Sometimes I wonder if anyone else in my class ate chalk. Once I saw Maya pop a piece in her mouth, but she was one of the popular girls and she did it on a dare—it didn’t count. My craving, in contrast, was acute. When our poetry teacher told us, while discussing Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” that the white cliffs of Dover were made of chalk, I immediately fantasized about going there to eat them. It wasn’t until I was 25 and living in the United States that I learned the meaning of my secret life. When Maya and I played together as 6 year-olds in Bombay, we would pick up handfuls of dirt and place the heaps on the see-saw. Then we would bump the bottom until the pebbles rolled off, and we were left with fine red mud that we could collect in our cupped palms and lick for a snack. The smell of rain-washed earth awoke particularly strong pangs of hunger for dirt. By the time we were 12, I suspect I was the only one with predilections for non-food items. I would linger in school after classes were over and help myself to chalk from all the rooms, flashing sweet smiles at the custodians who walked by as my hand froze in mid-grab. No one seemed to catch on, though I was sure they wondered why the chalk supplies ran out. I began to buy my chalk instead of relying on meager classroom supplies. The first time I did this, my guilty conscience made me extremely nervous that the storekeeper would, upon hearing my request, see right through me and roar, “What’s it for? To eat?” to which I had no good answer prepared. But, to my relief, he briskly wrapped the chalk and told me the cost as if it were the most normal purchase in the world. Once, my sister Lakshmi, 22 to my 13, opened the pocket of my book bag, alerted perhaps by white marks on the outer denim. Out tumbled twenty or thirty sticks of my secret. Being no fool, she knew that such vast quantities could have no innocent purpose. “Amma,” she called to my mother, “look, Seetha’s eating chalk!” When my mother questioned me, I pointed at my tennis shoes and said. “They’re for whitening the shoes!” My harried mother seemed willing to accept that. Perhaps she thought that even if my sister was right, I would grow out of the habit. I was just relieved that she did not make a fuss. I was a connoisseur of chalk, but could share my observations with no one. Some batches were sweetish, with a powdery texture that broke away in chunks with a little pressure. Some batches were brittle and slightly bitter, but with a pleasant aftertaste of camphor. Finally there was the powdered variety I was delighted to discover. One day we ran out of toothpaste, and opened one of the little packets of toothpowder that we kept for the servants. It was nothing but pink, powdered, sweetened chalk! I embraced this new form of teeth-cleaning with gusto and became conscientious about my oral hygiene. Every morning, I would anticipate the ritual of wetting my finger, dipping it into the powder, and placing it on my tongue. My sister caught a glimpse of my tongue once, and exclaimed “Your tongue is so pink! It looks so healthy!” But she must have thought the matter through, for on another morning when I emerged from the bathroom, she grinned wickedly and asked, “Had your breakfast?” I flushed to the roots of my hair and walked on. I always bought my chalk at a different store each time so that no one would guess my real purpose. With toothpowder, I wasn’t so lucky. Only one store in my neighborhood sold it. One day, the owner, smiling kindly, asked, “Eat it, do you?” I expressed surprise, and said “Of course not!” In retrospect, I feel certain that everyone knew what I was up to. Only the guilelessness of youth could have convinced me that I was fooling everyone by rotating my chalk stops, or pretending that my primary purpose with the toothpowder was to clean my teeth. How often did I hear my distracted mother remark that I had a calcium deficiency? And did the family not come home one day to find I had consumed almost an entire half-gallon container of the homoeopathic pills, Calcarea Carb.--calcium carbonate to the rest of the world, chalk to me? So, I think, everyone knew. My mother urged Calcium Sandoz supplements on me, which I dutifully ate. Still, I never felt the craving abate. When I was 15, we moved to Four Bungalows, a suburb of Bombay. Our flat was new, with lime-washed walls. My sister, the detective, had moved to Chicago. One day, with the knowledge that comes to the cunning or the desperate, I chipped off a small piece of wall and sampled it. To my delight, it was remarkably like chalk. Lime--calcium hydroxide—of course! It becomes chalk as it dries! My mania entered a whole new dimension. Large patches of wall became bare as I carefully chipped away. I used the needle of the compass from my geometry set to puncture the wall. Then I slid the point under the lime, and if I did it just right, an entire wafer-thin slice of wall would fall away into my waiting hand. Sometimes I used my right index fingernail to do the same thing. In the beginning, the patches were out of sight—behind curtains and bookshelves, and under tables. But by and by, as with all natural resource depletion, the losses became visible and my “habit” came out in the open. This happened so gradually, though, that there was never a moment of revelation to galvanize my family into action. Rather, it emerged in their consciousness as a long-known fact, finally acknowledged. At school, I mentioned the wall-eating to Maya. She seemed to have no memory of our days of dirt, and we were no longer friends. But she did have a sense of humor. “Uh-oh,” she said, “one day we’re going to hear that Four Bungalows.…” and with her hands, she mimed the buildings crashing down to their foundations as the insatiable beast devoured the walls. I was 18 when my two older brothers Ramu and Gopi, produced a play. People were in and out of our flat all the time, and the bare walls were by now so conspicuous that people could hardly help noticing them. I expect my family told them the truth: that I was an out-of-control wall-eater. Sure enough, one of the actors asked me, “How do you do it? Do you just bite?” and he mimed leaning on the wall and gnawing fiercely. “No, no!” I said, and explained about my tools. My friends found my habits funny. “Give Seetha a plate of chalk!” they would call, when it was lunchtime. But even after people learned of my habits, I could never bring myself to eat chalk, wall or toothpowder in front of others. It remained a private activity. I tried to recruit my brother Ramu, 34 to my 20, to the joys of chalk. “Just try it,” I urged. We were downtown in his office, where I had stopped to hitch a ride home. I had just spied a box of chalk—pink, yellow, and blue—and my stomach juices were churning in anticipation. Earlier in the week, he had sampled wall at my suggestion, but his verdict had been: “Tastes unhealthy.” I was eager to change his mind. “No,” he said firmly. “White chalk, maybe. But I draw the line at colored chalk.” His words gave me pause. Yes, I thought, I too should have some standards. I too will draw the line at colored chalk. At the age of 23, I came to the United States for graduate school at the Ohio State University. I hugged my friends and family goodbye and boarded the plane, eager for adventures in this next phase of my life. For the first few months, I was busy adjusting to the new culture, meeting my neighbors and colleagues, and settling in. Once my surroundings felt comfortable, I picked up a stick of white chalk from an American classroom, slipped it into my book-bag, and went home. The chalk felt different, smooth and shiny, as if coated with plastic. I took a tentative bite, and spat it out. It tasted heinous. Typical! I thought with disgust. Everything has additives and preservatives in this damn country! But I soon overcame my squeamishness. After all, it’s essential chalky goodness was there. Soon, I was supplementing my diet with chalk just as before. I was pleased that in the US, unlike in India, whole boxes of chalk were placed in classrooms, instead of just one or two sticks. I swiped these boxes in their entirety. As a result, I didn’t need to haunt the corridors too often, and my chalk supply was steady. I made occasional half-hearted attempts to give up the habit, reflecting that it wasn’t sexy, feminine or mature. But usually a long gap would revive the craving, and I’d fall off the wagon. I drank gallons of coffee, and stayed up nights writing papers for graduate school. Besides chalk, my diet included other foods, like dairy products, vegetables, and, when I went out with friends, hops (in the form of beer). But it wasn’t well-balanced. About a year later, I developed an unfocused ache in my legs, mysterious because I didn’t exercise and hadn’t injured myself. I went to the doctor, a dark-haired, smart, professional lady. We sat in the sterile office that smelled of disinfectants and cold instruments as I recounted my problem. “I’ve never heard such a complaint before,” she said, “but let’s take a blood test and see what we find.” There was silence between us as she pricked my arm. When she was done, I rose to leave. But she said, “Is there anything else you want to bring up?” I sat down again, book bag in lap, and searched my mind. The chalk-eating was so much a part of my life that it didn’t occur to me at first. When it did, I hesitated. It felt sacrilegious, somehow, to bring up my long-standing private ritual in this sterile environment. But I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Well, I’ve eaten chalk.” I saw a small flare of shock in her eyes. “I see,” she said, keeping her voice even. “And when was the last time you ate chalk?” she continued. “Oh, it was years ago,” I said, staring at the floor, by now ashamed and wanting the earth to swallow me up. “I see,” she said, nodding away, struggling, I thought, to act as if she heard this sort of thing every day. But she didn’t have to convince me. Now that I had said so much, the urge to confess could not be held back. I sat uncomfortably for a moment. Then: “I lied!” I cried, “I ate chalk yesterday!” “Ah,” she said, seeming to regain her composure. She briskly gave me another appointment, by which time the results of my blood-work would be ready. I left, wondering what was in store for me. I was to find out within the week. Pica, it is called. Iron deficiency, I learned, not calcium. I was anemic. No wonder the calcium tablets had not helped. Too much coffee, the doctor said, was compounding my poor diet by leaching iron from my body. Pica patients, I learned, often eat non-food items. It was a syndrome, and it had a name. Knowing this was somehow comforting. I was odd, but not alone! After the explanation, she prescribed iron tablets and sent me off to the nutritionist. I was bemused at how fast things were moving along. With the prick of a needle, it was clear, a lifetime of chalk-eating was going to be put behind me. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I still liked the stuff. I didn’t want to crave chalk and not be able to eat it. The nutritionist was a fount of information. She gave me lists. One contained items that pica patients eat, and as I skimmed it the words fairly leapt off the page. Hair. Light-bulbs. Feces. Lead. Vinyl gloves. I gasped. I had been lucky. Chalk-eating seemed tame compared to some of these things. Another contained helpful information about what kinds of iron are contained in what foods: heme-iron in meat, and non-heme iron in vegetables, grains and fruits. The nutritionist advised me that as a vegetarian, I needed to eat lots of vitamin C-rich foods to help my body assimilate non-heme iron. Another list. I tottered out of the health center laden with paper, a dazed but better-informed person. The mystery of the ache in my legs was never solved. But, as my vegetarian diet became more nutritious—lots of fruit and green leafy vegetables, less coffee--the ache went away, as did the craving for chalk. After a few months, I no longer needed the iron tablets. I told my sister the tale, and we rejoiced. I am nostalgic about my pica days, especially when the rain brings the smell of damp earth, and memories of childhood come rushing back. If you dare me to eat chalk or dirt, I can do it. Still, I don’t wish back the craving. I am glad to be healthy, glad to be rid of secret moments of illicit consumption, glad that, if I go to Dover, it won’t be to eat the cliffs. Seetha Narayan was born and raised in India where, besides snacking on strange foods, she published freelance articles and sang for commercials. She completed her BA in India and moved to the US in 1991 for graduate school. For the next decade she cut a swathe through Ohio, Colorado, Indiana, California and Pennsylvania, her head buried in a book. At present Seetha has taken a year off from her job as a philosophy professor, and is spending her time in Colorado with her husband. When not teaching or commuting, she enjoys writing, hiking, playing games and traveling. HOME