Social Hide & Seek
The school ball in Australian high schools is a big deal. In private schools, where the average family has deep pockets, it gets even bigger. The lead up goes on for months and the anticipation puts everything else on the backburner. Even the teachers, resolute and determined instructors in their daily interactions, start asking who has their suits ready, who has their limousines booked, and who has their corsage picked out. Growing up in Karachi on a healthy dose of American television, even though I knew what a school ball was, I never thought there would be so much excitement geared around it.
My high school in Karachi also had a school ball, but I had left before it took place, so I had no prior experience to work with. Also, balls in my school were different. The Australian dresses were exchanged for semi-formal tops and jeans, or shalwar kameezes. Though the private clubs in Karachi still had events where people would dress up in tuxedos and dresses, they were few and far between compared to the Pakistan my parents had experienced. Limousines are now earmarked for bureaucrats, politicians, or the armed forces. Though some of the kids in my school did have access to these vehicles through their parents, many would end up asking their friends with the biggest cars to take one for the team and create an informal cavalcade, where four-wheel drives would follow each other to the ball drop off point. I had heard all about this from seniors at school but had never actually experienced a ball.
Our version of a corsage was a motia flower and though street vendors would sell these readily, they were not durable enough to hang around the hands of people as they danced. I’m sure the more resourceful guys in my school had developed a workaround though.
The one similarity between both Australia and Pakistan was that you could take a partner. The major bottleneck though; where my school in Karachi was co-ed, my private school in Australia (like most other high-end private schools) was single-sex. I did find an opportunity to mitigate this though.
All boys high schools in Australia had ‘socials’. A social would be where the sister school of the all-boys school would, in a rare moment of compassion, allow their girls to meet the boys. This would happen once a semester, however most of the boys and girls already knew each other growing up in Perth, having gone to preschool together or being family friends. They would naturally form cliques. Not having grown up in Perth, I was boxed in with the international kids (mainly from Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) twiddling our thumbs, standing in the corner, sporting sheepish looks.
One social was enough for us international boys, to retire from them altogether. This must have happened with the previous cohorts as well, and one of them must have complained to the school, because later that year after we launched our inferno on the school administration, we found out that there was also an ‘international kids social’. All boarders (people living on campus) or first-generation migrants were to be given their time in the sun. This, however, was an annual event, and in the Year 10 international social, I was expected to charm and make agreeable a person for next year’s school ball, because in all likelihood, we wouldn’t be meeting again, since boarders had to live on campus with minimum opportunity for dates off-campus. Tall order.
Truth be told, even if I had free reign to meet the girls from the sister school again, I wouldn’t have been able to close the deal (or any other deal) anyway.
Just like the school social created Perth cliques, the international social created South-East-Asian cliques. The Indonesians flocked together, conversing in Bahasa Indonesia, the Malaysians in Bahasa Melayu, and the Singaporeans in Singlish. Just a few others and I were left between a rock and a hard place. Disgruntled and jaded, I spent the evening on the periphery. As we were packed off back to our school after the event, I sat on the bus knowing I would be going alone to the ball, if going at all.
My mother was having none of it, though. Taken up as her parental duty, she took to asking one of the school mothers to arrange a partner for my Year 11 ball. Private school balls were a big deal, so it was apparently not very hard to draw the attention of interested parties. All costs were covered by the boy, so it was a red carpet event, fully sponsored. Not a bad deal, even if you had to deal with me for the evening. My mother had sourced a partner and we headed down to the shops soon to do some further sourcing; that of a second-hand suit and a corsage.
As the day came around, I was a nervous wreck. Having no social conditioning at a previous ball, this was basically an impromptu blind date, with lots and lots of rituals and expectations.
My mother had to hold my hand through much of the introduction. The small talk, the dawning of the corsage, and the hand on shoulder walk to the limousine. Feeling quite embarrassed and somewhat terrified, I duly obliged, as I was in no position to negotiate with my mother at that point.
The girl seemed nice (gleamed from the five sentences we exchanged all night), but truth be told, I was petrified by the chain of events. I could have danced and even held her hand if I wanted to, but nobody gave me the instruction manual. These were all retrospective thoughts.
As the night wore on, she continued dancing with her friends and I avoided her like the bubonic plague. I covertly made my way to the international boys’ table. Some had found partners and some sat empty-handed. A few were even in my position, with blind dates who they were playing hide and seek with like I was. We smiled at each other, acknowledging the baptism of fire which are high school balls for migrant boys.
- Edited by Radhika Sharma