Nights of Beautiful Women

(Started in my notebook on the plane between Mumbai and Delhi three weeks ago.)

Mumbai, Maharastra
Deepti, Sapna and I are the only ones left here in Building 7 of the Sewa Samiti Cooperative Housing Society in King's Circle, Sion. We said goodbye to Manu this morning, with hearty back-slapping hugs and plans to meet again soon in the States. I was the only one in the apartment when Jenny left later this afternoon, our conversation not yet ended as she stepped into the taxi that took her away. The apartment was strangely quiet when I went back upstairs, and I stared blankly out the window at the gold dome of the gurudwara down the street until the cawing of a crow on the laundry line snapped me out of my reverie.

But now it's night here and the three of us have been together for the evening: Deepti catching up on email, and Sapna creating intricate mehndi (henna) designs onto my splayed hands. Her head is bent in concentration and I am trying very hard to keep my hand still on the orange satin pillow that has become her workspace. From the computer, Deepti is asking questions about love and boys and life and Sapna keeps yanking my hand when I start to speak. "Stop talking," she admonishes. "You move your hands when you talk." I look at her incredulously and she laughs aloud when I tell her I can't stop talking. At the computer, Deepti snorts. "Seriously, Sap, stop talking? For Rashmi?"

Later the three of us are in bed in their room (mine and Jenny's and Manu's has been stripped and cleaned in preparation for the new volunteers). The ceiling fan is humming above and the night is cooler than it has been in a while, blessedly deviod of rain. The smell of fresh mehndi rises from my hands and in the dark, I keep bringing my palms to my face to inhale the pungent aroma, oddly familiar from my childhood. We are talking in low tones, and Deepti's voice is velvety when she asks, "Do you remember the first time your parents thought of America as home?"

My hands, near my face, freeze and I feel my breath on my palms, even and slow. "Yeah," I reply quietly into the darkness. "It's kind of a big deal when that happens."

I know Deep is nodding and her voice continues, soft and sure. "I always used to feel like I was taking my mom away from her family when we left. You know?" Now Sapna and I are nodding into the darkness. "And I always was so guilty because I wanted to go back to America so badly. And this one time, we were on the plane leaving from New Delhi and I asked my mom if she was happy to be leaving. She smiled and said, 'Yes, let's go home,' and her voice was relieved and happy. It was the first time I didn't feel guilty for wanting to go home."

In my mind, I can see a smaller version of Deepti on the plane next to her mother, feel her childlike relief at going back to her bedroom, devoid of cousins and containing the notes from friends and Babysitters' Club books and clothes that are hers and hers alone. I know the overwhelming desire for American life that two months in a village in India causes within her, a life that is clean and ordered and in the other country, a desire that causes so much guilt. I see the question braced on her lips, waiting until after the plane rises high above the Deccan Plateau bound for Europe and then America, waiting to see if her mother's light smile and easy grip on her hand is a shared happiness. I know it because her story is mine as well as hers: it belongs to all of us in that room, three sisters of two separate worlds. In the dark, slow silent tears are moving down my face and my mehndi-scented fingers gently brush them away. The ceiling fan continues humming and we talk and laugh quietly, finally drifting off into a peaceful slumber.

New Delhi
In the Indian way, my cousin's daughter refers to me as "aunt." Knowing nothing of confusing western nomenclature of second cousins and once-removed, Nirupama simply calls me bua (pronounced "boo-ah"), the Hindi word for "aunt," and has grown into a little beauty in the five years since I've seen her last. She is now 11 years old and my height, with fair skin and brown hair, slim with an athletic grace that she owes to the hours of tennis and field hockey that occupy her afternoons. She is affectionate and sweet, speaking to me quietly in beautifully accented British English learned at her English medium school; she speaks softly if front of her parents as she is embarrassed to speak English in front of them. She has insisted on sleeping in my room with me and now she is laying on her side, playing with my hands and my hair, chatting with me in Hindi and asking me to tell her a story in English. I decide to tell her the story of "Ek rajkumari aur ek matar (The Princess and the Pea)." She laughs at the title in Hindi and then listens intently as I tell her the story of the honest princess with the ludicriously sensitive skin. At the end, she breaths out a happy sigh and says in English, "That was such a good story."

I laugh out loud and ask her if what types of stories she likes, and she responds immediately, "Animal stories." She excitedly tells me about her favorite snakes, about elephants and camels and cows that she sees in the village every summer, and reveals she wants to be an animal scientist when she gets older. I tell her I will send her animal books from America and she tells me she will show me pictures of her favorite animals tomorrow. Her voice is sweet and soothing and I feel my eyes start to close. Nirupama snuggles up to me so she is draped along the length of the right side of my body. "Rashmi bua?" she asks.

"Yes?" I ask sleepily in English.

She hugs me. "I am so happy right now," she says in English. I am overwhelmed by her unquestioning love and her simple acceptance of my intermittent role in her life. I have never had the easy smothering presense of extended family and I feel its loss so strongly that I turn to give her a tight hug. My words are spare and inadequate against hers, against the full weight of love that is my extended family and I respond quietly, "I am happy, too." Holding her hand, we fall silently into sleep.

Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh
I have now learned that I will not be sleeping alone in my time with my family and tonight my cousin Sandhya and I are talking about marriage, as her older sister, my cousin Priyanka, has recently gotten married. Our conversation is all in Hindi and safe inside the protective mosquito net around our bed, I ask Sandhya if she is going to have an arranged or a "love marriage." She laughs quietly and tells me in her rapid Hindi that love marriages aren't very accepted in Gorakhpur, a mid-size city on the far side of U.P. She knows that it is silly and she will let her kids choose who they want but this side of India, where cows and elephants are all over the streets, is slower to change than cities like Bombay and Delhi. Her voice is soft and content, with none of the angst that a life that she has not chosen would arise in me, and now it is conspirational, "Do you have a boyfriend?" she asks into the darkness.

I laugh. "No. Not right now."

I can see her face in the moonlight and she nods. "Did you have one before?" She then names my ex-boyfriend from college, the one I was dating the last time I saw her five years ago, a memory so distant now that I giggle again.

"No! Not him!" I exclaim. In Hindi, I tell her he was long ago "old boyfriend." She asks who the recent one was and I shrug into the darkness and tell her. In Hindi, I tell her that we broke up in February and that I didn't feel like dating after because-my voice slows as unfamiliar Hindi words rise to my lips-my heart was hurt. She clutches my hand and asks if its okay now and I laugh again, "Yeah," I say in English. "It's fine," I finish in Hindi, and she tells me it seems easier to pick for yourself. I tell her it seems easier to me to have everything picked out for you because then you never feel heartache and she agrees and then laughs a little. "I can't believe we are having this conversation! I will be so sad when you leave."

We are quiet then, me and my beautiful older cousin, and I remember my favorite picture of us from childhood. We are seven and eight and we are laughing hard into the camera, our arms around each other on the roof of our grandfather's village house. She is wearing a blue dress and mine is light green and my smile is gap-toothed and as wide as hers is pretty and mischevious; my left hand has mehndi on it and I am holding it delicately in front of me. At the age of 27, I raise my hand to my face and smell the faint scent of the mehndi that Sapna carefully applied five nights ago. Under the hum of the ceiling fan, I reach for Sandhya's hand and hold it tightly, grasping the memories of our childhood and the different countries we call home and the sisterhood that draws us toward one another again and again, holding our two separate lives together in my mehndi-decorated hand on a hot summer night in India.

A Brief Update

So I have been without internet access for a whole week now. I won't lie to you: it hasn't been a pretty situation. I wish I could say I was one of those people who finds deeper meaning when cut off from all information and communication channels but I am just not. I like email. I like reading the newspaper online five million times a day (London was BOMBED and I read about it first in an actual newspaper. Really.) I have been with my extended family for a week which means that my oolta-poolta (upside-down) Hindi was working non-stop and my thoughts are now in this icky messy mix of Hindi and English. (Also not a pretty situation.) I am not all that good at waking up in the morning and having to immediately start my day in Hindi was unspeakably trying for me. (Doing it with a smile on my face every morning-when-chai-was-brought-in promptly at seven as to not offend anyone in the family was also an experience.)

But there are lots more stories from my last week that I will fill in later. Right now I am sitting in the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, the only female in roomful of men at the internet-cafe-without-any-food-that-exploitatively-charges-$5-an-hour-(or-Rs200) for-one-blessed-hour-of-email-time. As deprived as I am at this point, I happily slapped down my Visa card (it is everywhere I want to be after all) and have spent the last 30 minutes speed-reading-and-writing to you all.

(There is some sort of nationalist India chant happening outside that starts every five minutes or so that is disrupting my concentration so if this doesn't make any sense, I apologize. Why such a strong military presence in the airport, I wonder? Men with machine guns are also slightly concentration disrupting. Chant just started again.)

ACK! Okay, I just looked outside and noticed the security line is beyond long and the entire obviously American family wearing surfer shorts and Hawaiian shirts (I don't get it. This is India, not Bermuda. And really, those outfits are beyond stereotype. You tell me.) hasn't moved in ten minutes. I am going to give up precious minutes here and take my place in line.

Will be back in Boston on the 11th of July (which it already is here in India). Cannot wait to see you all again. Get in touch with me!

Love love love...
(and more updates to follow)

Three, Two, One...Gone!

I am not given to cheesy endings. I do not like saying goodbye. Through trial and error, I've figured out that the best way for me to leave a situation is to quickly exit stage left showing the bare minimum emotion required. This has been a hard lesson for me to learn as I am a hugely emotional person at my core; if I allowed myself to display my full array of emotional yearnings, I would probably appear manic. Unfortunately, here in the country that has given the world Bollywood, in the city where the "masala" movies are made, overly emotional displays are like a disease, and after a month of living here, I am severely afflicted. I finally understand where I get my easily manipulated emotions because I'm surrounded by millions of people who are disturbingly like me: Indians are flagrantly emotional, loud and excited and angry and happy, with a collective sense of humor that makes me laugh daily.

And now that I am almost on the eve of leaving Mumbai for Delhi, I am having a hard time keeping my emotions in check. Yesterday was my last day of work at Kherwadi and while I still feel like I just arrived, I am surprised by how quickly I've grown attached to everyone. I finished the grant proposal that I was writing (such a great program Katie and I created!) and then had to say goodbye to the English class that I had picked up as a side project. The class is for girls who are high school dropouts and I was told by the new English teacher that I should say a few words to my students, and so I spoke in a voice that I've started to think of as my "English teacher" voice: a little bit FOB, a lot slower than my normal jabbering pace, and very, very clearly enunciated. They were looking at me expectantly and I told them that I would miss them, and that I had enjoyed teaching them, and then I started to tell them how very smart they were and how I was sure that their English would continue to improve with their new teacher, and my voice unexpectedly started to crack. I wish you all could see these girls. I can't accurately capture in pictures or words how very beautiful and funny and sweet and so eager to learn and so savvy and still fascinated by the world around them they are. We talk about families and lives and boys and politics and religion and school, and they unexpectedly brought presents on my last day that just made the lump in my throat bigger. I am not used to public voice cracking or lumps in my throat and both are slowly and disturbingly increasing in frequency, and I haven't seen my family in Delhi and U.P. yet.

I am so surprised by the panoply of my emotions here: I don't know if it's because I am seeing this all by myself for the first time, or if I just needed a break from my life to renew my natural optimism, but I can never predict what will make me laugh or cry or rage or delight. When I got to Bandra station today, a full squall was intensifying and all of us women in the "ladies only" car were laughing and squealing and crashing through the enormous "suspect lakes" that had formed on the tracks. The rain was blowing sideways and coming down in sheets and when I looked up at the sky in shock, I noticed the girl next to me doing the same. I smiled at her and we started to giggle and walked through the blinding torrent with umbrellas by our sides, chatting happily about the rain. Outside the station, the muezzin had sounded the call for adhan (Friday public prayer) and hundreds of Muslim men and boys with white crocheted caps were facing Mecca and the rain head on, standing so still in their perfect lines among the chaos that they looked painted into the scene, meticulously placed. The lump returned as the prayer continued and as one, they all fell to their knees onto wet prayer rugs and plastic tarps, and rose again and again. I couldn't look away even though the lump was getting worse; I got into a rickshaw and moved the tarp covering the side to peer at them, shocked by the tears in my eyes.

It is the unpreditibility of what will affect me that has shattered my carefully cultivated emotional checkpoints. The sight of two trains heading toward Borivali in the north, with thousands of people hanging out of the open doors still causes my head to spin in awe, still unable am I to comprehend the sheer number of people in this country. My new ability to deftly sidestep puddles, children, rickshaws, bikes, goats and street vendors without the benefit of sound (as my headphones are perpetually in my ears) will sometimes make me laugh aloud, a noise that doesn't go unnoticed by the person who is inevitably within hearing distance, who will always look and return my smile. Katie and Flora and I laughing through the bazaar road in Bandra East at the end of a day of work, talking loudly, hand gestures punctuating our stories while sharing "chocolate creme biscuits" will sometimes fuel and then quickly quell the little ache in my heart for home. The touch of the other teachers at work, their fingers knowingly and lovingly combing through my tangled curls, admonishing me in Hindi and Marathi for not using coconut oil regularly, while inspecting my ever-darkening face for messy eyebrows and unbleached facial hair makes me giggle for its very Indian-ness. A sweet email from my college friend, Jenni, unexpectedly causes me to burst into tears. My mom and I logging onto Skype at the same exact time unplanned on a random Sunday and having an hour-long spontaneous conversation makes me happy whenever I think about it. The sight of all of the fantastic driven people I've met here, roommates and new friends, American and Indian and Swiss and Dutch and Canadian and Jamaican and Scottish and everything in between, dancing to the beat of some Hindi filmi song convinces me that we have so much more in common than divides. The same thing happens in my English class, where I have six girls, two each of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian, where our conversation about how the world is changing and they know they may fall in love with someone unlike them and they're not really sure that is a bad thing is so like conversations that I have with my friends at home that I can't help but believe that our world is getting smaller everyday.

I am on emotional overload here and am oddly, relishing every minute of it. My brain feels like it never rests, and my fingers are always aching to capture every moment of my life into words or pictures, and my eyes are always open, trying to remember exactly what everything looks like. I know I will sleep for days and days when I come home.

But until then, I will remain here, overloaded and slightly sleep-deprived, so happy and so very alive.

P.S. IMPORTANT: If you want anything from here, let me know as I am going to Delhi to do some mad bargain-shopping with the fam and need your orders immediately. Much love...