If anyone was worried that I wasn't independent enough, I think a year in India will assuage all fears once and for all. There's something about being a foreigner in a place where everyone immediately recognizes you as such that gives you a sense of isolation from the larger world, but closeness with those with whom you can empathize, namely other foreigners. Today as Tangi and I were walking to school, an auntie, a colloquialism for an older woman, came running up to us. "Are you foreigners?!" she exclaimed. It was hard not to respond with "No, of course not, we were born and raised in Delhi, can't you tell by our perfect Hindi and oddly colored faces?" I said yes and she asked excitedly where we were from, at which point I said we were in a rush to get to class and didn't have time to talk. This compares nicely with the experience Hannah and I had, when I accidentally dialed a wrong number while trying to reach the person in charge of helping us get Internet. I realized quickly that I had reached a wrong number, said so, and hung up. Two minutes later, the person called back! Hannah answered, and, speaking in Hindi, explained politely that we had reached them by accident and had not intended to call them in the first place. The woman started trying to have a conversation with Hannah, asking her name and where she was from. The conversation went something like this, and please keep in mind that this was over the course of several phone calls, because Hannah kept hanging up and the woman called back two or three times:
Lady: Where are you from?
Hannah: America
Lady: What do you do?
Hannah: Why are you asking this? I don't know you.
Lady: Can we be friends?
Hannah: NO, we can't be friends.
Lady: Why not??
Hannah: BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW YOU!
Lady: So you can't be friends with someone if you don't know them?
Hannah: NO. Please stop calling me, this is very expensive!!!
Lady: Please tell me your name.
Hannah: I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU MY NAME PLEASE STOP CALLING ME
Lady: Fine then don't tell me your name, bitch!
Hannah: There's no need to curse! Please stop calling me!
Only in India will someone you dial by accident take it personally that you don't want to be their friend. Part of the reason I am so looking forward to starting to teach is that I feel that not having personal relationships with people from here is making me feel even more isolated in this bubble we've created within our little ETA community of six. Because of our limited current ability to communicate with people here, both in a spoken and cultural sense, I often find myself unable to convey basic ideas, from the desired width of the pants at the tailor's to asking for coffee with milk but no sugar.
On a different note, I am fortunate enough to be coming into this experience straight from a year of working and living at home, which allowed me to save money with which to travel while in India and hopefully after as well. My roommates, however, are coming straight out of college and are trying to live as economically as possible so they will be able to do the traveling they want to do while in Asia. It is a combination of these factors that led me to spend the morning cutting hair--first Patricia's and then Hannah's. Of course there are a million and a half salons near where we live, but wanting to be thrifty and a fear of ending up with a mullet led my roommates to prefer my limited scissor skills to those of a barber. I have cut hair several times before, both in college and when I was living in Israel after high school. However, the last time I cut someone's hair was my roommate in college, who said she wanted short hair and then behaved passive-aggressively towards me for three days before finally admitting that she hated the haircut and ruined her life. Or something like that. Anyway, my roommates had expressed wanting to get haircuts and not wanting accidental mullets, and I said that I had cut hair before and could probably give them a trim. This was a few weeks ago. This past weekend Patricia asked if I would cut her hair. I put on a long dress over my pajamas, googled hair cutting as a quick refresher, placed a plastic chair outside on our little balcony, and started to snip. It did occur to me about halfway through the cut, when Patricia looked in the mirror for the first time, that it was a terrible mistake to try this and may possibly result in Roommate Rumble Part II, but alas I was already in deep and couldn't quit at that point! Though the bangs came out a little shorter than intended, the rest of the cut came out very even and I was relieved beyond words that I had not ruined anyone's life. I went on to cut Hannah's hair also, again not perfectly, but evenly and nicely enough that she could still look me in the eye afterwards. There's something about living here that forces me to trust and be trusted in new ways that I wouldn't have expected prior to my arrival. My roommates and I are so interdependent in so many ways, much more so than I have ever been with people I've lived with, and we've already learned not to be shy about expressing concern for one another's safety. When someone leaves the house alone, we always ask where she's going, just so we know, just in case. In the US I would consider this very nosy to ask of a roommate all the time, but here we have a much higher consciousness about sticking together and being trusting. I think there's also something about the fact that money is worth less here, that we can buy enough vegetables for four people for a week for less than $10, that an expensive auto ride is $2.00, that makes it less stressful to keep track of what we spend on communal items and household maintenance. Throughout my life I have sought out opportunities to study, live and be in community with others, but this community is more intimate and interdependent than any I've lived in so far. It's funny that our interests and whereabouts in the US are close enough to have possible crossed at some point previously, but we had to come here to be a community.
Lady: Where are you from?
Hannah: America
Lady: What do you do?
Hannah: Why are you asking this? I don't know you.
Lady: Can we be friends?
Hannah: NO, we can't be friends.
Lady: Why not??
Hannah: BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW YOU!
Lady: So you can't be friends with someone if you don't know them?
Hannah: NO. Please stop calling me, this is very expensive!!!
Lady: Please tell me your name.
Hannah: I'M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU MY NAME PLEASE STOP CALLING ME
Lady: Fine then don't tell me your name, bitch!
Hannah: There's no need to curse! Please stop calling me!
Only in India will someone you dial by accident take it personally that you don't want to be their friend. Part of the reason I am so looking forward to starting to teach is that I feel that not having personal relationships with people from here is making me feel even more isolated in this bubble we've created within our little ETA community of six. Because of our limited current ability to communicate with people here, both in a spoken and cultural sense, I often find myself unable to convey basic ideas, from the desired width of the pants at the tailor's to asking for coffee with milk but no sugar.
On a different note, I am fortunate enough to be coming into this experience straight from a year of working and living at home, which allowed me to save money with which to travel while in India and hopefully after as well. My roommates, however, are coming straight out of college and are trying to live as economically as possible so they will be able to do the traveling they want to do while in Asia. It is a combination of these factors that led me to spend the morning cutting hair--first Patricia's and then Hannah's. Of course there are a million and a half salons near where we live, but wanting to be thrifty and a fear of ending up with a mullet led my roommates to prefer my limited scissor skills to those of a barber. I have cut hair several times before, both in college and when I was living in Israel after high school. However, the last time I cut someone's hair was my roommate in college, who said she wanted short hair and then behaved passive-aggressively towards me for three days before finally admitting that she hated the haircut and ruined her life. Or something like that. Anyway, my roommates had expressed wanting to get haircuts and not wanting accidental mullets, and I said that I had cut hair before and could probably give them a trim. This was a few weeks ago. This past weekend Patricia asked if I would cut her hair. I put on a long dress over my pajamas, googled hair cutting as a quick refresher, placed a plastic chair outside on our little balcony, and started to snip. It did occur to me about halfway through the cut, when Patricia looked in the mirror for the first time, that it was a terrible mistake to try this and may possibly result in Roommate Rumble Part II, but alas I was already in deep and couldn't quit at that point! Though the bangs came out a little shorter than intended, the rest of the cut came out very even and I was relieved beyond words that I had not ruined anyone's life. I went on to cut Hannah's hair also, again not perfectly, but evenly and nicely enough that she could still look me in the eye afterwards. There's something about living here that forces me to trust and be trusted in new ways that I wouldn't have expected prior to my arrival. My roommates and I are so interdependent in so many ways, much more so than I have ever been with people I've lived with, and we've already learned not to be shy about expressing concern for one another's safety. When someone leaves the house alone, we always ask where she's going, just so we know, just in case. In the US I would consider this very nosy to ask of a roommate all the time, but here we have a much higher consciousness about sticking together and being trusting. I think there's also something about the fact that money is worth less here, that we can buy enough vegetables for four people for a week for less than $10, that an expensive auto ride is $2.00, that makes it less stressful to keep track of what we spend on communal items and household maintenance. Throughout my life I have sought out opportunities to study, live and be in community with others, but this community is more intimate and interdependent than any I've lived in so far. It's funny that our interests and whereabouts in the US are close enough to have possible crossed at some point previously, but we had to come here to be a community.
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