salman's house

Yesterday on our walk we ventured as far as the Chowk, which we had previously always taken a rickshaw to. It turns out that it is about a half hour walk, which really isn’t far at all! I wanted to buy some cloth for a couple of long courtas, as the tailor had been confused by my directions the last time I came in and had made me short courtas instead of long ones. I can’t wear the short ones with my churidad pants, because they look absolutely ridiculous, so there you have it, I am not buying excessive amounts of clothes at all! Okay, maybe a bit more than I need… anyway, I picked out a couple of things, as well as some green fabric to make an entire salwar suit out of, so then I will have three or four “appropriate” outfits that I can wear out and about without the local women asking me “why aren’t you wearing…?”.

I can’t help but notice that everyone absolutely hates it when I wear my hair in little, tiny pigtails, which I find kind of funny. There really is only one acceptable way to wear your hair if you have hit puberty: long, long and longer. My short hair, especially in its pigtail form, is the great amusement to many of the women and children here. The other day Shushma teased me and asked if I had had lice, and that was why I had to cut it all off! Yesterday Shivani’s grandmother came up behind me and pulled the elastics right out of my hair, telling me (in Hindi of course, so I only think this is what she said) that I needed to wear my hair out and long.

I should mention here that yesterday afternoon a guy named Salman showed up at Sambhavna, looking for Derek. Salman is somewhat like Mausam, in the sense that he serves as a sort of welcome-wagon for many of the new volunteers. He was close friends with a few different ones who have been here over the years, and has since decided that all of the volunteers should want to be his very best friend. On my second or third night in Bhopal I went to his house with a number of the other volunteers, since Mel had been hanging out with him a fair bit during her time here. However, Mel also warned me that Salman was extremely jealous and perhaps a little on the creepy side, so I had been avoiding him when he came for visits with Anisha afterwards. This wasn’t hard, since he didn’t seem terribly interested in hanging out with me, so I hadn’t seen him since my first few days here. (Ah yes, with the exception of when he came and brought Anisha an enormous pair of earrings for friendship day). Anyway, it turns out that a past volunteer that Derek knows had sent Salman a letter saying that Derek was here at Sambhavna, and that they should get in touch, so Salman came by yesterday to invite us to dinner.

Salman has a huge, very welcoming and sweet family. He is the eldest of five sisters and four other brothers, as well as some of the kids of his oldest sister, or at least that’s who I think they were. Yesterday was also the first day or Ramadan, so the entire family had been fasting since sunrise that morning. So before dinner was served, we ate a huge snack of fresh fruits (luckily all had been peeled or were peel-able) and sweets. It was pretty interesting to see the traditions. At the beginning of the snack we each ate a date, which is apparently the first thing that you are supposed to eat after a day of fasting. So that was interesting… Anyway, Salman showed us all of the photos of the other volunteers he had befriended, and it quickly became clear to me that he is generally only friends with the male volunteers, which is why he was more interested in Derek. Although he did say “Emily I am very, very sad. Do you know why?”. In my head: “No, but I can guess that it has something to do with the guilt-trip you’re about to lay on me.” “Emily, I am sad because you did not come to visit me all this time you have been at Sambhavna.” Ten points for Emily’s guess. Anyway, I’ve decided that this isn’t going to be something I lose sleep over. Derek can be friends with him, and I’ll try to quietly and politely bow out of that one…

I’ve spent most of the morning reading The Namesake, which is a novel about a Bengali family moving to America, and their eldest son trying to adjust to being the middle ground of the old Bengali ways and the new American ways. It’s strange how well I feel like I can relate to some parts of the book since coming here. One of the things that really struck a chord with me is the feeling of being temporary in a new place, because that’s how I feel here a lot of the time. I just can’t quite imagine moving to a new place forever and always feeling like that. At least my feeling of impermanence will end when I get back to Canada, whereas when you immigrate somewhere permanently you feel temporary for the rest of your life. I think that it makes me understand why Grandma and Grandpa Gibson kept wanting to move back to England, but never really could.

Anyway, we are supposed to be going to Sanchi later this afternoon on Mausam’s bike. I’ve been to Sanchi before, my first weekend here; it’s the ancient Buddhist stupas about an hour outside of Bhopal. Originally Derek and Prabjit were supposed to go with him, but Derek ate some street-vendor food that has made him horribly ill (thereby finally vindicating my strict no-street-food policy), and so I get to go instead!

By the way, I forgot to mention that there are the most adorable little kitten living somewhere in the clinic!! I came across them on Saturday night when I was going back to room for bed, a little later than usual since I had watched a movie. And what did I find in the hallway, but a mother cat and two sweet little kittens. The kittens got scared and ran into the bathroom, so naturally I had to take a photo of one of them... the other one ran out, so thats the picture of the one scrambling down the stairs!! They are soooo cute!