Alternative Transport System

Dear dedicated reader,

After many aborted attempts to get my driver’s license so I could buy a motor scooter and zip happily and efficiently between the schools I must visit to observe our Fellows, I must bow to the monolith of Indian bureaucracy and admit defeat. Why I cannot get my license is an overdue story for another time: needless to say, I have discovered another way to jet between schools and it is not the bumbling local bus system.

I stumbled upon the “chakra” system of transportation by accident: I never had any reason to discover it when I lived in Kadod because I never had any reason to travel anywhere that wasn’t regularly serviced by buses. A chakra is an over-sized autorickshaw: basically like a normal auto-rickshaw but with a backseat. I’ve sometimes heard them referred to as tempos in other places around the country. Locally, they are the source of controversy and with reason: I thought it was only my American sensibilities that found the idea of cramming 14 people into space meant comfortably for 7 and watching the driver drive with four men sharing the front seat with him ludicrous, but it turns out the locals feel this way as well. Darshanbhai, Kadod’s local phone booth owner, warned me off the chakras, citing the state of Indian roads: “Driving is crazy! In buses, government will give you money for accident and hurt. Government will give you nothing if you are hurt in chakra!”

Sadly, I must take my chances. The entrepreneurial spirit of the chakra drivers appeals to me and furthermore, the bus only comes about once every one and a half to two hours. To take a chakra is the same price as the bus and they leave much more often. What is the catch, I hear you ask? Well, they drive like maniacs, overcrowd the vehicle to the point of people hanging off of it and they won’t leave until they’ve reached hanging off capacity, which means you could be waiting for the chakra to go almost as long as the bus, depending on the time of day. However, its added modicum of efficiency is enough to convert me to traveling using the system daily.

I found myself waiting today, as I often am, at the Madhi bus station. In order to get from my current residence in Bajipura to visit my old home town of Kadod and the new teachers stationed there, I must change chakras at the Madhi bus stand, which is located in between Kadod and Bajipura since there are no direct chakras that go from Bajipura to Kadod. This change can take anywhere from 5 to 50 minutes, depending on the time of day and the whim/greed of the chakra drivers.

The drivers themselves, despite their insistence on ignoring my pleas to please leave when they have sufficient passengers, have taken an interest in me. Because I’m often at the station by myself in the middle of the day waiting in the back of one or another of their vehicles, in the beginning, they took to standing around at a safe distance and gawking at me. When the word spread that I could speak Hindi (the chakra network updates almost as quickly as Twitter, or so it would seem), they dared to take a step closer and ask me a few questions, mostly predictable: where are you from? Why are you here? Do you know those other girls teaching at Madhi? Do you like India? Etc.

At first, I answered cautiously, unsure of their motivation. I was still new at the system, I hadn’t yet learned which drivers go between which villages and who lives where and who will take you home if you get stuck near nightfall at the Madhi bus station or who will let you pay later if you don’t have a five rupee coin. Each passing day, I’ve learned more: who listens to old hindi music and which drivers like the poppy new versions, who has children, who can read. Each day, they’ve asked me more about myself: why did I come here? Why do we teach in the schools? Do I miss my family? Who is in my family? The camaraderie between myself and these men, young and old, was totally unexpected.

It still won’t get them to leave with only 13 passengers though. Rupee beats relationship, or so it would seem.

Best,
Cat

Poor Substitute

Dear dedicated reader,

I am sorely behind in my accounts to you. I don't make my apology lightly - I think about you almost daily and hope that my anecdotes of daily life here can resume once things become a little more settled. In the meantime, I present the following to you as a poor substitute for my usual detailed updates.

I had an article published in the Indian paper DNA recently that provides a more rounded reflection on my experience than I usually provide. If you are interested, it can be found here:

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/interview_indian-student-works-hard-but-isn-t-prepared-for-jobs_1273822

Best,
Cat

Parallel Universe

Dear dedicated reader,

This feeling of déjà vu is unmistakable. It was only a year ago that I lay here in the middle of the night writing on this same cot, pulled out in the center of the room so as to be under the fan (and in the process defying all Western rules of space use which don’t apply in such insidious heat anyway). The feeling, however, is somewhat unwarranted as while the circumstances for laying on this cot might be the same, the difference is that our comfortable house in Kadod which we turned into a home has been completely stripped of everything except for this cot and the massive cupboard which houses our English children’s library. The refrigerator is still here, housing one lone bottle of water which I brought with me from the train. The water is almost gone. Tomorrow I will have to buy more.

Bracketed by returning to Kadod, my experiences of the past two months in the US feel strangely foreign. Is foreign the word I want? Or is it parallel? Like another universe, perhaps.

Vimalbhai, our friend who rents his car and driving services for a living, came to pick me up from the train station, bottle of water and flowers in hand, looking for all the world like my grandparents did at airport when they met me not two months before. “Sister, you are the big boss now!” He exclaimed, making me laugh with embarrassment. He followed this assertion with an insistence that he treat me to some roadside sugarcane juice made by running sticks of sugarcane through a manually operated press that squeezes the juice out. As I took my first sip of the sweet, green colored liquid out of a dubiously clean plastic cup, my mind flashed back to the time that I had spent at the Princeton in Asia orientation last month in order to meet our new Kadod fellows. Sitting in on the ‘Health and Wellness’ session, the head of PIA had detailed how you lose the necessary antibodies to protect you from disease when you leave the country for a few weeks.

Vimalbhai looked at me expectantly. “Tastes like India!” He shouted, partially as a question.

Looking into his expectant face, I gave a hearty “Yes!” and a mental shrug, washing it down with my sugarcane juice.

The drive back to Kadod didn’t feel real until we reached the part of the highway that is only sugarcane fields as far as the eye can see. Amongst this expanse of sturdy, leafy stalks, I knew that somehow I had found my way back here, resisting the siren call of all the major cities on the East coast I had visited while home. As we approached the final stretch of the interior road the leads into the village, I started to see faces that I recognized: Anish, my 9E student on his motorbike, the woman who runs one of the local restaurants at the bus stop next to the man who runs the nearby shop whose t-shirt always reads “Work like a dog; Sleep like a log.” Turning from the main road onto Bazaar street, I felt a sudden pang of anxiety. What if… what if I missed Kadod more than it missed me? What if this was going to be one of those sequels that isn’t as good as the original movie?
I guess I shouldn’t have worried.

Vimalbhai stopped the car in front of the local phone booth and yelled to Darshanbhai to come out. All of a sudden, the car was surrounded by Darshanbhai’s family reaching through the window to grab my hands and say a welcome home. My smile widened until my face couldn’t contain it. It was a feeling that repeated itself often today as I reunited with Kamleshbhai the tailor and his family, Vimalbhai’s wife, daughter and nephew Avinash, Vikrambhai and his family, Taiyaba and her family.

How is it possible to feel so at home when it’s home that I’ve just left?

Best,
Cat

Return At Last

Dear dedicated reader,

Sitting in the Mumbai airport waiting for a dawn departure to the train station en route to Kadod, I finally have time to compose my thoughts to you, dear reader . My lapse in communication these past few months is inexcusable: Over stimulated by my last month in Kadod as a teacher and subsequently overwhelmed with a whirlwind two month visit to the US during which I assumed the responsibilities for my new position with the Foundation, I can tell you that this unaccounted for time left me happy but in turns frazzled, anxious, and unable to write. Know that I have not forgotten you, nor do I intend to as I return to India.

The past 24 hours have had the makings of a most curious transition. The outward markers of my Indian existence which I shed so easily while at home amongst family and friends in the US have been slowly reassumed and the feeling of transformation was most unusual, inextricably linked to the legs of my journey back.

Like transformational waves lapping at the edges of my mind, the first washed gently over me as I sat in front of a chatty Indian girl on the first leg of my flight to Frankfurt. She spoke to her seat-mate, a fellow Philadelphian bound for a German beer festival, of her life growing up in India and what it was like in Bangalore. As I listened distractedly, I felt strangely disconnected from her experience and to soothe and immersed myself in catching up with the blockbuster hits from this past year, feet firmly planted in America.

The next wave was stronger, firmer and more unsettling. I walked through the spidery, dark halls of the Frankfurt International Airport passing an international myriad of hurried and leisurely walkers to my gate (I myself fall squarely in the former category). At the end of the hall, I spotted the sign I had spent half an hour following signs and searching for: C16. Upon turning into the gate, I was greeted by a sea of brown faces peppered here and there with a few foreigners like me. The strange familiarity of this pierced my consciousness – the strength of my recognition and the depth of my discomfort surprised me. However, like pulling on an old pair of jeans folded in the back of the closet, after squirming for a minute of so I found that my discomfort left me and I sat down on a bench to wait for boarding. The recollection of the feeling, however, that definitive shift of mind, stayed poignant.

And then I was fully drenched as yet another wave crashed over me: The airline attendant presented me with my specially ordered vegetarian meal, which on a flight from Frankfurt to Mumbai can only be Indian food. Know, dear reader, that I’ve been on an Indian food ban since I left Kadod, knowing that upon my return this would be my only fare for the next year.

At first, as I peeled back the sides of the aluminum top and revealed the tripartite dish underneath (rice, saag, and rajma arranged like a tiny reproduction of the Indian flag in my easily reheatable airline food container), I reluctantly eyed the contents. Running my eye over the rest of the tray left me feeling similarly disappointed: a small salad with limp, diseased looking lettuce, some suspicious looking raita (yogurt with vegetables mixed in) and a dessert which took my unexercised eye a minute to finally identify as a type of halwa (milky Indian dessert) with pureed pistachio.

I took up my plastic fork with trepidation and for a moment poked idly at the rice in the center of my tray. I took a bite. Not atrocious. I took another. The buttery feeling the rice left on my tongue brought back a picture of the daily blue bowl of rice, sitting on my kitchen table in Kadod. I took another, this time taking a little of the patriotic green saag. Too soon, I decided as I swallowed the spicy bite with distaste and took a bite of my neutral looking roll to soothe my unamused mouth.

Next I decided to turn my delicate attentions to the halwa. My spoon dove gently into the soft mass and brought up a bite. Things were beginning to look up, I decided as my tongue agreeably caressed the spoon, searching for more sugary halwa. For an airline approximation, this was good. I promptly ate half of it and, spurred by this victory, decided to attempt the suspect raita which I also found surprisingly pleasing.

It was then that I spotted the small packet of mango acchar (pickle). Acchar is a commonly used Indian table condiment that is like a spicy jellied fruit that you eat small portions of in conjunction with your main dish for flavor. There are many kinds, but spicy mango is popular and common. Normally, acchar is one of my favorite parts of the meal. However, on this occasion, I found myself twirling the sealed butter packet sized container between my hesitant fingers. My fingers passed over the pull tab that would open the lid. It felt like a . . . . commitment. It was so unarguably Indian and as I watched the oil shift from side to side through the clear plastic packing in time with the ministrations of my fingers, I balked, thought, breathed and pulled back the tab, spreading the contents over the top of my main dish.

The linguistic transition seemed simple after my commitment to the cuisine. Watching Billu Barbar (SRK Bollywood blockbuster from earlier this year) during the latter half of my flight was like splashing on the sandbar compared to the mental steps I’d made over the previous sixteen hours. My mind played with the Hindi phrases in my head, puzzling over some of the more complicated ones and storing others for later use.

And now I have arrived: after being checked diligently for swine flu by men in white breathing masks, fighting eager Indian passengers awaiting their luggage at the belt and changing my money from dollars into rupees, my transformation is complete. I’ve even changed back into Indian clothing thanks to a conveniently located bathroom near customs.

Only two more hours to go till I’m en route to Kadod. I can’t wait.
Best,
Cat

P.S. I just killed my first mosquito.

An Exciting Announcement

Dear dedicated reader,

It seems strange to qualify anything that I write to you, dear reader, as ‘personal’ since my account of my experiences here can only be described as personal. But I have a personal update that doesn’t have to do with anecdotes of delightfully incorrect sentence structure or classroom management or even cheating on exams.

I’ll be staying here in India for another year and even better than that: I’ll be staying here in Kadod! Our Foundation is expanding our program model to two additional schools in the surrounding area next year and over the past few months has been discussing the possibility of hiring an India Director to manage its operations in country. I’m happy to share that as of this morning, that person will be me! While the decision to trade in my chalk and duster for a mobile and mobility is my own, it does seem strange to choose a student-less existence after three years of working with students full-time.

Oddly enough, in an unpredictable twist to my own story, it seems I cannot get enough of Gujarat. That, however, will not stop me from returning to the U.S. from April 8th to June 2nd. I will be in Philadelphia, New York and Boston during that time, so if that is in your general direction, let’s connect.

Best,
Cat

You Coming Sister Marriage?

Dear dedicated reader,

I came into my Spoken English class a week ago to find my boys huddled in a group around one bench, whispering feverishly to one another in Gujarati. I heard a snatch of “Melisha ma’am” and “Ketrin ma’am” as they spoke. What were they up to?

The huddle broke as they saw me and I saw Hitesh, my small, rambunctious and usually unprepared student from 9D hide something quickly behind his back. Oh god, I thought, I hope this tete a tete isn’t yet another attempt to scare me with a very realistic looking plastic lizard.

He walked slowly forward and a wide, toothy grin broke out in a shine across his face.

“Miss,” he said in his voice which is surprisingly scratchy for a kid, bringing his hand out from behind his back and presenting its contents to me, “you come in my sister’s marriage?”

I looked down at what he was holding out to me. It was a card upon which “Melissa ma’am and Cathrine ma’am” had been scrawled on the neat blank line designated for names and inside it was full of the Gujarati of a formal wedding invitation: our first.

“Of course,” I replied, delighted.

Apparently, Melissa and I had graduated from crashing weddings with Sejalben to being invited in our own right. Of course, this presented a new problem: were we ready to strike out on our own? I mean, an Indian wedding is not exactly the minute to minute affair of a New York wedding: there is lots of idle time between dinner and the ceremony, sometimes hours, for guests to roam and chat and somehow everyone (except for the clueless American teachers) knows how long this time is supposed to be. How would we fare without our crutches?

It turns out I needn’t have worried.

“We’re going to be late,” I whined as we readied ourselves to leave the house this afternoon for the wedding. As we threw the bolt closed on our front door, I ran my eye over Melissa’s sari and my own bangled arms, hoping we would be up to the measure of the critical Indian aunty’s eye.

We made our way as quickly as we could up the main road of Kadod and back into the neighborhood where Hitesh and his family live. I had often seen him when I was out on my bike, running around his plaid play shirt and school uniform pants. As we reached the road where I knew he lived, I realized I didn’t know where we were supposed to go. As many times as I had threatened to go to his house and tell his father about his Gujarati jokes, his missing text book, his constant lack of a pen, I had never actually done it because of his disarmingly adorable smile and so I didn’t actually know where he lived.

Confused, we stopped just outside the large temple which dominates this part of town and contemplated our next move. Kids and adults in finery were milling around, but there was no sign of any of our students. Melissa and I looked at each other. We were failing our first closed-book cultural test.

Luckily, our cheat sheet arrived.

“Miss!” Hitesh bounded out of a house up the street where a large tent had been set up for the wedding proceedings. He was dressed in a flat pressed blue collar shirt with a sewn in slogan on the back proclaiming ‘No Fear!” and a pair of tight jean pants. His hair had been slicked back and despite his diminutive size he was almost looking fourteen years old (which he is).

He stopped bounding just in front of me. “Hungry? You eat?” He asked me, smiling excitedly with eyes darting back and forth between me and Melissa. He immediately started leading us towards a large gravel yard at the end of the street where long bolts of cloth had been laid in parallel with large platters and bowls made from dried leaves placed in front. He indicated that we should sit, so after a moment of weak hesitation we did, and he plopped down right next to me.

As soon as we sat, the other mass of children who’d started to follow us out of curiosity and it turns out would follow us all night, also sat. By now, eating dinner had gained momentum and adults were following our lead and sitting to receive the portions that were being doled out by local boys (all my students, incidentally) onto the leaf plates.

“Miss,” Hitesh said, catching my attention and pointing, “this is my aunt, and that one, my uncle and that one my grandfather and there my grandmother.” It was the longest English sentence I had ever heard him speak.

“All your relatives are here?” I asked him.

“Yes, miss, and my sister, her marriage, she is in house for beauty parlor!” He said laughing at his own wit. As Mayur, one of his classmates, threw down a large spoonful of unidentified cooked and spiced vegetables onto my platter with a plop, Hitesh pointed at it.“In Gujarati, saag,” he said seriously and I nodded with a smile in appreciation for his identification, watching out of the corner of my eye as the boys who moved down the closely packed line of plates serving food kicked up dust as their shoes shuffled down the row. I then watched it settle on my food, smiled at Hitesh, and dug my fingers into the saag to take a bite.

After dinner, Hitesh took us and the cadre of seven to ten year olds who’d decided that they’re new occupation was trailing American teachers like lemmings to his uncles’ house where his sister was being readied for the wedding. He tried to shoo away the kids but they persisted in staying and staring at us with their big eyes so he merely blocked the stairwell as we made our way up the rickety steps to the second floor where his twenty year old sister Pritee was being adorned with jewels by her best friends. She tried to get up as we entered. “No no!” we insisted as we indicated she should sit. Both her arms were covered from the sleeve of her sari blouse all the way to her finger tips with deep, dark intricate mehndi.

Hitesh, who after a few minutes came running into the room after successfully stopping the onslaught of pre-teens introduced us to his sister as “my American teachers.” After a short congratulations, we left the house. As we got outside he said, “Now I am fresh, miss.”

I stopped, confused I stumbled to put our discarded sandals back on just outside the doorway of his house. “What do you mean?” I asked him.

He threw up his arm and exposed his freshly scented armpit to me. “Full Perfume!” He shouted happily.

“Oh, ah yes,” I said, as the scent of white jasmine floated towards me, “very nice.”

Undeterred by my tepid response, Hitesh charged forward into the street, motioning for us to follow. “She sister marriage nine and coming my house now groom and you see!” He smiled over his shoulder as he marched onwards.

Confused but trusting that he had everything in hand, we followed him (and the seven year olds followed us) out across the street to a house a little further down next to the gravel yard in which we had enjoyed our carefully narrated wedding banquet.

Leaving our sandals at the threshold, we ducked our heads past the low dark doorway and found ourselves in a room full of glittering saris and embroidered kurtas with relatives of the groom inside them. The groom himself lay sprawled out on the floor on a mat in the corner, relaxing but looking nervous. We gave a quick palms together ‘Namaste’ to everyone as moved through the room to the back, following the excitable Hitesh.

Inside the room, an old wrinkled woman in a purple silk sari indicated that we should sit, saying “Please seat yourself,” over and over to us in Gujarati. She came and sat next to us and took Melissa’s arm in her firm grip. One of the clan of seven year olds was sent dutifully for cold drinks.

She began to speak in a rhythmic, slow Gujarati, her tongue caressing each sound carefully. Her care, unfortunately, was lost on us as we looked at her blankly and then at Hitesh, who glancing quickly at the ceiling with a concentrated look, began to try and translate.

“You, married? She ask?” He said. We told her no.

“You… liking India?” His scratchy voice intoned again with intense concentration. This question and answer continued and each time he dutifully translated so the groom’s mother would be able to comprehend our answers.

I was ecstatic, but not because of the conversation or because of India. With every sentence of English Hitesh uttered, I became even more so. Here was a student who never, and I mean never, spoke English in the classroom if it could be avoided. Despite coming to Spoken English class everyday, he’d loll around at his bench, tell me in Gujarati that he didn’t bring a pen, and then after I gave him one wouldn’t open his notebook or follow directions and after it all would look at me sadly and say plaintively, “Miss, outside game?”

This was different, however: perhaps born out of a desire to meet the demanding rules of Indian hospitality and also his happiness at our coming to the event, Hitesh was now presented with a genuine communicative goal. And hence flowed forth the English!

I guess it was all he needed.

Best,
Cat

An Overdue Haircut

Dear dedicated reader,

When I first met Mr. Tailor’s androgynous offspring, Krishna, I was stymied.

“Your… child is so cute,” I said, calling out the reserve word I formerly used when making cold calls to parents in the Boston Public School system when I couldn’t determine the sex of their child.

“Oh Thank You!” Kamleshbhai (Mr. Tailor’s true name, or so we’ve discovered) exclaimed with his usual exuberance. No follow up, no pronoun use. I couldn’t ask any questions about the small cute kid now running haplessly around the shop without giving away that I didn’t know his sex and since Krishna is both a girl’s and a boy’s name here, I wasn’t getting any help from that quarter either. So, I simply smiled and nodded emphatically.

Krishna, for his (or was it her?) part, burst into tears on sight of me. I seem to have that effect on small kids around here.

Since that encounter in Mr. Tailor’s crowded and colorful workshop, Melissa and I uncovered the answer to this elusive question through a recent invitation: I had stopped by Mr. Tailor’s shop as I sometimes do to sit in the back near the foot powered sewing machines whose whirring needles punch the fabric in a rhythmic way while Mr. Tailor looks on, now and then stopping to cut a piece of material.

We had been discussing the coming of Narendra Modi and the business acumen of the Gujarati people when he abruptly veered away from these topics.

“You…will…” he began in a sort of stop and start English, struggling to force the language to express his thoughts. I peered at him curiously until he switched into Hindi and the words began to flow. “You will come to our house on Thursday for the babri?”

“Babri – matlab (meaning)?” I asked him, not understanding.

“Er,” he paused, thinking of the best way to say it, “the haircut of my son,” (ah ha!) “he is cutting his hair for the first time.”

“Isn’t he like, two years old?” I said, confused.

“Yes, it is our tradition, no haircut until he is so old and then we will shave his head.” Suddenly, I remembered: I had seen photos of the ceremony at people’s houses and read about it in my religion class in college, but this would be the first time that I would see it for myself.

When we arrived on the appointed day, an awning had been set up over the street, blocking any traffic making the mistake of trying to get through on this special day. Chairs had been set up in rows outside for no one in particular’s use. All the men were simply standing around outside talking to each other while the women sat sequestered on the floor in the small main room of the house. Kamleshbhai smiled widely as he saw us walking up the street: when we arrived under the awning, after some warm ‘namastes’, he motioned for us to go inside with the rest of the women and take our seats. The room was packed wall to wall with women ranging from the beautifully wrinkled faces of old women with crooked teeth and wireless spectacles to young black-haired women bedecked in sparkling bangles and colorful, jeweled saris.

There was one open space on the floor which, after a moment of hesitation, we decided was the perfect size for two American teachers. When Kamleshbhai saw that we had elected to sit on the floor, he motioned to an empty bench in the corner where we could sit comfortably, but since none of the other women were sitting in such a manner, we protested and said that we would be fine on the floor. What we did not realize was that his generosity was not for our benefit but rather for his, since the open space in which we had elected to sit was right in front of the shrine to Ganesha where the family would need to sit for the ceremony. By the time we realized our mistake, it was too late: the arm of Indian hospitality had swung into action and rugs were being pulled from the other room and placed in front of us to give the parents and Krishna somewhere to sit as they performed the necessary pooja. My cheeks burned with embarrassment, but by the time I protested and said we would be happy to move it was far too late. I mentally added it to the ever-growing list of faux-pas by the American teachers.

Kamleshbhai and his wife sat on either side of small Krishna, whose hair had been loosed from the pony tail holder that usually keeps it out of his face in a tight sprout from the top of his head. When the priest began to chant, Kamleshbhai smiled down at his tiny son and put his hands together in a gesture of prayer; Krishna followed suit, straightening his tiny fingers into a gesture of piety, looking up at his father for approval.

The ceremony itself was merely a prelude to the big show which followed: once the rice had been powdered and thrown at the shrine of Ganesh-ji and two one rupee coins had been pasted to the wall using ghee, Kamleshbhai’s sister, as per tradition, grabbed a lock of Krishna’s hair and used a large blessed pair of shears to cut off a huge hunk of Krishna’s hair. Looking at the hair in her hands, Krishna began to loudly cry and was taken outside where the rest of his hair was shorn short so that it would be easier to shave.

The guests followed and I watched as both of Krishna’s parents had to physically restrain him as the barber brandished his sharp razor over Krishna’s screaming head. I gasped and bit my lip with nervousness each time the razor was brought towards his head: Krishna was wildly bucking and kicking in his parents arms, screaming a frenzied plea to all the delighted adults assembled to watch. Despite his parents cooing, and promises of forthcoming chocolate, he raged on; meanwhile, I found myself impressed by the skillfulness of the barber who always seemed to move the razor away from his rearing scalp at just the right moment, averting potentially bloody accidents left and right. The poor kid had cut hair covering every part of his exposed face, his neck, his arms. I would have bucked and screamed too, in that situation.

Just after the barber ran the razor artfully down the last curve of Krishna’s scalp, leaving him completely bald, Krishna was whisked away in the arms of his aunt inside to have the stray hair washed from his face and to have his clothes changed. When he emerged again, this time clad in a golden colored kurta pyjama, he was still bawling in her arms, refusing the comfort of all his well meaning relatives. When a sympathetic aunt handed him a Cadbury chocolate bar, he screamed even louder and threw the chocolate bar with all his might back at her face, narrowly missing her nose.

Perhaps as a way to distract from the ill-mannered reception of the his first haircut, Kamleshbhai drew our attention away from Krishna and his adoring relatives with an invitation of lunch. Two runners had been laid down on the street under the awning upon which, as with many feasts we have been to here, we were to sit. The rocky, gravelly street did not make for the most comfortable vantage point for eating lunch; however, I did not want to offend Kamleshbhai, so I maneuvered my legs around in my sari so that I could sit and eat the thali-style meal which was being served to us by jean-clad teenage boys (a theme for feasts here).

Just as everyone had gotten settled in neat rows of hands digging into food and mouths chewing thoughtfully at their Gujarati delicacies, an unexpected visitor arrived to partake in the proceedings. I looked up from my plate, hand poised in front of my mouth to deliver a tasty portion of papad when I saw a large cow with overgrown horns sauntering right into the middle of the tent.

For a moment, everyone just stared at it and for the briefest of seconds I thought it was going to be allowed to walk as it pleased through the tent. It stopped, looked, and then swung its head dangerously towards the left and stuck out its large, hammy tongue dripping with oozing saliva to indulge in some sabzi from the platter of a woman sitting across from me. She leapt up with a scream of fright and Melissa and I started back as well, thinking the scream would force it to head in our direction. Immediately, the men descended upon it, thwacking it and making clicking noises until it was run out from under the tented awning and made to promenade itself back up the street.

As we savored our meal, Krishna, tears freshly dried and smiling now as if all was indeed forgiven (I have my suspicions about the role the chocolate may have played in this decision), made is way in the company of his cousins down the row of guests, smiling and gurgling attentively as the perfect host. His newly bald head shone in the noon sunlight and as he passed me, he even put out a little hand.

As strange as the whole thing seemed at the time, on reflection, how natural is it to dress up male babies in white dresses and sprinkle water on them? I’m just saying, is all.

Best,
Cat