(o) Sulu More Than an Item of Clothing

Sulu or No Sulu

By Subhash Appana, whose "humourous" school memories tell us much of race relations in Fiji

 Sulu Uproar 

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=139250

http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?ref=archive&id=139494
http://babasiga.blogspot.com/2010/02/labasa-college-and-short-pants.html
http://www.allvoices.com/news/5174495-sulu-uproar
STOP PRESS. Education Minister Filipe Bole says students can wear shorts or sulu Link.

The raging Sulu v. No-Sulu debate in Fiji makes one wonder whether the country really wants to move with the times. But hang on; this was a limited case of just two schools in the North wasn’t it? Two Principals had suddenly been found to have been left in an evolutionary time rut somewhere along the line.

That’s how the thinking would go amongst those who oppose the stance taken by the two gentlemen – and there are many of these progressives. From experience I know that much more would’ve been involved to prod the schools to make a public stand and ban sulus among Indo-Fijian students.

Having said that, I’d like to take us back three  decades and share my own experiences with the sulu issue. I was born in the village of Vuna in the southern tip of Taveuni; the most beautiful of Fiji’s many islands. I spoke Hindi at home and Fijian outside. Those were my two native languages.

For Kindy I attended class 1 at Vuna District School where the teacher had to spend more time ensuring I hadn’t gone wrong because I was not of school age. I was there because Master Pai allowed me to. All my classmates, playmates and friends were Fijian and we spoke English only when we had to – for lessons.

Then I formally joined Class 1 at the neighbouring South Taveuni Indian School where class make-up at the time was predominantly Indian, but there was a healthy mix of others from the copra plantations. This was an Indian school and there were Hindi lessons that everyone took. I guess I liked it just as much as my Fijian friends did, but I had a tough mother so I always came first in Hindi.

After 5 years, my parents got Ratu Ilaitia (Major) to get me enrolled at the more-promising Wairiki Catholic Mission School which had a Junior Secondary section. Once again, I found myself among Fijian students where I was bullied for the first half of the year until I adjusted and adapted to the environment.

When I sat for my Fiji Junior exams in 1977, Wairiki Junior Secondary School had just become Wairiki Secondary School. My 5 years at Wairiki however, was cut short as my parents were obsessed with getting me to do “pure science”. So I came over to Indian High School in Suva after failing to get into Marist because I didn’t have an introductory letter from Wairiki which was a sister school.

Once again I had to adjust into an “Indian” environment. At that time, IHS hardly had any Fijian students – there were 3 in Form 5C where I was unceremoniously dumped as nobody knew me even though I had been a star in Taveuni. The bullying started as soon as I introduced myself in class after the teacher asked me who I was.

You see Taveuni meant junglee/kaiveikau to these people. I remember how I was made to suffer for having called “film” “sakis”. That was the one that took the cake. From then onwards I had difficulty speaking in Hindi in public. Who could I tell that I did not belong there? Or did I belong there like everyone else after all? 
 

As the bullying escalated I was subjected to all kinds of subtle abuse. My very first friends had a similar background to mine. Rajend (Boto) used to hang around with a group of boys from Rewa Street. Aiyub (Kalule) had been groomed at AG High. And Bose (later Suva goalkeeper) was a Fijian.

And in a few weeks, I felt comfortable enough to beat up one of the bigger bullies. That cooled things down for good. As the year progressed, teachers began to notice my capabilities and I was comfortable again. The same thing had happened at Wairiki – half a year wasted in adjustment.

The following year, I moved from my Mausi’s (mother’s sister) place to my grandfather’s rented-out house in Rewa Street. I had a room to myself, but my uncle Freddie’s wife (a Fijian from Wailoku village) looked after my clothes and dinner. Aunty La made sure that my uniforms were the brightest on her clothes line.

I joined the school hockey team and we were regulars in the Suva Men’s Competition at Albert Park on Saturdays. Boxer Livai Saqasaqa used to train in an adjacent garage so I joined that group for a bit of variety. Sunia Cama’s boy, Brij Nand used to join us sometimes. Pratap Sen also dropped in from USP on occassion.

I had two pairs of white uniform shorts and realized that Aunty La was having difficulty keeping up because I was a bit fast and the shorts got brown pretty fast too. One of my ex-Taveuni school mates (who was at Grammar at the time) gave me a white sulu-va’taga after I talked about this, and suddenly I found myself at Indian High School wearing a Fijian sulu.

Nobody said anything the first day because I guess nobody was prepared for that kind of “heresy”. I was also one of the founding members of the Students Council and had introduced the flag raising ceremony at the school. To top it off, I had organized that year’s walk-a-thon with fellow councillor, Sanjay Mishra. Suddenly here I was apparently breaking an unwritten rule that was difficult to fathom.

Two days later, the Vice-Principal called me as I was on my way to the toilet. His exact words to me were, “Subhash, that sulu is getting into your head”. This was the best that the school managed by way of protest in that year of the Lord 1979. Nobody ever said anything about that sulu again.

And I proudly wore it at least once a week with panache. I remember how Uncle Freddie’s Fijian friends used to comment that I wore the sulu high “as it should be worn” compared to the Fijian boys who had begun to push it down their hips. Shortly afterwards, it had gone so low that the “sapo” began to show and the Principals saw red until the sulu slithered back up.

I’m sharing this story because in my case, that white sulu was a source of pride as well as psychological comfort. Inside me I knew who I was and that statement was being made through that sulu. I was the first Indian student to wear the sulu as part of school uniform at Indian High School, and I’m proud to say that the Principal, Mr. Jai Narayan, never saw it as a problem.

If now, some 30 years later, we still haven’t come to terms with how to deal with the sulu in school, I can only despair. If the sulu and the shorts are both part of uniform in our multi-cultural country, who should determine which one the child should wear? Isn’t that the prerogative of parents and their children?

I remember a remarkable letter, during Speight’s folly in 2000, in the Fiji Times by Jake Tulele in which he described the multi-hued polyglot of students coming down the steps of Indian College. Jake said that he couldn’t see race, only children.

Well I tell you I used to walk down those same steps wearing my sulu ironed by Aunty La and I was one helluva proud student. The rest is ongoing history.

Subhash is the Auckland Institute of Studies (AIS) MBA Coordinator and an academic and political commentator. He previously taught at USP, Suva. subhasha@ais.ac.nz