Would you rather...

Dear dedicated reader,

Sometimes, in college, when we were bored on long car rides going to and from debate tournaments, we would play this game “Would you rather…?” The chooser is presented with two options and has to choose between them. A favorite was “Would you rather have a ketchup dispensing bellybutton or a pencil sharpening nose?”

In that vein, dear reader, I would like to tell you a little bit about my homestay. I live with a lovely joint family not far from the institute and am carefully looked after by the mother of that family, Auntie-ji, who sees to all of our needs here in house. She is soft-spoken and sweet, speaks English exceptionally well (I actually wish she did not speak it quite so well) and has two adorable children, Ayusha, age 8 and Arjun, age 6. Her husband has a position in the Indian military and is stationed in another city in Rajasthan, though he has been home for the past week, on leave from his job. The house is rounded out by Pappa-ji, the 84 year old grandfather who was a lawyer for the Rajasthan High Court and still practices law out of his office at the back of the house.

Because they have two extra rooms with their own bathrooms, they have often taken study-abroad or AIIS students into their care over the past few years. When Rachel and I arrived on our first afternoon in Jaipur to make their introduction, they greeted us with a detached politeness that was welcoming while at the same time belying their previous experience with foreigners coming and going in their home.

The day we arrived to move in, we quickly chose our rooms, Rachel taking the one at the back with its own entrance, I taking the one through which Rachel must pass to get to the rest of the house. Our induction to the house, however, came when Rachel discovered a dead rat in her closet, which the family quickly called the servant to come remove. This, we were to learn, was merely foreshadowing.

A few nights back, I was awoken by a hysterical Rachel who had crept into my room and perched herself on my bed, recounting to me that she had awoken with a similar uninvited intruder: a small brown mouse had taken it upon itself to crawl into the crook of her arm and nestle itself in her armpit. When she woke up to find her new friend, she screamed and flung her arm out, causing the mouse to fly through the air and then run, terrified, into the bathroom. Rachel, herself terrified, had then run into my room and spent the rest of the night in my bed (which is quite large). The next morning, when we repeated this story to our Auntie-ji, she assured us that she would administer some “medicine” strategically to the various mouse holes in the house.

“There is only one mouse,” she said, “and we have been trying to catch it for several weeks.”
I explained that, having had much success with traps back in the states, I wondered if those were commonly used here in India.

“They are,” she said dubiously, “but this mouse is very clever.”

The medicine having been administered, we believed that we could sleep easily. We were wrong.

Two nights ago, I awoke with an itch on my stomach, which I groggily moved my hand towards, searching for some relief. Putting my hand to my stomach, however, my whole body tensed as I heard the familiar crunching sound that accompanies a large bug being mashed to death. Paralyzed, my hand clutched whatever it was that I had unwittingly captured through my shirt, unwilling to let go, unsure in the dark whether the thing which I held was fully dead or not. After a moment of thought, I got out of bed and turned on the light, shook out my shirt and watched in horror as a the body of a large, dead cockroach fell down and landed on my bare foot. Shaking my foot with a full body shudder, I jumped back and hopped from one leg to the other for a bit for my involuntary shaking subsided.

Knowing I had to sleep, and that there was little I could do to prevent this happening again, after a few moments of thought I determinedly tucked my t-shirt into my pajama pants and got back into bed. All night, I could feel phantom cockroaches crawling up and down my legs.

So, dear reader, I present you with the question: Would you rather the mouse or the cockroach? It is a subject which has sparked some lively debate amongst my peers here and I would love to know your opinion.

Best,
Cat