She calls herself Esoteric Rubbish. The name lends itself to a fusion of attributes that make up her unusual personality. Her hair has been five different colors and three different lengths. From a long light brown that spiraled all the way to her hips to short spiky pink hair that stands out on the uniform streets of our school in New Delhi, from platinum blond to black to red shoulder length hair that contrasts with her sparkling grey flapper dress that twirls when she spins, its grey ribbons lashing out around her.
She finds comfort in books written by troubled authors featuring troubled characters, Holden Caulfield being her “phony god.” However, she is devoted to literature that range from unheard of science fiction to unpopular classics. She has heard of singers that no one knows, she watches peculiar foreign sitcoms, and she obsesses over random celebrities. Her closet is filled with bohemian, preppy, glam, slinky and diverse clothing including a cow suit and the flapper dress. After 11 years, she’s more Indian than most Indians. With her skillful bargaining, her room is a display of all sorts of great finds from street markets. As the stuff she likes becomes popular or well known, she discards them like dirty socks, but she attacks people who are unfamiliar with her eclectic tastes.
Her aesthetic personality is as obvious as her upturned nose or faint British accent. When not talking about her wide-ranging likes or dislikes she is constantly making up scenarios in her head, giving life to strange doodles on the corner of notebook, and laughing silently at them in the middle of the class. She has taken every art class available at our school and is a religious member of our art club. Her love of words is the essence of her being. She has notebooks and notebooks filled with words and she decorates her shelves with awards they have won her. On a whim she signed up for salsa classes and fell in love with it despite her klutzy spinning. She would spin hazardously and carelessly inflicting unconscious pain on those around her. Theater being her passion, she has been in every drama performance to ever hit our school, burning up the stage with her stellar performances.
She matches the old stereotype of those so immersed into the arts and so detesting of athletics. During the fifth grade, when our bald, female teacher and her class of 18 laughed at her incapacity to “bump” the ball over the net, she muttered something vulgar to the teacher and walked out of the class. She never came back to our physical education class and shot members dark looks as if to dare them to comment on her athletic skills. No one ever did of course.
Strangely enough she is also the type of person that cries at the last day of school, one that howls at sentimental movies, and someone who tears up with good books. But her frank and blunt opinion is quite the repellent to new friends. She doesn’t hesitate to tell you when you are being stupid, childish, immature and catty, much to everyone’s dismay. I am quite familiar with her cantankerous personality, being the victim of two flying binders at my refusal to give her my English homework to copy. She ruined my 15th birthday party with her verbally abusive outburst when accidently ignored. The next day she treated everyone as if it never happened. It was never talked about again instead our days became filled with superfluous conversation about cute guys.
My telephone lines are busy with her complaints about how she didn’t really fit in and it was time for a change. And occasionally she does not seem to fit. Sometimes she simply listens to lunch time conversation with one earphone of her iPod running unfamiliar music in her ear. But sometimes she is the life of conversation, leading a discussion about her strange theories or strange dreams, most of them revolving around our young English teacher. He once was a crush but now her sworn enemy for life.
Some avoid her and the awkward silence that follows when trying, unsuccessfully I might add, to be in the presence of someone infinitely greater than them. Some find her fascinating and she draws them to her with her humorous and enticing stories. Some are frightened of her sporadic explosions and her honest opinions. She calls herself Esoteric Rubbish. Esoteric meaning understood by or meant for only a select few.