Day 27.28.29

Day 27/28/29
So here is how it all went down. It is Monday and Abhinav and I are getting up and going. W are also exhausted. We get to Asha and find that the boys class is having a meeting. They have a meeting once a week to discuss one public health issue and one social issue. I was very tired and so was Abhinav, so we kind of sat there and watched until I sort of nodded off. I mean, it was all cute and everything and it’s really great that they are educating the children about things like contaminated water and gender roles, but when they just keep saying the same things over and over again in Hindi you start to fall asleep in your chair. Which is what I did. It’s kind of the same reason I don’t go to Hindi movies that often.
Then anyway, Abhinav and I were like, they’ve been having their meeting forever but we’re still here… can we take their class or leave or something? And then Anita (the principal of Balmandal) said, “You can take them now.” So we took them and we taught them prepositions, which they are really damn good at. The boys can be really intelligent to the point that they wow me. Of course there are one or two that don’t understand it as well, or don’t understand anything. Abhinav and I decided to split up their classes. The Asha Health Center is very small and open to the outside, meaning there is no door, but just a part where you walk inside. This means that random civilians can hang out in the schoolyard, usually in small groups of slum children. There are these big windows in our school room with little box shaped bars to shield from the outside, but no windows. Occasionally during class, small children will put their hands on the bars from outside.
In the lag between the boys and the girls, I left the room to play with the cute babies whose mothers take them to the center for free vaccinations. After I was done with the babies, I went to the computer room to play solitaire, at which point Abhinav entered the room and asked, “Where’s your bag?” I thought he was teasing, because he always makes weird jokes like that, so I was like, “I don’t know, where?” and he said, “It’s not with you?”
We went back to the schoolroom and looked all around for my purse which was nowhere to be found. Abhinav asked Anita to look for it, and she was like, “You kept it by the window? Someone must be taking it.” I became really annoyed because everyone was staring at me and saying that I should’ve known not to put it by the window in their broken English. As time passed, everyone was talking about me and my purse in very apparently. The girls were all chatting amongst themselves and the little girl who says rude things about me said more rude things about what I was wearing, even when I told her I could hear her. The kids were in general, really nice and tried to cheer me up by making me ride a bicycle that didn’t have breaks. I kind of refused… not wanting to add injury to insult. Kiran’s husband, Freddy, made a call to the center and said a few things to make me feel better.
So we left and I called Papa and had him cancel my card. And Bhua pulled this horrible prank by telling me that the wallet she gave me was a Louis Vuitton worth 15000 USD. She laughed and laughed at me after I felt all horrible. We went to a restaurant called Kitchen and got comfort food and then went home and I ate some kind of bread pie that Bhua made. After that, Abhinav and I went to Mocha (this really hip coffee joint that looks like a harem and has hookahs and sheesha) with Abhinav’s friend Ishan. That was okay, but the crème brulee they served was not actually crème brulee but peach yogurt with brown sugar on it. It pissed me off beyond belief. Just as much as the cheesecake. It started to rain when we were leaving and my sandals with the cloth soles got soaked.
The next morning I began to feel really upset about this whole thing. We were running late and we got stuck in traffic three times. I was filled with fear that they would hate us for being so late and that Katherine, the girl from Harvard who has just come back, would outshine us since I’m late and I was stupid enough to leave my purse in sight of a window. When we arrived twenty minutes late, I was surprised to see all the children sitting in the room with Anita. When they saw me, they all jumped up and smiled. “Mil gaya!” Anita told me a long involved story about how she had seen my face after my purse was stolen and how upset I was, and that there has never been a robbery at the school before. She said that they went to the schools and took all the boys out and asked them if they knew anything. All the children insisted that they respect me and Abhinav and wouldn’t take my purse, but some thought they had seen a certain kid, who used to go to the school, but was kicked out for being too naughty, on the roof. On the roof, they found my purse, empty and in a water tank, and they tracked down the kid who said he hadn’t done it. After meeting with his parents, the five ladies who were searching retrieved my wallet, cell phone, medicines, and debit card. The only thing missing were a few makeups and all the money in the fake Louis Vuitton wallet (about 1500 rupees). I was so moved by the fact that these people would care enough to do an investigation to find my meager little purse. As Anita and the women handed me my purse, the boys jumped and hooted for me. They asked me if I was happy, and I said, “Bohuth Khushi Hai.“ They locked it up for me and told me to be very careful in future.
After that, everything was good at the school. Katherine came and taught the boys with us and we got to know her a little bit. She is tall and blonde and goes to Harvard. She is also trying very hard to learn the Hindi alphabet and read and write Hindi. She is picking it up very fast for a foreign person and I would know because I myself can’t even read Hindi. (It’s really easy, but if you don’t take the time to memorize the letters you will be screwed.) The language is very straightforward, but there is a letter for each sound, so it’s harder to remember all of them. Even some of my Indian family don’t remember all of them. Katherine is cute. She knows a few Hindi phrases that she mispronounces, but her point gets across and that’s all that really matters to most people. She is very teacher-ly unlike me and Abhinav-- we tend to be more like Didi and Bhai to the kids. We discussed the children and how some of the girls are less advanced than the other girls so it’s hard to know what to teach, and we split them up into two classes. The little girl who insults me actually started to read and I think it made her a little less ill-natured.
After we get back from volunteering and eating a little meal, we come home and we have tea. Mariam gives us these awesome cookies that we dip into our tea that taste really good when the tea hits them and we lounge around on Bhua’s bed and Abhishek comes home and hangs with us too. Abhishek is a neat fellow, I think he’s more reasonable than Abhinav and Bhua sometimes, because they get hooked onto little details and jump to conclusions sometimes, and he tends to take the opposite viewpoint, which can be refreshing. He told them that they shouldn’t take me out for desserts and then tell me that I shouldn’t eat sweets, which I found to be quite an astute observation.
Today I started walking the stairs. This is because I am sick of eating, but sometimes can’t get out of it. I went to visit Nana and Nani today and got stuck in traffic on the way there and back. I started to get a sore throat in the car on the way there and we stopped at one of the ice cream stands. Then I got to their house and they gave me kheer and chaht. I didn’t eat a lot to compensate for eating the ice cream. When I got home an hour later, Abhinav wanted to get an oreo shake because of his birthday tomorrow…. And of course I couldn’t be like, “No I don’t want one” because then he wouldn’t want one anymore and I still have a sore throat, so I said all right. Then we got back and they offered us more food. So I had some raita and rajma and chicken that I could’ve done without and then I felt sick for a little while and started to write this post and fell asleep for a while. But I’m serious, I’m going to stop eating so much because people expect me to. It’s really a problem. I just find it really difficult to say no. Tomorrow is Abhinav’s birthday. Meh, I don’t know where this sore throat is coming from but I get the feeling it’s because of the constant temperature changes and AC.