Click
here for my Facebook photo album "In a Relationship. With India. It's Called Love."
Click
here for "I Love India Twoo."
Crickets and Frogs. India is the world cricket champion (I watched them win! It was really exciting! I felt proud and learned about a whole new sport!) and I have become the local frog celebrity. The kids don’t dare touch frogs but I think they're cool (outside). So when I was visiting the hostel after school one day and the gardener was cutting bushes, out came lots of frogs. In my 3rd standard class (they call it “standard” instead of “grade”) we had been reading a book about frogs, and students ran up to me, “Aunty, frogs! You see—frogs!” They thought it was the funniest thing that I would catch one, and then they were trying to get me to catch every single frog there. When I held up a friendly amphibian to anyone, they would jump back, “Nooo, Aunty” and peer at a distance with fascinated fear. Several kids asked me if I eat frogs. I know I’ve gotten a little reputation for my odd cuisine, but frogs—that is food for a dare or a good story only. I have enjoyed fried crickets, though.
It’s a great treat at the school to watch movies on Saturday nights. My treat is watching the kids watch the movies. So far we’ve seen several Disney and Pixar films, and when 180 kids all ooh and ahh and laugh and gasp together, it’s like I’m five again and seeing these new films at that age. I sit with the children on the floor of the Dining Hall after dinner, where the film is projected onto the wall. Inevitably a few kids will sidle their way over to snuggle and ask me questions. They tell me “bad boy” and point at the screen whenever the bad guy comes on, and hold on to me a little tighter. “Good boy” for the handsome hero, and they all know a princess. One thing that always makes me a little nervous, however, is the on-screen kiss. “They kiss in those movies?” you might ask. You probably haven’t paid too much attention because these displays of affection are very brief and mild by Western culture’s standards. However, in India it is prohibited to kiss or hold hands in public. Any respectable person would never do such a thing, and if you’ve ever watched a Bollywood film, you might remember the lack of lip-locking despite most themes centering on marriage, forbidden love and family ties.
“Marriage first, love later” is India’s traditional approach to wedlock. Arranged marriages are fascinating to me, probably because in most ways they are so very contrary to my culture. Initially I recoil at the thought of having no choice in such an important matter. I even had a dream at 19 that my marriage was being arranged and everyone felt fine about it, but I was trying not to freak out. The first time I met my intended, we had a meeting with our church leader to make sure everything was in order, and suddenly when we left the meeting I was married to him forever. What? It happened and I had never said yes! But I decided, “Well, I guess I’d better learn to love him because there’s no going back now.” And I started to at least feel okay with being okay about it. These days when people ask me why I'm not married, I tell them that my parents are lazy.
If you take romance out of the equation and expect your elders to have much more wisdom than you do, it becomes natural that they would make that important match. The tide is turning among the younger generation in the larger cities of India, and ironically, I will admit that there is something very enticing about leaving to trusted others the responsibility of choosing a mate. The people I have talked to from the village scene say they want love, and many of them have been unhappy in their relationships with a rare divorce, but so far they all accept unequivocally that the parents decide. It is very respectable for a woman to be so faithful to her husband and to love him and be good to him. The girls may know for years that their parents found her husband, but normally they don’t meet him and certainly don’t talk until maybe a few months before, or even the day of the wedding.
The ideal is an arranged love marriage. One of my friends, a 22-year-old housemother (one who lives at the hostel and cares for the children there) who is also a teacher at the school, was prohibited from even talking to boys all through school until she graduated college. Her grandmother told her she wouldn’t pay for Rajikumari’s education if she talked to anyone but girls. So Raji didn’t break their trust, but somehow still developed feelings for a kind young man from the highest caste whom she ran into again at a friend’s wedding a year or so ago. “Lakshmi,” she speaks his name softly because he is a secret, “wants to marry me.” Since Raji is out of school now, she feels okay talking to him. But her parents don’t know about him and will refuse her, she fears. Rajikumari asked me how I know whom to choose. “That’s a great question,” I laughed. Life experience and my preferences are important, but ultimately, I told her, “It takes lots of practice and prayer to ask God what He wants for me.” Does God arrange marriages?
One day when I was still new here, some boys asked me, “Aunty, how much buy you house?” (Huh?) “How many stars? You dinner? See movie?” I was really confused until I asked the other volunteers, who explained that we can offer a special night with the students for a Star Store prize. Every Tuesday the store is open after school and the kids line up to take turns buying trinkets, school supplies, and special movie nights with the volunteers: 30 stars for dinner and a movie, or 15 stars for just a movie. Some little boys I had never met spent 30 stars (one month’s worth of good behavior) to come to April Aunty’s house, and I wanted to make it good. I make egg bread (French toast) with jam, omelettes with vegetables and enchilada sauce, watermelon, and fun-size 100 Grand chocolates. Aravind, 5, Sanjay, 6, and Ismael, 11, wanted to watch Hulk, Spiderman 3 or Transformers. I don’t watch scary movies, I told them. So we settled on Jumanji, which was still intense for me! And I got to do Night at April Aunty's house the next week with two other boys.
Singing and dancing, paper-cutting tricks, poi fire ball spinning, catching groundnuts in the mouth, and sharing poetry and artwork were treats we enjoyed at the second annual Rising Star Talent Show. All of the teachers, housemothers, volunteers, and even some grounds crew came for the event. One of my favorites was the older boys’ comedy dance where three boys danced Indian-style, and then a fourth boy, dressed convincingly as a girl, walked out and stole the boys’ hearts. They were swooning over "her" the rest of the dance and it was hilarious.
Nail polish. One of the girls told me recently “You talent putting nail polish.” Huh, I had never considered that as one of my talents. The kids here LOVE getting their nails painted, and I’m so glad my roommate had a bunch of colors she was willing to share. The kids usually have a different color for each hand and foot, and then they put contrasting colors of dots on each nail to decorate. It’s like it’s too hard to decide which color, so use as many as you can. As I was leaving the girls’ hostel after my first time painting nails here, I passed some boys who eagerly asked me to paint their nails too. “I love pink!” “Yellow is mine!!” the boys clamored over the colors. “Oh, my,” I thought. “I guess fashion is different here.” Seeing how happy it made them, and deciding that boys painting their nails is purely a cultural preference that I could let go of in India, I went along with it. I came back another day with polish for the boys, and they were just as excited as the girls had been. One housemother even let her boys stay up late because they had been expecting me but I had gone to another group first. I kept laughing at their enthusiasm to paint, and I asked their housemother, Gandhimathi, if she knew that in America boys do not generally paint their nails. In fact, most people think it’s kind of strange. “Here, too,” Gandhi said. “Same. But these boys hostel boys. They go outside, some girls laugh.” Oh, no, what did I do? I thought it was a totally acceptable Indian practice for boys to paint their nails, but here a housemother is telling me that the kids living at our hostel are just a little naïve? And they are leaving the next day to go home for six weeks with their nails painted? Nobody thinks anything of it from all I've seen, though.
Today was a weary day, feeling tired and even frustrated at the poor level of education here—and I've only been here a couple of weeks. I spend 2-2.5 hours every morning correcting journals, and it got to me today that these kids just don't seem to be learning and most of the teachers don't know English very well either. And then I tutor various kids when I'm not teaching, and today they seemed especially slow. I take full responsibility for my feelings and I'm not blaming them. It's me! I am just having an impatient, uncharitable day! I share this because I am so very human, and I was touched in a sweet way by one of my students, Ebinesar. He came in to the library at the start of lunch and asked me how I was doing. I was finishing the last of 4th standard’s journals and was in the midst of my frustration with the education. I told Ebinesar, who is the tiniest smilingest boy I’ve seen, that I was frustrated because people make the same mistakes over and over, and I just needed to get over it. I didn't know how much he would understand and was kind of hoping he wouldn't, because I didn't want to dump on him. Without saying anything, he started to open the remaining journals to the page I was correcting and then he went off to lunch, smiling back at me. Tears dripped from my face, as I felt my frustration melting and I felt sorry for my hard heart.
In my quiet moments, I hear little Indian voices commanding my attention: “Aunty, you see—frog!” “Aunty, you come!” “Aunty, why you name April? When you birthday?” “What you mother name?” “You like veg-e-ta-bles?” “Vhen you vill come my house?” “Aunty, picture me take.” And sometimes I feel a firm tug on my forearm, a child taking me to whatever she wants me to see. The children are gone for six weeks on holiday break now, but their voices run through my mind even when I’m alone, reminding me of their excitement for life and the time we’ve shared for the past month learning from each other. (This picture is of Amirtham, a vivacious 7-yr-old girl who was so stoked to buy Spider Man socks at Star Store! I haven’t told her, but she’s also a kid I wish I could take home with me. I think her family wouldn’t like that.)
Next time: Coming-of-Age, Wet Saris, Pain and the Colonies, and more
