by James Murray Perry
(This is just a tiny peek into a much deeper book I’m writing — the serious stuff comes later, I promise. So if you happen to catch me staring blankly into space, don’t worry, I’m not high. I’ve just been locked in a battle with my own sentences. Writing and editing — it’s cheaper than therapy, but only slightly less painful.)
Primary School was a short walk down the stairs, we lived above the school. Still in the fog of those early mornings, it felt like entering a different world. We wore shoes scuffed from too much running and cloths that never quite dried in time. Our Khasi classmates were shy at first — we were the outsiders, the ones who didn’t know the rules, the prayers, the hand signals of friendship.
But play has a way of smoothing edges.
It began with marbles. Little glass planets clinked together in the dirt, a quiet invitation to join. Roger, Bob and I picked up the game fast — but I insisted on using my index finger to shoot, convinced it gave me an edge. Winning meant keeping your opponent’s marble, so the stakes felt enormous. Some of us came home with bulging pockets and wide grins. Others sulked with empty hands and dust on our knees.
In summer, the games grew louder.
That’s when the war games started — boys fashioning weapons from discarded inner tubes, sliced into long strips and tied at the end to make them heavier at one end. We’d fire these rubber bands like arrows across courtyards, hiding behind trees, stacked firewood or hay stacks. Alliances formed and dissolved in minutes. Someone always came home with a welt on their arm, and someone else would triumphantly carry the “flag,” a stolen rag or a brother’s old shirt.
Tag was constant — up hills, down narrow paths, behind churches and under laundry lines. The Khasi kids were fast and agile, laughing even as they darted away, barefoot on gravel. We learned quickly to follow their shortcuts, leaping over ditches, ducking under fences.
Then came the tops, Latom in Khasi — heavy wooden ones, hand-carved and beautifully brutal. Tied with string, flung with a whip of the wrist, they spun like tiny warriors. The goal wasn’t just to spin — it was to strike. A good top could crack another in half. The battles were loud, full of gasps and cheers. I remember losing my first top and crying over it. But a week later, a classmate carved me a new one from a tree branch. No words. Just handed it over and walked away, stoic as ever they were.
Then of course, there was the season of kites — Kot Kudi, as we called them in Khasi. The skies turned into a canvas of colour, each kite a masterpiece of hand-crafted design. Delicate bamboo strips were shaved and bent just so, forming the light frame that held the whisper-thin paper, bright as stained glass in the sun. We’d run through open fields, spools in hand, sending our kites soaring higher and higher, eyes squinting against the light. And then came the real thrill — the duel in the sky — weaving, dodging, then slicing through the string of a rival kite, watching it flutter away in wild defeat.
Even the girls’ games had a kind of fierce grace. They carried baby siblings on their backs — snugly wrapped in blankets and shawls — and still managed to skip rope, chase one another, and laugh with the ease of girls unbothered by weight or worry. The older girls in our family still tell stories of trying it themselves. They would strap Sally’s doll to their backs, but it kept slipping to one side no matter how tightly they pulled the fabric. The village girls giggled, then came over — not to mock, but to help. Quick hands adjusted the knot, showing them the trick: a twist here, a loop there, the strength in the wrap.
And just like that, with shared laughter and a borrowed skill, the line between outsider and friend quietly disappeared.
Not long after, it was me they wrapped up. I must have been 6 months to 1 year old. They took turns strapping me to their backs like one of their own, arms flung out, squealing with laughter as they ran. And in that moment, I wasn’t just the foreign baby — I was part of the game, part of the rhythm, part of them.
In the rainy season, we played under the eaves, feet dangling over flooded ditches, telling ghost stories and daring each other to fetch plums from the neighbor’s tree. When the sun returned, we drew chalk games on dry ground — hopscotch, or something like it, mashed together with rules from a far-off country.
School itself was a patchwork — rote learning, times tables chanted in careful unison, lessons scribbled in shared notebooks. Shirley was the best at making friends — she could mimic any accent and learned Khasi faster than the rest of us. Bob, on the other hand, got into trouble for asking too many questions. He once asked a teacher why the math book skipped from page 34 to 47. The teacher stared and said, “Because it does,” and that was that. Of course it was simple, somebody had torn those pages out.
Some teachers treated us kindly. Others kept their distance. And then there were those whose way of punishment was as much about control as it was about discipline. They would line us up and tell us to choose a stick — each one with its own promise of pain. A thin, almost fragile branch, so light you could almost imagine it wouldn’t hurt. A thicker one, sturdy and unforgiving, the kind that seemed to carry weight even in your hand. And then there was the stick, as wide as a ruler, solid and heavy, the choice that made your stomach churn just looking at it. We never knew which one we’d end up with, but we always hoped for the lightest, even if it didn’t always spare us.
Each time the stick landed, it felt like the world slowed for just a second — the sting sharp, then fading quickly, leaving only the quiet hum of the classroom in its wake. There was a moment of silence, then a shared glance — one that said we were in this together, whether we liked it or not. No matter how much we feared the sting, the bond between us grew stronger. Later, we’d laugh about it — a kind of defiance in the face of what we couldn’t change. “Number Eight reporting for duty, sir!” we’d joke, as if we were in the army, making light of what was meant to break us. And somehow, in those moments, we were never truly broken. We were just learning how to stand, together.
Still, friendships grew. Slowly. Authentically.
One boy gave Roger a jri, a small slingshot made from a forked branch and a strip of tire. Another showed Barbara how to fold a leaf into a cup for drinking stream water. Grayce was invited to a bam khana, a girl’s picnic, where she sat cross-legged eating rice with her hands, feeling more included than she ever had.
And through it all, there was a quiet understanding — we were different, but not unwelcome. We didn’t belong in the old way. But we belonged in a new one.