Jessica’s Silly Blog

India!

April 3, 2007 at 1:33 pm (Uncategorized)

“Do you know what’s going on right now?” asked my friend Naveena. We were sitting in her Maggie Auntie’s house and her family was having a heated discussion about something. “No,” I replied. “I haven’t understood what has been going on for at least the last 10 minutes.” Naveena forgot momentarily that Brittany and I, who accompanied her to visit her family in Kerela, do not speak or understand Malayalam.

Naveena has lots of extended family in India. By lots I mean I met more people from her family than I even have in mine. We met cousins, uncles, aunts, and all those other relatives whose relationships seem too complicated to explain.

Her grandmother, or amache, was an interesting character, although we never understood a word she said. She always wanted us to eat more food, even though we were full practically the whole time there. She laughed at our attempts at Malayalam. Once she picked up my wrist that has ribbons from Brazil tied around it and had a good laugh. I think she wondered why someone would put ribbons on their wrists instead of nice jewelry. Every now and then she would say something loudly and look at Brittany or me, as if waiting for a response. Of course we didn’t know what she said, so we just sort of nodded our heads and smiled.

The first night at amache’s house Brittany fled from the bathroom and jumped onto the bed. She was so scared for a second that she didn’t even tell us what was wrong. Then she explained that there was an enormous spider that she saw right next to her. We named him Samuel the spider. We did not like Samuel. He was not the kind of guy (or girl) we wanted in the room right next to us. So Brittany and I went on a half-hearted mission to go kill him. It was half-hearted not because we didn’t want him dead, just because we were too scared to get that close to him. There were a few failed attempts and a few retreats from the bathroom. Finally the maid (I guess you would call her that) killed him, and we were able to sleep soundly that night.

Much of my trip was a blur of meeting family and friends of Naveena’s. We would take off our shoes, sit down on the couch, introduce ourselves, figure out the family relationship, have orange soda and some sort of snack, chat, and say goodbye. This is what we did for a good portion of our time in India. “Poy de veride,” Brittany or I, or both, would say. That is pretty much the equivalent of “see you later” but means “I’m going and I’m coming.” They would always be amused that we even tried to speak the language. Brittany was better at it than me, for sure.

On this trip I discovered that I can’t even speak English very well. Not because I somehow mastered Malayalam or any other Indian languages. I just end up saying crazy things out of order a lot, at least when I’m exhausted. “Deans Mike” instead of Dean Mike’s, “Stiral Spaircase” instead of spiral staircase, and “flina chites” rather than China flights were a few of the ridiculous things I said. It is way too hard to get a decent amount of sleep while in port. We went to the history of Kerela museum, and since it was mostly dark in the room, I dozed off at least 30 times while we were in there. It wasn’t that it wasn’t interesting; my eyes just wouldn’t stay open.

My eyes did stay open, unfortunately, during most of our death defying car rides. I have never been so sure I was going to die so many times in a row. We would speed up next to huge busses and trucks, weave in and out of lanes, and not even begin to slow down for the stopped traffic a few yards ahead. We went straight through a red light and had a bus coming toward us from the side. That was fun. We were so close to motorcycles that we could have easily just touched them and made them fall on their helmet-less heads. Every driver thought it was a really good idea for us to pass the truck in front of us without looking to see if there was oncoming traffic, so we narrowly escaped hitting someone head-on more than a few times. The scariest thing I saw was Brittany’s face on one particular outing. Her face isn’t normally scary, she’s a pretty girl, but this face told me that her life was flashing before her eyes and we were certainly going to crash this time.

Luckily, we did not crash in a car in India and we are back on our luxurious boat. Luckily covers a lot of things, not just our safety on Indian roads. Luckily we were born in America to middle class families. Luckily we have an education. Luckily we don’t have to beg for our meals every day. At Naveena’s family’s houses we didn’t see poverty. Actually, I saw a lot less poverty around town than I was expecting to see. But I still saw it. I saw kids with no clothes on at all. I saw people with deformities by the train station begging for money. I also saw disabled kids who were lucky enough to be in a school and housing system. But is lucky really the right word to describe someone who has no wrist or ankle joints? Or has no ability to get around besides dragging themselves on the ground? Or someone with a head that is half the size of a normal head? These kids seemed to think so. They were incredibly happy just to be there playing with us.

So sometimes our legs hurt from working, but at least we have legs, and have a job to do. Sometimes our feet are dirty from walking in sandals, but at least we have shoes. There are too many things that we take for granted and too many things that we could do to help out other people. The idea of having a fancy house and a high paying job and going through all the motions of the “American dream” is getting less and less appealing to me as we go on. For those who do choose to go that route, I hope they at least stop complaining about it so much.