'I was made to fit in a square box'

Terrible is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg cracking on a zinc counter and terrible is that sound when it moves in the memory of a man who is hungry,” recited Nicole Sumner.

The verse being from a Jaques Prevert poem ‘Late Rising’ was the first ever that Sumner had read growing up as a child. Now in her 50s, word ‘terrible’ is something which Sumner is quite familiar with.

“I didn’t pass my English in 12th grade. I had a cover with no diploma certificate in it and at the college ceremony I was too embarrassed. I did rest of my education in a community college. It was then when I began to think why do students fail and why do some succeed. Because I had failed and I didn’t understand why?” Sumner told Metrolife in a candid chat.

It would take many a year for her to answer these questions. “I understand now that I wanted to do so many things, and yet, I was made to fit in a square box,” she added.

Now a teacher at the American Embassy School, Delhi, Sumner is helping her students to break open that box from which she had liberated herself years ago.

“I was in a school which said that they believed in peace but they didn’t teach peace. I wouldn’t let that happen to any of my students,” she said. Sumner has been teaching arts and music in Delhi for the past five years.

Born in New York State , Sumner grew up in Rome after her parents moved from United States. “I lived there with my family, when Rome was not a tourist destination but a locality which housed working class people,” she said.

From Rome to United States, and now in India, Sumner’s life seems like an elaborate journey which is filled with music, poetry, theatre and of course her favourite ‘street activism’.

“My first protest was more of a family affair. In 1968-69 my parents, my two sisters and our dog stood in a corner of our town to protest against the B1 bomb that Vietnam was pounded with. We put a sign on our dog which said, ‘This K9 says no to the B1’,” she said.

Art and politics seems to be a family trade for Sumner, with her mother a professional violinist, sisters in visual and video art and a husband who is a jazz drummer.

“We married just before coming to India,” said Sumner. Her arrival to India in fact is quite a colourful story. “In 2008, I was attending a workshop in integrating Chinese music into American music. I met this person named Sky and I emailed him the same day,” Sumner said smilingly before continuing, “I wrote to her that I wanted to see how she running her programme in Florida as I was under the impression that she taught there. She responded that she doesn’t teach in Florida and in fact was a part of the American Embassy school in Delhi. She wanted me to join her and I did so happily. It was fate.”

Laced with theatre studies in Seattle and a Masters in inter-disciplinary art education and a teaching credential in music, Sumner arrived in India after teaching in public schools for almost 15 years. “Schools are going global especially international schools. They are sharing best practices at a speed never seen before through our technology, conferences so on and I want to be a part of it,” she said.

Sunmer also mentioned about her other activities which has made her fond of the city. “I like teaching here but there are other things which I get here, for instance having workshops in poetry or participating in other socio-cultural movements in Delhi,” she said. “If there is anything I want to teach here is that, you can put something out there which is not perfect which is not complete,” she concluded.