Hit by nostalgia!

My mother chose to send me to an all-girls school run by gentle nuns in this then sleepy town of Lucknow. She hoped that I would turn into a polite and polished young woman, much like an admired childhood friend of hers. I don't know if my convent school education turned me into the person my mother had envisioned but I certainly knew that I stood out among my peers, the good little Bong girls in the Lucknow of the eighties. First, I had a highly competitive spirit; second, I turned into an outspoken tomboy, much to the consternation of my mother. While my brother recited Sanskrit shlokas (prayers) at assembly, I knew the Lord's prayer by heart. Only the compulsory school dress bugged me no end.

I was free of the rigid dress code once I graduated from school but the college years are just a blurred memory. The days passed in a haze of classes, and exams, weighed down by the stress of doing well academically, a burden familiar to children of all middle class families whose only inheritance is a good education. The thought of how much my clothes and accessories contributed to my identity did not seem important enough to register in my overloaded teenage brain...