It still happens

I remember the first time it happened.

I was nine and the only Indian girl in my Primary 3 class. I didn't fit in with my Chinese classmates because they were not very friendly. So I lived for Tamil class and recess, when I will see all my friends again.

But my mother kept encouraging me to make friends with some of my Chinese classmates, saying that I should learnt to mingle and thus pick their brains. So I tried.

I went up to this squat, rather boyish girl the next day, and said, "Hey, wanna play zero-point?"

And she turned around and said point blank, "My mother said I cannot play with Indian children because they all very dirty and have kutu (headlice)."

I was embarrassed and dismayed. I damn near cried right then. My classmates started giggling and pointed at my hip-length braids, "Yah, so long, her hair. Sure got kutu!"

I didn't say a word to anyone for the rest of the day. When I got home, I told my mother to take me to the hair salon and cut my hair - short. As short as a boy's.

Slowly she extracted the story from me. With great maternal indignation, she came to school the next day (in her nurse's uniform - my mom had style), spoke to my teacher about the incident, and got me a public apology from all my tormenters.

Later that year, I made friends with Rosalind Chong, a shy but brillant girl from the same class, and we stayed friends till PSLE.

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Present

On Monday, we had our first meeting for our company dinner and dance. We were supposed to present a skit item to our colleagues and I had painstakingly re-written the Cinderella story with a localised twist.

One of the required props was a turban for the prince. I informed my colleagues that I had one, from a play I did before and would be happy to lend it to them.

The prince, played by a 34 year old division manager, casually asked,"Yours ah? You got wear before or not? Inside got kutu how? Make sure you clean first ah!"

I was speechless. Amidst the laughter, I sat stock still with a stony stare on my face. Finally they got it, that I didn't think it was funny. Once there was silence, I calmly moved on to the next topic of discussion, totally ignoring the question and the person who asked it.

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Our society has so much growing up to do.