DTEA — The School of Our Lives

In our part of Delhi, there was a school called DTEA.

Nobody knew what the letters stood for, except perhaps the headmaster. It was enough to say, “I go to DTEA,” and everyone understood.

It was the school for Tamil children.

Every morning, in the winter, we would leave home looking like small versions of our parents. There would be a sweater, another sweater if the cold was particularly serious, and sometimes a muffler tied around the neck. Amma would stand at the door and say, “Take your sweater.”

We were already wearing two.

“Take the other one.”

There was no point arguing.

DTEA stood somewhere between our homes and the rest of the world. The first Tamil families who had come to Delhi had started these schools many years earlier. They had brought their language, their habits and, above all, their belief that children must study.

By our time there were several DTEA schools scattered across Delhi.

To the rest of the city, we were simply the children from the Madrasi school.

At home, education was treated with some seriousness.

Tamil had to be spoken, read and written. Mathematics was important. Science was important. Everything else was negotiable.

If anyone showed an interest in history or literature, an elder would look at him carefully and ask,

“What will you do in life?”

The question usually ended the discussion.

We were expected to become engineers, doctors, scientists, or, in particularly ambitious households, Ramanujan or C.V. Raman.

Nobody had considered whether there was enough room in the country for so many Ramanujans.

The school building was not designed to encourage great scientific ambition.

Some years, we studied in a tent.

This was particularly interesting in winter.

Delhi winter entered the tent from every direction, and we responded by wearing more sweaters. By the third sweater, writing became difficult. But nobody complained. We had been taught that education required sacrifice.

There were teachers who contributed greatly to this education.

Our physics teacher spoke about physics with such confidence that we assumed he had discovered most of it himself.

Our mathematics teacher had a different method. If you did not understand something after several explanations, he would say,

“Fail this year. Next year you will understand.”

It was difficult to argue with such long-term planning.

Our history teacher believed that quantity had a relationship with marks. If the answer required two pages and you wrote six, you had demonstrated enthusiasm, if not historical knowledge.

We were happy to oblige.

The boys at the back of the class had their own curriculum.

There were girls who knew the answers to almost everything. We admired them from a safe distance.

We had other accomplishments.

At lunchtime, for instance, we had developed a system of exchange. If you liked your friend's lunch better than your own, you ate it. In return, you left some money in his tiffin box so that he could buy a dosa.

Nobody called this economics.

It was simply understood.

Examinations were different.

At the front of the school stood a statue of Saraswathi, the goddess of learning. Before examinations, some of us would leave a little money at her feet.

There was no complicated prayer.

We were children, and our requirements were simple.

We wanted the answers.

We assumed the goddess understood.

The results were not always satisfactory, but we continued the practice. It seemed safer than doing nothing.

Years later, when I think of DTEA, I remember very little of the lessons.

I remember the cold mornings.

The sweaters.

The tent.

The teachers.

The tiffin boxes.

The girls who knew everything.

The boys who knew enough to survive.

And the statue of Saraswathi, patiently watching generation after generation of children asking for help with their examinations.

DTEA had been created by people who wanted their children to receive an education while growing up far from Tamil Nadu.

For us, it became something else.

It was where our friends were.

Where our childhood happened.

And, without our noticing, where we grew up.