‘Ma’am how do you parents support your decision, to go to Kashmir, right now?’, asks one of the students. ‘Forty darling, I am forty!’ I reply. But I have been saying that ever since I was eighteen and of course one couldn’t have told a class full of impressionable twenty year olds that in my younger years, I would be bashed up and locked up, for my rebellion. They’ve sloooooowllly resigned after trying really hard to discipline me.

Mum, who would actually feel bad, if something was to happen to me, doesn’t say much. She knows me so she knows, I always do what I think, needs to be done. ‘ I love you’, she tells me as I leave. I’m glad she doesn’t realise the enormity of the situation. The Father, reacts as he usually does, with sarcasm, yelling and abusing. ‘Tumhare jessa baccha hone se accha, na hona!’ This helps me more than he realises- pricks my ego, doesn’t make me miss home and I end up taking it all out on any man with authority.

The ex assistant worries, as does my dad’s driver. Don’t fight with anyone, please don’t fight with anyone, they plead with me. My intolerance for bs, is well known but somehow I will try, to keep a lid on it. Somehow!