I thought that I’d eventually understand what she meant, but even now I’m not sure I do. She repeated herself very slowly, as if to a total doofus, “Self. “But what does it express?” I asked, entirely in earnest. I awkwardly asked the one with the pierced eyebrow whether her piercing had a “meaning.” She smirked a little. But, chatting with the girls afterward, we found that they disdained our pleasure in victory, along with our hand-me-down polyester ties and blazers, our identical short-back-and-sides haircuts. They all wore a kind of shapeless tie-dyed garment that couldn’t be part of any uniform, spoke in a slack, almost American drawl, and, with their air of casual privilege, were amused by our prissy diction-our try-hard idea of what proper English was supposed to sound like-and our evident lack of ease around them.īeing well practiced, we won the debate. But the girls we were ranged against, who went to a “progressive” school for which we had an unreflective contempt, were creatures from another world. I had managed to get the team together only by promising the other boys that there would be girls there. I was sixteen, travelling with the debate team from my high school in the quiet suburbs of Bangalore to the busy city center for a regional meet. I remember the first time I encountered a pierced eyebrow. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
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