Hear my story.
Nine years ago, when I was 11, my parents asked about boarding school, and I naively and innocently said yes, and that one answer changed everything. They took that “yes” and sent me there. The boys’ hostel was near the main school, where we studied alongside girls, while the girls’ hostel was about 2 kilometers away and completely out of our access. We were not allowed to go beyond the gate of the boys’ hostel and school campus. The girls arrived at school by bus, and in an average class, the ratio was about 5 girls to 40 boys. The school had a cult-like religious culture, with staff and hostel authorities following a central “guru,” representing the whole institution, which was an integrated setup of multiple schools and a college around the country.
The staff also made us pray every day. It was a routine: around 600 boys would sit on a huge ground for about half an hour, chanting mantras while a head figure led from the stage in front of us. I believe it was similar in the girls’ hostel too, with their own female staff and head. The weird part was that the trust and its guru members, around 100 of them, lived in a temple very close to the girls’ hostel. The strange thing was that no male was allowed inside the girls’ hostel, not even a girl’s father, yet these gurus were located literally right next to their building. Foreigners also used to come and donate a lot of money to the trust, and between the temple and the girls’ hostel there was a small mud house where the main trust’s representative guru lived. The girls had better living conditions because there were fewer of them, and also because they were girls.
Electronics weren’t allowed, and we had to sleep in one big hall with about 80 boys on double-decker beds. The bathroom setup was just as bad: one huge shared bathroom with only six toilets. It felt like hell. The food was terrible, basically malnutrition.
Every week, I used to call my parents from my housemaster sir’s phone, as he only allowed us to call on Sundays, crying and asking them to take me back, but they never did. For four years, it was always the same answer: “just one more year.” I was bullied, and that’s where I learned the harsh reality of the world. I had almost no interaction with girls, and it messed me up in high school and even now. Also, two male teachers targeted me; they would even slap me for not answering their subject-related questions correctly.
I still hate my parents for that, and I won’t pretend otherwise. They left me there for five years, until my schooling was over.
Nine years ago, when I was 11, my parents asked about boarding school, and I naively and innocently said yes, and that one answer changed everything. They took that “yes” and sent me there. The boys’ hostel was near the main school, where we studied alongside girls, while the girls’ hostel was about 2 kilometers away and completely out of our access. We were not allowed to go beyond the gate of the boys’ hostel and school campus. The girls arrived at school by bus, and in an average class, the ratio was about 5 girls to 40 boys. The school had a cult-like religious culture, with staff and hostel authorities following a central “guru,” representing the whole institution, which was an integrated setup of multiple schools and a college around the country.
The staff also made us pray every day. It was a routine: around 600 boys would sit on a huge ground for about half an hour, chanting mantras while a head figure led from the stage in front of us. I believe it was similar in the girls’ hostel too, with their own female staff and head. The weird part was that the trust and its guru members, around 100 of them, lived in a temple very close to the girls’ hostel. The strange thing was that no male was allowed inside the girls’ hostel, not even a girl’s father, yet these gurus were located literally right next to their building. Foreigners also used to come and donate a lot of money to the trust, and between the temple and the girls’ hostel there was a small mud house where the main trust’s representative guru lived. The girls had better living conditions because there were fewer of them, and also because they were girls.
Electronics weren’t allowed, and we had to sleep in one big hall with about 80 boys on double-decker beds. The bathroom setup was just as bad: one huge shared bathroom with only six toilets. It felt like hell. The food was terrible, basically malnutrition.
Every week, I used to call my parents from my housemaster sir’s phone, as he only allowed us to call on Sundays, crying and asking them to take me back, but they never did. For four years, it was always the same answer: “just one more year.” I was bullied, and that’s where I learned the harsh reality of the world. I had almost no interaction with girls, and it messed me up in high school and even now. Also, two male teachers targeted me; they would even slap me for not answering their subject-related questions correctly.
I still hate my parents for that, and I won’t pretend otherwise. They left me there for five years, until my schooling was over.
