The geography teacher was a neurotic man who looked like he was about to have a heart attack every time an untouchable child got close to him. And unlike other teachers there he wasn't even a good teacher to start with. He stumbled with his words and, conscious of this, he would bring in maps to make up for it. You might think a geography teacher would need maps in any case. But maps are such a luxury in India that even nowadays most teachers do without them. This teacher couldn't. But at the same time he didn't want to let the untouchable students get close enough to the maps to see the ant-sized cities, lakes, deserts, and mountains he was pointing out. He would order them to stand at least five feet away at all times with their hands locked behind their backs. Unable to make out anything from that distance, the children screwed up their eyes, furrowed their brows, bunched up their mouths, craned their necks, and tilted forward as far as they could on their toes. They couldn't understand what he was saying or make out what he was trying to show them. In the end they would tilt forward so far they tipped over and sprawled on the floor, making the geography teacher jump. Shaking and sweating like a man who had narrowly escaped a fatal accident, he would warn them in a trembling voice not to come near him ever. Eventually the untouchable children gave up on geography and resigned themselves to failing. Carey, bold as always, looked forward to geography class. He would stand near the teacher and threaten to touch him, making like a cobra striking: "oohp, oohp."
At eight years old, almost everything in the world cracked Papa and her friends up with laughter. In her new school she made tons of new friends. And not just untouchables--she had kamma friends, reddi friends, even brahmin friends. They were not just friends, either--they were all close friends. Close friends always sit next to each other in class and walk togther on the way to school, on the way home, in the hallway, and in the playground. And it's not enough to walk together, you have to walk with your arm around your friend's shoulder. If you don't do that, you can't be close friends. One hand was for carrying books and the other was for putting on your friend's shoulder. So how could a girl have more than one close friend or, when not carrying books, two at most? They all had to walk together and keep switching places every now and then in order to all qualify as one another's close friends.
Some of Papa's closest close friends were brahmins. At school like the other girls they vied to sit next to her. On their way home they all walked together with arms around each other's shoulders. As they got caught up in chatting and giggling, their hands might slip off their friends' shoulders and they would have to keep putting them back. Sometimes Papa would put her hand back on the shoulder of one of her brahmin friends but that girl would be too engrossed in talking and gesticulating to remember to replace her hand on Papa's shoulder. Papa's hand would slip off again and again as her brahmin friends talked, laughed, and jumped around on their way home. She would put her hand back again and again until one of them would get annoyed and tell her:
"Abba vunda vay!" (Just stay like that vay!)
Putting vay at the end of a sentence makes it sound intimate. Close friends always use vay when they talk to each other.
"What abba?" Papa would ask. Papa was for whatever reason unusually polite and mild-mannered, so she alone out of her group avoided using the familiar vay, which in other contexts can sound disrespectful. She would use abba instead.
"No more arms vay."
"What's wrong abba?"
"How many times to tell you vay, you still don't understand vay. We're getting close to our homes. Walk on the other side of the street, OK?" In their own neighborhood they couldn't be seen walking with an untouchable girl.
When brahmin teachers and students came home after school, they wouldn't go straight in through the front door. They would always go around to the back of their houses to strip and take a bath before entering. They had to cleanse themselves after having been around untouchables all day.