I used to believe that money was something exclusively owned by men.

We did not talk about money growing up; where it came from or how it was made. We did not worry about it either. Whatever we needed was provided for (and a couple of extra frills) and this had something to do with daddy leaving the house with a brief case and sitting in an office.

Money was not supposed to get finished. It was impossible for that to happen. It was always somewhere even when it was not meant for the biscuits, sweets or chips we asked for. We never heard about a ‘Hard day in office’ or ‘I’m waiting for salary’ or ‘You don’t have school fees.’

This is why it was shocking to me when in lower High School, some of my friends would be sent home for their school fees balance.

My O level High School would in colloquial language be termed as ‘local’. While other schools were fighting for ‘sosh‘ (socials) partners, we were begging for ‘parties’ for our locally named internal school sports’ teams in our grimy dining hall . We did not have sosh committees where people pledged amounts with more than three zeros. We drank water packed in kaveera by our matron at break time. We wore huge long skirts (with pulled up socks inside) that swept the dusty compound. There were no ‘Do not step in the grass’ signs. The grass was brown and scanty. We bathed in open bathrooms where everyone could see each other. We slept in dormitories of about 100 on triple decker beds with gaping wiry holes in the middle. We kept our suitcases and everything else we owned on the space which we did not sleep on. We were not ‘ladies’, we jumped over benches and short shrubs to escape long wooden whips. And most people could barely string a full set of English words to form a sentence. Therefore, we were not even in the running for high class. We did not know the who is whos and we did not know that we were not.

The top students every term as read out on assembly, numbers one to twenty five were always boys. Except for one girl in our class who defied the odds. Most people’s academic ambitions were not to get ‘kabazid’ (axed) at the end of the year. Our goals were short term, if we had any. It was not to get whipped at the next communal whipping for lowering in grades and to leave school without ever getting the unexpected double whammy slap popularized by one of our teachers.

We never strived to understand the difficulties of Maths, Chemistry or Physics. We just tried not to sleep, during lessons, in a way that we could be noticed. Book in the lap, head on the desk, we dosed off until the pen dropped to the floor and we sat up hoping to still be unnoticed. The three hour mid morning to lunch hour lessons were the longest of naps.

It was only after lower High School that I was reintroduced to the world of status. It was bottled water from now on and what you owned was a status symbol. Money was important and the perception of how much you had, dictated which friends you made, which friends you maintained, who approached you, who didn’t, who talked to you, who didn’t. Finally, last names (Father’s names) came into play.

I understood better where I stood but I remained uninitiated (or so I think). I had my own last (first) name and I still received just enough to get me what I needed.

Pre-high school

On the day my father left his job in civil service, he took me to the supermarket on the way home from school and told me to pick whatever I wanted. I was twelve. I walked around the supermarket with a serious look on my face and after one round across each aisle, I picked one of those orange oranges. He looked at me, puzzled (he must have been), “Only that?” I picked another one. I spent the rest of the journey home wondering if he thought me very wise or very foolish.

Mother, told us, years later that he had left civil service with nothing but some savings and his gratuity package, handed her a part of it, and took the rest to start afresh in un- explored territory. He had gone back to his home town and turned what was meant to be a family home into a hotel. Mother said my grandmother had thought him mad.

The first day I turned up at his office, I thought, This is it? How do people make money from white walls and shelves filled with books?

After a few days of sitting aimlessly and dosing off until lunch time, I tried to inquire from him about the work he expected me to be doing. I received a note saying, You are here to make friends. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

But that was the holiday after my first year in University. Three year later, I graduated and was back. This time my instructions were not so confusing. I picked up on one of them, Don’t embarrass me.

I did not manage to not embarrass him or may be even fulfill his earlier instruction, but I learned that money literally does not fall off trees and men are not the sole custodians of it.