The Contest

Contest 04 - Robert Klein Engler

"Barbie Goes to India"

sther planned to do it on Sunday when everyone was out of the house and she was alone with Sushila. Maybe it would help the school they attended. This school in India where her father taught was in desperate straits. It had second hand desks, maps that were yellowed, few books and no indoor plumbing.

The school enrolled mainly girls from the untouchable caste. Although the students did not have much money to spend on their education, they made up for it with excitement and dedication.

Esther's father was a missionary, and tried to teach his vision of the truth. He liked his student's excitement, but not all of their Indian ways. To be a good teacher he had to give up smoking cigars, learn to eat vegetarian food, and observe some Indian holidays at the school. One school observance was a week long celebration dedicated the Indian Goddess of Learning, Saraswati. These ceremonies were important, because they encouraged the students to study hard and practice discipline the rest of the school year.

When Esther came to live in Padmanpur, she brought her Christmas presents with her, among which was her favorite toy, a Barbie doll. The girl and the doll were inseparable. Esther would sit in the patio of the house as the dust and noise of the street filtered to a background hum, combing Barbie's hair. The bright air of an Indian afternoon gave a surreal quality to her patient strokes. It was as if she were evolved in a ritual only she could explain. Because Esther made friends easily, it was no surprise her best friend would turn out to be Sushila, a little girl who attended the mission school. Sushila had a winning smile, big brown eyes and looked almost as frail as a doll herself. Sushila also became fascinated with Barbie. On Sundays the two girls would play with the doll under the shade of a banyan tree.

"These are the clothes Barbie wears to bed," Esther would say, showing Sushila a pair of pink pajamas, "and these are what Barbie wears when she goes out with her boyfriend," displaying a pair of blue jeans and a suede jacket. This Sunday afternoon, when Sushila came to play, Esther planned a surprise. She would give her Barbie doll to the dark eyed girl

ater that week, Esther overheard her father laughing and talking to one of his colleagues. They were talking about the Saraswati procession at the school. A statue of Saraswati, decorated and riding a peacock, was led to a temple set up for her honor in one of the school's back rooms. There she would receive her worshipers, and then they would be encouraged to study hard and learn their lessons.

Father was laughing because in this year's procession, the statue of the goddess wasn't the usual clay figure one sees sold in the stalls of the town bazaar, but an elaborately decorated Barbie doll. Esther's doll had passed through the hands of Sushila, and into the hands of the classmates at the girl's school. Barbie was now the goddess of learning.

Father said Barbie played her new roll to the hilt. Her outfit of hand sewn silk with sequins and gold thread would make all the other Barbie dolls of southern California green with envy. Her altars, with jasmine flowers and incense sticks, was like no other Barbie doll house in Missouri or Florida. Her devotion was beyond anything she would receive in Manhattan or Vermont. Barbie had come to India and realized her dreams.