The Places He'll Go

Congratulations, today is your day.

Yes, that’s right, we’ve graduated. Well, technically, Jasper was the one wearing the hat and gown and accepting a certificate on the stage, but it feels like a milestone for me too. And, as I have never attended a graduation ceremony before, it was also a first. 

I have had opportunities to attend one before, of course, although not when I was a small child. My cynical British soul tells me these early-years graduations are something that America has generously bestowed upon the world. My first real chance was my own, when I finished University — but I was already entrenched in a paid internship in Jersey that would fund my gap year travels and so the thought of flying back to the mainland using that hard-earned money didn’t appeal. Swinging to the other end of the frugality spectrum, I once flew from Yangon to London for a weekend to surprise my sister at her graduation from law school. Alas, my absolute secrecy meant that I wasn’t signed in for the actual ceremony.

I am not entirely sure why Mumbai has jumped on the pee-wee graduation bandwagon, but once one school does it, all the school have to do it, such is the competitive nature of the schools landscape and the need for marketable moments throughout the calendar year. Jasper had a graduation when he was three, when he moved from his preschool to where he is now, but that was a closed-door situation, presumably because the children were so young there would have been tears and tantrums if they’d let the parents in. (From the parents, not the children.) 

This time, Jasper has graduated from his early-years classroom and up into what his school calls KG, and which aligns with the UK’s Key Stage 1: the start line of formal education, the beginning of real school. You’d be right to act surprised that Jasper is only now setting his feet in the starting blocks of academia because we have been talking (and I have been writing) about school for years now. This is because, here in Mumbai, classrooms welcome them very young. No, ‘welcome’ is the wrong word — expect is perhaps more apt. Because, if a child hasn’t already done four years of some kind of institutional learning by the time they arrive at Key Stage 1, it’s probably because their parents have been arrested for neglect of their academic oversight duties. 

So, here we are. After four years of school, Jasper is now finally about to start school. 

While it feels as though it has taken a long time to get here, that time most definitely hasn’t been wasted. When I think back over the past four years, my mind is blown by the things Jasper has done, seen, learned, and enjoyed in a classroom. He has had the chance to play around with blocks, letters, numbers, the concept of sharing, ball games, the concept of discipline, drawing, the concept of listening, cooking, painting, and the concept of taking turns. Some of this he has really taken on board. 

Most notable of all is his steadfast Indian accent that shows no signs of abating and which is now accompanied by such a natural, high-speed head wobble that I really do wonder if I’ll recognise him, should he one day decide to become Australian or British. Other areas of cultural expertise, such as being able to sing the Indian national anthem, identify Gandhi and Subhas Chandra Bose in a line-up, and explain how Ganesh got his elephant head have come and gone in phases, over time. I am sometimes surprised at how completely he can forget something that he once knew in great detail, but then I remember that he’s only five. He can’t remember what he did last weekend, let alone the lyrics of Twinkle Twinkle in German which he sang on stage aged four. But the one thing that seems to be deeply, deeply infused in his every cell is this accent of his. The other parents joke that he’s the most Indian child in our year-group. 

I wrote about his accent in great detail when he was three years old and, reading that back now, I see that not a lot has changed. Or at least, not in the direction I thought it might have, given that he’s been in an international school for the past two years. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say he’s doubled down on it. He rolls his Rs, muddles his Vs and Ws, and I don’t even know how to describe the way he pronounces some of his vowels. Perhaps if a Geordie and a Welshman had a competition to see who could elongate their Os the most, they might land on something like how Jasper says No? 

‘Vherdrde are ve goooooowin?’ is something I hear a lot in preparation to leave the house, usually to school or the club, both destinations with which he is very familiar. And in that particular moment, as I am scrambling to push a small boy and a frustratingly large amount of stuff out of the front door, I don’t have the brain power to correct him. He has also picked up some choice Hindi to throw into conversation. Useful, high-brow vocabulary like ‘chuddie’, which means underwear. If he asks to see yours, just say no, please. That said, a quick Google to check the spelling of this word has just informed me that chuddies was actually added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2019. So, from now on, I’ll be defending his use of it under the banner of genius. Still, the rest of you, please don’t entertain his request. 

In an attempt to preserve something that will surely one day perhaps at some point maybe hopefully in a few years once we leave India fade, I have been taking videos of him talking. These videos are also an excellent source of entertainment for friends and family, and belong to the archive of what I call Accent Watch India Ltd. I’ll be opening a subscription service soon. Here he is, offering advice to his British family on how to stay cool in their heatwave. Frdrawzjen mungaws is frozen mangoes to the rest of us. 

Reactions to his accent are varied, depending on how effectively people can mask their shock. Indian adults who meet him for the first time will turn to me and ask with a gentle, understanding smile, ‘Does he have a slight accent there?’ Small children in a playground in the UK will spin round and look at me in horror as they exclaim, ‘Why does he sound like that?!’ Interestingly, in Australia, children either don’t notice or simply don’t care, as long as he’s up for playing with them, which bodes well for his future assimilation. Our family in Australia, however, gets a huge kick out of the way he speaks and bobs his head, and the resulting impressions (of Jasper) would not be acceptable in a public setting. 

The biggest gaps in Jasper’s knowledge at the moment are undoubtedly in areas related to his own heritage and cultures, but we are trying to fix this. Last week, as part of their Around the World topic, he and his friends were learning about Australia. As our real-life Australian was otherwise engaged at work, he and I devised a game and trivia session, and I was called up to serve as envoy. I did not put on the accent, but I did succeed in getting thirty-four non-Australian five-year-olds to try Vegemite, something I hope the immigration authorities will value when I apply for citizenship. Granted, a lot of them spat it out, some directly into my hand, but I still felt a huge swell of Aussie pride. As to whether I will be going back in for a session about British culture, the answer is no. Something tells me India has had enough of people doing that.

During our UK summer stint this year, Jasper and I will be popping over to London with his grandfather — for the first time, as far as Jasper’s concerned. He has, in fact, been to London before, but he was only ten months old at the time and even I can’t expect him to remember that. True to his paternal lineage, he is most excited to see the buildings he’s constructed with blocks at school - Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament — and, having recently been introduced to Mary Poppins, he’s also keen to see some dancing chimney sweeps. Sadly, the cultural icon I would most like him to meet is also the one he’s least interested in: Paddington. Ever since he worked out what taxidermy is, he has refused to watch any of the movies and has all but gone off the books. He is, however, keen to try his luck at Platform 9 ¾, since we have recently started to read Harry Potter and he is already convinced he’s a wizard. 

As for Jersey’s culture and history, it’s a tough nut to crack with a young child who is studying at the German school, given that one of the most significant and best-documented periods of the island’s history was the German Occupation during the Second World War. It’s also hard to pitch cows and puffins against kangaroos and kookaburras. Not to mention how cold the sea is going to feel for a boy who is used to a bath-like swimming pool, heated entirely by relentless sunshine. But pitch and push I must, because one day, he will be intrigued by his personal mish-mash of cultural heritage and I don’t want that day to come after we have moved to the opposite side of the planet. 

Now that our Foundation Stage years are over and our first graduation complete, all that stands between us and the summer holidays are the last two weeks of term. Unlike the graduation ceremony, the last two weeks are entirely recognisable to me: the teachers and students launch themselves down the end of term slip’n’slide that will whoosh them through the annual Primary School musical in a couple of days, and off into a week of pyjama days, talent shows and visiting puppeteers before landing them all in a heap the size of the lost-and-found pile at the end of June. 

These are the weeks when intentional learning goes out the window; the weeks when the children can bask in their friendships and live up to the kind words their teachers said at graduation; the weeks when they imagine themselves in the grade above; the weeks when the parents' WhatsApp chat explodes with confusion about who needs to be where, at what time and wearing which clothes. These are also the last two weeks of my time as Class Rep for our year group. Transitioning out of that role feels less like a graduation and more like escaping from an overgrown maze. Good luck to the next person foolish enough to take up the mantle because, from next year onwards, the real academic race begins.