college, she would have hanged herself long ago. I cannot tell you how deeply satisfying it was to hug the Naughtiest Girl in School. One that I never had the guts to be.

Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com