Will You Remember Me?

It was the 15th of August—Independence Day—and my wife and I were special guests at a school parade. All it took for that honor was the propitious convergence of visiting a local friend and being foreigners—the latter still a rarity in that part of the country. However, we were not the only platform guests on that sixtieth anniversary of Indian Independence. There was a politician too—"an exceedingly minor one," ventured our friend, "or he’d be elsewhere."

The dais on which we sat was unshaded, but it was early morning and not yet hot. Moreover, a lovely breeze was present, which the school principal said signaled the approach of rain, "but not before tea time." The young scholars, all in uniform, were lined up by households and gender on the maidan. The boys wore brown pants and white shirts with colored collars—the colors representing their household. The girls wore colored skirts and white tops. Some of the children came from local towns and villages. Others, whose parents "were no more," as the principal put it, or were unable or unwilling to care for them, called the campus community home.

The community was tightly knit. It was accommodated within a 200-acre compound that included the school, central dining hall, residences and hostels, and administrative offices. There was also an infirmary, a small hospital open to the public, a farm, and a church. At almost the exact center of it all lived its oldest resident—an aged banyan tree that in its lifetime had put down so many trunks it was its own small forest. In and around its multiple trunks were stone benches. The stone came from the same granite quarry that supplied the slab wall of the compound.

The Independence Day celebration began with a prayer and a welcome to guests and other visitors. Then came words of greeting from the politician, who got the year of Independence wrong, and the principal’s oration in which she righted but did not mention his mistake. After that came the flag-raising ceremony and the singing of "Jana Gana Mana," the national anthem. In the finale, the students paraded around the maidan to patriotic marches crackling from loudspeakers on the dais. The marches sounded like they came from scratchy 78 rpm records, which seemed perfect to me, for the ceremony they accompanied, while celebrating a new era, was, nevertheless, deeply rooted in old traditions. The principal’s speech had covered the past, present, and future: the heroism of India’s freedom fighters; the advance of its "largest democracy in the world"; and the promise of a bright tomorrow in the still new millennium. Yet, the ceremony overall—with its protocols of politeness, political correctness, and crepitating march music that sounded for all the world like it came from an old world gramophone’s morning glory horn—was vintage 1940.

After the ceremony, my wife and I had a breakfast of medu vadas and sambar with our friend. Four girls followed us to the dining hall. No longer in their early-morning uniforms, they wore bright, holiday dresses—pink, purple, green, and yellow—with flower patterns and lace. When we emerged, they were still there.

"Good morning, Uncle! Good morning Auntie!" they said as we passed by—and we said good morning back to them.

"I think they wanted to say more," I commented.

"Yes, and they would never let you go if you allowed it. They would have you answering questions until winter," said our friend.

"You have winter?"

"Not like yours."

As we left the vicinity of the dining hall, I photographed a sign on one of its gables: "Children and flowers are very much alike. Both bring fragrance in our lives." Such signs were everywhere you looked on the grounds. Few walls or prominent rocks lacked an epigram, poem, prayer, reminder, or Bible verse. "We make the most of every opportunity to instill values," said our host. The manners of each child we met made me believe the scheme was working.

Later that morning, my wife and I, out for a walk on our own, saw two of the girls who had greeted us. They saw us too and immediately came running, saying again in one voice, "Good morning Uncle! Good morning Auntie!"

Then, one of them—the shortest but, perhaps the bravest—said, "My name is Anita." And, looking intently at me, she asked, "Uncle, what's my name?"

"Why, Anita!" I said.

Her eyes brightened and her smile widened. Turning to my wife, she asked, "Auntie, what’s my name?"

"Anita."

Then, she engaged us in serial questioning. We remembered our host's prediction of questions until winter. After a few minutes we said we had to go now. However, we had not walked far until Anita caught up to us and tugged my sleeve.

"Tell me: Uncle, what’s my name?"

"Anita."

"Auntie, what’s my name?"

"Anita."

"Yes, that’s right: Anita! Then, planting herself squarely in front of us, she asked, "Uncle... Auntie... Will you remember me?"

When we told our friend, he replied that the children often ask visitors to remember them. "And isn't that something we all want?" he said. "Isn't there even a song called, 'Will you Remember Me?'"

"That was also the request of the criminal who died next to Jesus," I added. 

"Yes," said our friend, and he quoted from a psalm: "'Who are we, O Lord, that you notice us, and remember us?' Makes you think, doesn't it?" (cf. Psalm 144:3)