1 My birth

I started my life by bringing sadness to others, at least that was what I had been told by my father after my mother died giving birth to me.

'Who needs a girl? Especially one that did not even spare her own mother,' he muttered at my 5 year-old self. I was too young to really understand what he meant, but I was mature enough to understand that he didn't want me around. So I did my best to stay far from him. It wasn't even that hard, he found all types of excuses to stay far from home.

If it had not been for my maternal grandmother, I probably wouldn't have survived the first day. Afflicted by grief after my mother's death, my father brought me home and left me on the floor without even giving me anything to drink. My grandmother was the one who stole some milk from our neighbour's cow, and added some tap water to feed me. I was ill for the first couple of days with the unpasteurized milk, but gradually my system got used to it. But I wasn't getting any nutrients and I was often sickly.

One day, the neighbour who was a paediatric doctor saw me sitting on the floor, a little miserable creature left alone in the yard. He convinced granny to bring me to his clinic for vaccinations. It would have been good to say that he took pity on me, but that wasn't the case. He was simply frightened that I would catch a deadly disease and transmit it to his son who was the same age as me.

His son was the one who helped me get interested to study. Every weekday, he would leave his house in a similar blue outfit and a beautiful bag. He would come back with wonderful stories to tell and I could hear him from the spot I had adopted, the empty trunk of a dead tree set just underneath his window. There was no separation between our yard at that time. It was not necessary. At one glance, one could see the well-kept lawn on one side and the scraggly weeds on the other. When I had just learnt that there was an institution where you could go to become better, I wanted to go and that was the first time I dared make a request to my father.

'Baba, I want to go to school.'

His reply had been a slap that sent me flying to the ground. Holding my reddened cheek, I looked at him, not daring to cry, only sobbing quietly to contain my pain.

'What will you do studying? Remember, girl, you are an untouchable. Your role is just to be a servant in someone's house. And if you're lucky, you might get married.'

He spat in my direction and left. I never saw him again. I later learnt that he got into a drunken bawl and was killed.

He was not the only one to remind me of my caste. Everywhere I went, there would be others who would nicely inform me that I was not wanted by averting their eyes. Others would throw whatever came in handy. An old lady once threw her umbrella at me, causing a gash to open on my arm. Crying did not serve anything. I merely took the umbrella and ran.

After the death of my father there was no one to monitor me, so sometimes I would sneak into the school yard and listen to the teachers talk. I had learnt that being an Untouchable meant that you were practically invisible. So I could spend hours gazing through the window and this was how I began learning. I liked it best when the teachers read fairy tales. There was one that I liked a lot, Cinderella. A poor girl who lives in poverty and then finally has a happy ending. Oh, I never dared believe that this could happen to me, but at least it gave me temporary happiness.

One day, a teacher, Miss Charles noticed me at the window. At the end of the day, she called me in the classroom. She patted me on the head, before wiping her hand on her sleeve.

'My dog died yesterday. You look like him, all messy and cute. You want to learn?'

I nodded hesitantly.

'Be on time tomorrow.'

I never missed any class. She would make me sit on the ground at her feet and sometimes give me the biscuits she had started eating, but couldn't complete.

'I have to maintain my diet, you see.'

I didn't understand the word diet but I just nodded. Sometimes it would be the only meal that I would have during the day.

She called me Dixie, the name of her dog. I didn't mind. I had been called worse, but at least I could study.

My neighbour also became an involuntary participant in my quest to study. When he would throw his half-used exercise books at the end of each semester, I would take these to study and write in them. The stains of the other items from the bin didn't discourage me.

A few days after I turned seven, Granny died. They said that her heart just stopped functioning. Afterwards, each week, a social worker, whom I recognised from her uniform, came to drop a meagre bag of provisions at my doorstep, but it all stopped when I turned 18. It wasn't problem because by then I had learnt to grow a few vegetables by planting the scraps I found in the doctor's bin.

I had kept going to school and each year the pile of books I picked up from the bin grew and became my most trusted treasure. I had managed to find a copy of Cinderella and I kept it beside my mattress to be read each night by the light of a candle. I had fallen into a kind of routine.

One day, Miss Charles saw me and after looking me over with a slight disgust, said,

'Dixie, the national exams are coming up next month.'