Life in the hutch

When Willy came back from his trip to India in July of 2009, he was full of tales of the fantastic things that he saw, the amazing food, the wonderful weather, and the absolutely great people that he met.  In some ways, that trip started the ball rolling on our “trip“ to India. We just didn’t know at the time just how involved the trip would be, and that it would last this long.  One of the things that he was most intrigued by was the way that a lot of Indians, many of them unknowingly, bob their heads as they are conversing.  He tried to pinpoint the exact meaning of the gesture, but was only here for a short time, and never really narrowed it down.

Even though I had heard of his experience, I was a little confused when we arrived and so many of the people that we spoke with shook their head intermittently in conversations. I wasn’t at all used to it, and the motion gave me the impression that the person initiating it was disagreeing with what was being said.  Each time it happened, I would stop and ask, “is that OK?”, and each time I sought to clarify, I would be met with a confused look.  Then Willy explained to me that many of the people he has asked about this bobble have bobbled without being aware of it, some even deny that they, or any of their countrymen, do it at all.

Nine months later, I am still not absolutely clear on what the motion means.  It varies by person and by context, but it is a safe bet that the bobble means one of:

Do you see why I am confused?  In truth, it is most likely to indicate agreement, or consideration of what is proposed than anything else, but it can occasionally mean disagreement.

I have noticed that many of the transplants pick up this gesture.  Some will only bobble in response to another’s bobbles, but a few of my friends will initiate or bobble when no one around them does.  I know that Willy has been caught doing a reciprocal bobble on more than one occasion, a fact he will grudgingly admit.  The lils have not, and seem to be even more confused than I am.

I do not bobble.  I think.

We were warned that an assignment of one year is basically six months of settling in, and six months of moving out.  We’ve tried not to view it as such, but it’s hard not to think about it when it comes up in conversation all the time.  It’s the ex-pat dance.  People talk about how long you are here for and when you are leaving.  Lately, when I say that we are here for a year, leaving in the fall, people tell me that is really soon.  So I counted the days.

The number is one hundred.  We are committed to be here for one hundred more days.  Sure there is an outside chance that we will stay longer, but it doesn’t look like that will happen.  We’ll likely be moving back Ottawa, but we are really not much clearer on that than we were one hundred days ago.  In any case, we will be home in October for some period of time.

I am not ready to leave Bangalore, to leave India. We are finally really and truly settled, although it took much longer than we anticipated.  This is especially true of the lils, who have blossomed since we returned from Canada and are really enjoying life here.  It is almost like they had to see that everything was still OK at home to realize that it is pretty OK here.  Their happiness contributes to our happiness, and we’ve all found a groove.  Sure, I am still lonely, especially when Willy travels or works at night, but I knew that would happen from the start. We are just a lot better at making the most of the opportunities we do get now.

So I am making lists. Not the lists we need in order to move, the lists of what we want to do before we go. They are huge.  There is so much we have yet to see and do, but now there is pressure, and a need to prioritize.  Large chunks of Bangalore have been unexplored, and there are favourite spots to revisit. I have plans with friends that we just haven’t gotten around to yet. Do we go back to Mysore, or visit somewhere new?  We know we are going to the Maldives soon, can we swing a trip to Thailand or Singapore as well? Will I get to take one more trip to photograph parts of India that I will never get to again, where will it be, and who will I go with? As the lists grow and grow, I worry that one hundred days is not nearly enough time.

In my day to day life I meet and chat with a number of different people.  Some of them are ex-pats like our family, but mostly I meet Indians from all walks of life.  Many of them are what our family like to refer to as our helpers, the domestic staff that work in almost all of the villas in our community. The lils and I have gotten to know a few of them, because they work on our street;  we are always bumping into them as we walk and ride around the community; they are playing with their charges in the park as we are there; or all three.  As I chat with these men and women, I often get to hear a little bit of their life stories.  This is Anu’s*

Anu works on our street.  She is friendly and polite and has taken an obvious shine to the lils.  She loves to play with them, and will make the time to do so whenever she can.  Over the months that we have known each other, I have learned bits and pieces about her life. It was only today that I pieced them all together.

A mother and a grandmother, Anu is only thirty-four years old. Her husband doesn’t live with her, though, as he has another wife and family.  He hasn’t divorced her, he just moved on when he wasn’t happy with her.  He is still around in her life, and she still considers herself married, yet she is raising their two children and helping to raise her grandchild alone.  She pays all the bills, and gets very little, if anything from him. She was TWELVE when she married him, and gave birth to their first child days after her thirteenth birthday. I fail to wrap my head around this, knowing that she was married and a mom when she should have been playing with her friends. I can’t see how she willingly (in law or in life) made these choices.  I doubt she was given any say in the matter at all.

This shocked, saddened and sickened me, despite the fact that Anu claims to be happy. Her reasons are that he never speaks poorly of her and has never beaten her.  It doesn’t change the fact that she was forced into a marriage with a much older man, and had given birth to a child when she was still a child herself.  Yes, India does have a history of child marriage, but it has been against the law since 1978, the very year that Anu was born.

Still, these marriages happen, clearly they happen.  Just this spring there was massive media coverage of an eighteen year old girl who had her marriage annulled.  It was the first of the kind in the country, and there was widespread speculation on the backlash that she and her family might face for having taken such a drastic step.  She learned of the marriage when her in-laws arrived to “claim” her, as she had been married to the boy when she was one and he was three.  These are just two of the many stories that I have seen and heard while we have been here.  These marriages keep happening.

To her credit, Anu is doing a fabulous job of taking care of herself and her family.  She speaks excellent English, in addition to Hindi and several local languages.  She can also read most of these languages, including English.  Her life has not been easy, yet she has worked hard to further herself, and certainly has. In doing so, she has raised two fabulous children, one who is married and a mom herself, and another who is studying engineering at college. Her kind heart shows through every time I see her, in her every interaction with those around her.

Despite Anu`s assurances that she is happy and the fact that I can see she does have happiness in her life, I also know that she has a fairly lonely life and wonder about what could have been.  As I watched her playing with the lils after our talk, I could not help but think that a part of the reason why she plays so well with them is that she never got to play the way any child should.  Thrust into the roles of wife and mother, her time for games and tomfoolery certainly ended far too early.

*I have changed Anu’s name