Her Pink Wind Chime

by Amy Esterhuizen

For Ayushi Chhabra (www.fourhensandacock.blogspot.com), a first year journalism and drama major, the hardest part of first year has not been surviving academic life but rather surviving the social life that comes with being a first year at Rhodes. Her outgoing and enthusiastic nature makes it seem like she would have no trouble at all fitting in and coping with the social life at Rhodes. But as she explains, the difficult part of social life has been being judged and stereotyped by other people. “You want to have fun, experience many things, make mistakes and learn from them but in that process people create these false perceptions of you and it’s hard to change the way they think,” she says.

Being only 17 years old, Ayushi is much younger than many other first years. This makes her feel vulnerable and affects her on every level of her Rhodes experience. She looks down at her pink duvet and says, “People’s comments made it hard for me to be who I am”, but then with clear confidence she looks at me and continues, “But I’ve moved on and have learnt not to take other people’s shit to heart.” Ayushi explains that at Rhodes she felt a pressure to prove herself to other people and break free from the stereotypes that are so common here. Her fast paced and loud speech makes it clear that she has had many experiences of being stereotyped before. “I find it difficult balancing my two worlds” she says. Auyshi is Hindu and has lived in India for most of her life and says that this has often led to her being stereotyped because she comes from an Indian background but has a “western” social network. “Just because you belong to a certain ethnic group it’s like you have to submit yourself to their ‘ways’ instead of just being Indian inside of you”. Feeling excluded from the Hindu society at times has been hurtful for Ayushi who often hears that she is ‘too western’ for their liking.

She moved on to tell me about her experiences in Residence and how it hasn’t been an easy change due to some of the girls’ judgements. Ayushi tugs restlessly on her white scarf as she says, “the people in my res have a false image of me” and explains that she has often been called “fake, Barbie or a bitch”. The only time doubt and unhappiness is expressed through her voice is when she speaks about some of the issues that have occurred in her res. “I ran for entertainment Rep and the girls in my res ripped my posters off and tore them up,” she said seriously. It is because of incidents like this that Ayushi is changing residence next year, but this is not going to ruin her experience of first year.

Auyshi came to Rhodes because she needed a change from the lifestyle and ‘high school mentality’ she had in Johannesburg. She smiles and says that she has changed for the better, becoming a strong independent girl who is not going to let other people bring her down. “I’m very proud to be who I am, I consider myself a survivor”, she exclaims. Ayushi’s strong opinions and wisdom are a breath of fresh air. Her pink wind chime blows melodically in the wind as she says “the most important lesson I’ve learnt is to be true to yourself, be who you want to be and everything will be alright”. She leans back and says that she won’t let these problems get her down because these problems are what “make life, life”. Ayushi is looking forward to each new day here at Rhodes, having fun and doing things on the spur of the moment. She grins and says, “In ten years time I want to look back on my time at Rhodes and say, ‘Whoa, those were the days!’”.