Background: I am teaching with a program that helps low-income students in India learn English and math. It occurs after their regular school day, from 3:30 until 6:00 pm. The students mostly speak Urdu at home (and in their school), and Hindi with their friends. So for many of them, this is the only time they speak English. Apparently, their home schools are also awful. The other day, I read in the newspaper that, on any given day, 25% of teachers in India just don’t show up to work. Not even a phone call so they can find a substitute teacher. For the teachers that do show up, apparently many of them don’t actually teach… And for children like my students, who are at a very poor public school, it is probably even higher fraction of teachers not showing up to do their job. So the students’ 2.5 hours with me might be the only time they are learning throughout the day. When I am in control of discipline and they are actually listening to me, that is.
The program teaches students from all over Mumbai (population: 14 million people) and has roughly 60 centers throughout the city. Because the program is non-profit, and has very little money, they do not have their own buildings for teaching. Instead, they utilize empty classroom space in various schools/buildings throughout the city. For example, my students live near a very nice school (I think it is a private school), and they walk 10 minutes each day between the two.
It is a very big contrast- the school in which I teach is absolutely beautiful. Well-manicured lawns, amazingly clean, good facilities (still no toilet paper in the bathroom, though), clean classrooms with white boards, etc. Yet the students are from a completely different world. They are very low income, and while they don’t live in slums, their living conditions are not very good. I wonder what they think coming there each day. Maybe they don’t think about it, simply because that is the way things have always been…. But as a foreigner seeing the differences for the first time, it seems like such a clash of environments that there must be some emotional feelings about the situation.
One of my students, let’s call him Student M, is the second smallest kid in class. But he probably has the biggest personality. He loves Michael Jackson, and thus can moonwalk, break dance, and even stand on his head. He is very good at math, too. Anyhow, his mom, let’s call her Mommy M, is the school aide. She comes off as a very stern, organized, and clean person. She walks the students to the school, walks them back, makes copies of the day’s worksheets, and is quite good at making them stop talking, which is very, very wonderfully helpful. Mommy M doesn’t speak a word of English. But we still get along well. On Thursday she invited me (via the students pulling on my arm and excitedly translating for me) to dinner at her home the next day.
Friday after class, around 6:30, I walked back with the students and Mommy M, rather than taking my usual cab ride home. Mommy M had tied her red and green dupatta (scarf) in a sash-like, Miss America-style, which I thought was incredibly practical. Usually the long dupatta is draped over the neck, with the two ends hanging loose down the back. I have yet to manage this with style. I always wind up with one end dragging on the floor, or it slips over my shoulders. Or falls down in the front. There are endless ways to mess up that dupatta. The students were wearing their matching, bright yellow school t-shirts with a various array of shorts and pants on bottom (I should say trousers, as pants = underwear in British English). I had on loose black pants and a long blue shirt that sort of resembles a salwar kameez. I wore a white t-shirt under it to be more modest, so it looked remarkably stupid, but everyone here wears t-shirts under their tank tops, so I was hoping I didn’t stick out too much.
Now, I knew the students were low-income. But knowing and seeing/experiencing their living environments are two completely different concepts. We walked to their apartment complexes and it was quite dirty. The uneven roads were covered in dirt, trash along the road. I walked inside, and the walls of the building were splashed with stains of various food items. They were covered in every spot possible. Mommy M’s apartment was on the first floor (Indians says Ground Floor-1st floor- 2nd floor, etc., as opposed to the American 1st floor- 2nd floor, 3rd floor, etc.). So we took one flight of stairs up to her home.
Her home consists mainly of one large room, which acts as a living room, dining room, and bedroom. It was 8 by 17 floor tiles (I counted). So probably 136 square feet of space. There was a tiny kitchen, a small toilet, and a cement-covered tiny room adjoining the main space.
The tiny room was about the size of a couch. On the floor, they kept big bottles (green, but they looked similar to the red containers we use in the States for gasoline) of what I am guessing contained water. On a small table, a large steel basin sat. It was full of water and had a small plastic bucket beside it. Those small plastic buckets are ubiquitous in this country. Every single house/apartment/hotel I have been in has them in the bathrooms. To wash your hands, you scoop a bucketful of water, soap up, and then rinse by pouring the water over your hands. The water is then just poured onto the floor, which is permanently damp. They told me to put someone’s flip-flops on to walk in the room, but everyone else just stood in their bare feet.
I didn’t go into the bathroom or kitchen, so I can’t describe them.
The main room had newish, cream floor tiles. The walls were painted a yellowish color that had a layer of dirt over everything. Even up to the ceiling. The only furniture in the room were the two standard plastic lawn chairs, just like my folks have at home. After a season or two in the Michigan outdoors, the lawn chairs are covered in a layer of dirt that is difficult to remove. These chairs, indoors in India, were much dirtier. They were just covered in a thick layer of grime. If you have a wooden handrail on your staircase- you know how dirty it becomes after 15, 20 years? And then you scrape off the years of grime and realize it was actually several shades lighter in color? That is what the coating on the chairs resembled. Parts were solid black. One chair contained thick blankets, used for sleeping, and the other had a pile of all the family clothing. A clothesline hung along one wall, and, hung on the wall opposite, a pair of backpacks and a cockeyed clock. A haphazard pile of sandals surrounded the door.
Mommy M is always very clean and orderly and I would have never guessed that all of her clothes are piled on a chair. I don’t understand how the family keeps their clothes so nice and clean. Her son, too, might have a rather odd selection of clothes (it must be a universal characteristic of children to wear weird, mismatch clothes), but they are always clean, neat, and tidy.
When I arrived, they ceremoniously brought out a big standing fan and pointed it directly at me to make me feel nice and cool. It was very sweet of them, but it is also awkward for me to feel like I am the center of attention and that I am getting nicer things than the rest of the people. I know it is just the way things are done, but I’d much rather just share whatever they have, and not have my own personal fan.
Mommy M’s family are Muslims, but she doesn’t dress in black or cover her head. In fact, I had thought she was a Hindu because of her clothing, which has always been a brightly colored salwar kameez. She even wears a mangalsutra, which I had naively thought was something only Hindu women wear, as it is a necklace (like a wedding ring) given during the Hindu wedding ceremony.
A young neighbor came over to visit, and she was wearing a more typical outfit that adorns the female Muslim, but it was a light blue-gray color rather than black. And the headpiece was white. I had never seen that before, so it surprised me. I didn’t realize the attire came in colors. It almost reminded me more of a nun habit. It is like when you go to Shipshewana and you expect to see the dark black colors of the Amish, but then see all the colorful attire of the Mennonite women instead.
So we all spent some time comparing our toe rings (what married Indian women also wear) and our mangalsutras. They kept asking me why I kept my mangalsutra hidden (I wear it beneath my shirt), and I told them that I was afraid people would steal it. I didn’t know this until recently, but mangalsutras are ALWAYS made with real gold. And it just dangles there invitedly. I’ve even had a stranger question me about it. So it seems like a better idea to just keep it hidden when I am out. Of course, the goal is to keep the gold pendant hidden, but not the black beads around my neck. If people see the beads, they know I am married, and I HOPE that means people will talk to me less. I don’t that is true, though. Mostly now I just get confused, “you are married?” questions, since it is obviously a Hindu, not American, tradition to wear the mangalsutra.
Mommy M has four children, ages 19, 18, 17, and 9. The 9-year old is my student. The 18-year old, a boy, was sick. He was lying on the one rug in the room. He didn’t talk, since he was feeling ill, and mostly slept through my visit. He was in jeans, and several inches of his underwear were showing. It is such a contradiction that women cover up so much and it didn’t matter that a perfect stranger, a female besides, saw so much of his underwear. It was rather awkward to me. Anyhow, around 9 pm he went to see the doctor (who lives in the same building) and got an injection. He sat up, at least, after that point.
The 17 year old, a bright-faced, cheery girl, seemed quite nice. She thinks I say ‘thank you’ way too much, so that was funny. Especially after she told me that, because then I would laugh every time I unconsciously said it. She, the other girl (in the blue-gray outfit), and Student M and I played a few variations of those hand-slap games we all played as a kid. The games were a bit more brutal, though. Every time you lost, the winner got to hit the loser as hard as they could.
Eventually the 19-year old brother came home from work. He seemed quite nice, too, though his English wasn’t as good. He even asked me for my phone number, which struck me as odd for this particular society, where women can only have female friends. I think he was the only one of the four children who owns a phone, so it might have been more for his mother’s benefit (so I told myself). Right when I was leaving the father came home. He had big hair, blow-dried 1970’s style, which made me smile. It reminded me of a Bollywood movie star.
When I first arrived at their home, Mommy M shook out a weaved rug-like item for us to sit upon. We sat cross-legged. Everyone else sat on the floor. She pulled her money holder out, and had her son go buy me a Coca Cola. I felt so guilty about that. I’m sure they don’t normally spend money on such items, just based on the appearance of their home. So I tried to drink it as slowly as possible, so they wouldn’t feel obligated to buy me another. It was called ‘thums up’ (note the spelling of 'thumb') and came in a glass bottle, like a classic coke. It tasted just fine, though I am not, in general, a pop fan.
When people ran out to buy items (the pop, vegetables for dinner, medication, milk) they only had to go down the stairs. There were vendors within the building selling the various items. So that is nice and convenient, at least.
I had been worried about conversation, so I brought my wedding album to start the conversations. That was a great idea because everyone wanted to look at it and see my sari, etc. So I’m glad I did that. Of course, it brought endless questions on whether Sandeep was American or Indian. Usually those aren’t difficult to answer, but it is much harder with the language barrier! It also brought the inevitable, “why don’t you have children yet?” which was impossible to explain, as I am pretty sure birth control is non-existent in this particular home.
Speaking of birth control, I read in the newspaper that only 12% of the women in India can even afford sanitary napkins (I’ve heard that basically no one uses tampons). So instead, they use rags, which are often dirty. So there are very high rates of infection. It is easy, when in the states, to know we are lucky to have TVs, video games, cars, etc. But is even more amazing the things we take for granted that we don’t even know we are taking for granted. Who would have thought people can’t afford sanitary napkins?
Eventually we started dinner. I asked to help, so they let me chop the potatoes (Mommy M peeled them for me), parsley, tomatoes, and cauliflower. They refused to let me cut the chilies, onions, and garlic, because they would make me cry and burn my hands. That was quite nice of them. I am such a dork that I tried to chop with the knife upside down! So that was great fodder for them to tease me for the rest of the evening. I kept saying that it looked different from my knives in the States, but in reality, it was so dull and kind of grimy looking it was hard to tell which edge was which. So I actually tried, multiple times, to chop with the wrong end. They must think I’m a complete idiot. When we were done chopping, the remaining material (onion peels, etc), were just left on the floor.
Dinner was aloo gobi and chapattis, pretty typical, standard Indian food. Aloo gobi is a cooked veggie dish (see the poorly chopped veggies described above) and chapattis are the standard food with which you eat the dishes. It is a flat piece of bread. You tear the bread with your RIGHT hand (the left hand is used for wiping yourself in the bathroom, so NEVER touch food, etc with the left hand) and pinch off some of the veggies in the bread and eat it. Repeat. All Indian dishes seem to use a TON of oil in their foods. In the shopping bag, the bag of oil (I am guessing it was actually ghee, which is clarified butter) was larger than the pile of veggies. So the aloo gobi and chapattis were pretty greasy, but I’m fairly certain that is considered good here.
There was also a bowl of rice and a bowl of dal, a sort of yellow soup of lentils. As far as I can tell, dal and rice appear on every single lunch and dinner table, every single day, in India. Usually, they are served at the end, when you are finished eating the rest of the food. You put some rice on your plate, pour the dal ‘gravy’ (it seems that gravy, in this country, describes any liquid food, regardless of the viscosity) over the rice, mix with your right hand, and eat with your right hand. I vaguely remember some grade school lesson that beans and rice, combined, are a good protein substitute. Perhaps that is why it is served at every vegetarian table. They are also always served in a metallic container. Everyone seems to serve their food/drinks in this material. I think it might be stainless steel. I guess you can’t break that, at least.
Dinner was a bit awkward, because they only served me the food. Eventually Student M also ate, but he only ate the rice and dal (the cheapest of all the Indian foods) whereas they gave me the aloo gobi and chapatti, which cost much more to make. So it left me wondering if they only had bought the vegetables for me. Which made me feel incredibly guilty. I don’t want them wasting their hard earned money on me… Mommy M told me she makes 1500 rs./ month, which translates, in American dollars, to about $33. I know her husband and son has a job, too. But it sure isn’t much money.
Now, in India, you have to eat a LOT so people know you like them, like their food, etc. It is very important. So after two chapattis, I tried switching to rice, so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about eating all their nice veggies. Rice in India makes my belly hurt, by the way. I’m just so sick of it. I don’t see how it is possible that something as bland as rice is causing the ache, but once I stopped eating it with my dinner the belly aches went away…. I started to scoop the rice myself, but Mommy M took the bowl and spooned it for me. She spooned a HUGE amount. At least two full cups of rice. And then drenched it with the dal. There was no way I could finish all of it. I sat there, trying to decide if it was ruder not to finish it, or to finish it and be so full that I would get sick and throw up in their house. I decided I’d take my chances with their wrath and not finish it. I don’t enjoy rice, save the fried rice at Joy Fong in Kalamazoo, and I will be honest, it was the worst rice I have ever had. And they put SO much rice on my plate. I ate as much as I possibly could, and gave the rest of the plate to Mommy M. She ate it without hesitation. So I wonder just how hungry they are.
The whole family (well, most of India) is incredibly skinny. Earlier in the day, the medical staff came to the school to check the students’ eyes, teeth, health, etc. So they were all weighed. The students all asked me to climb up on the scale, and I found out I weighed 62 kg. I had no concept of what that number was. But later Mommy M told me they asked her to do the same, and she was 40 kg. When I looked it up, that meant she was only 88 lbs. She is obviously shorter than me, but not much. I really hope that 40 lbs was just an error in translation, because I think that means they would truly be starving, if that were in fact her true weight.
During the evening, Mommy M’s family spent a long time trying to teach me various Hindi phrases, which was fun. They would laugh, because when we were practicing the word ‘eat’, I mimicked it with my left hand, realized my mistake, and quickly switched to the right. It is good that non-verbal communication works so well, regardless of language barriers.
Obviously, the family has no TV. So at one point during the night, I asked Student M. where he learned all of his Michael Jackson moves. He is OBSESSED with Michael Jackson. He wrote a paper about America, and said he was going to move there so he could dance with Michael Jackson. Student M got his oldest brother to pull out his cell phone with the tiny 1.5 inch x 1.5 inch screen, and show me the video of Michael Jackson dancing to Billy Jean. Student M was so excited, and described every move before it happened. So apparently he learned the moves by watching that tiny screen. Amazing.
I think this point was the saddest point of the entire night for me. Here was this incredibly smart, loving kid, and he taught himself to dance from this one image from his brother’s cell phone. Imagine if he was in the US. He’d have the wii, or a playstation. His parents would have bought him that new dancing video game, and it would be projected on a big screen TV, so he could dance to all of Michael Jackson’s dances. He’d have a DVD player, so he could listen to the music. He’d have that glove and hat so he could dress up like him. I’m not saying he’d inherently be any happier- he seemed like such a happy kid- but it seems so unfair that some people just have nothing while others have so much. And really, by Mumbai standards, I think he still has a lot. He has a roof over his head, and it is a real roof, not a tarp. But still, he’s just a kid. I hope he can stay that happy when he grows up.
I left around 9:45 pm. I was holding back yawns. I asked them what time they usually went to bed. I was told 2:00 am. And that they wake up at 6:00 am. Every single day. Can you believe that? I really, truly thought this was another translation error, but I asked the question a few different times, and always got the same answer. And they looked wide-awake… If this is true, it makes me totally re-think this whole 8 hours of sleep a night thing. Maybe if you started as a kid with only 4, you just get used to it?
When it was time for me to leave, Mommy M, Student M and I walked to where cabs are usually lined up and waiting. It is maybe a 4-minute walk. It was semi-scary because we were walking through what looks like (to me) a fairly rough neighborhood, and I know that there were a lot of men loafing around. At one point, some men got off the curb and sort of got closer to us, and I don’t know what they were saying, but Mommy M started to respond angrily and so I just grabbed her hand and pulled away. We were holding hands, anyway. Everyone (same-sex) holds hands in India, no matter the age. So I was semi-jumpy for the rest of the night (good use of foreshadowing here).
Fast-forward 40 minutes or so and I had just gotten out of the cab and was walking to my guest house. The cab had dropped me off half a block from my guest house, due to my annoying habit of saying, “stop soon”, rather than yelling stop right at my house. I was walking rather quickly because I didn’t want to be annoyed by strange people (it was about 10:30 pm at this point). Our building has a narrow hallway, maybe 30 feet long, and at the end of the hallway is the elevator and stairwell.
The elevator is one of those old-school numbers with the metal doors you manually open and close. Plus, the elevator plays the song It’s a Small World, After All, every single time you ride it. Which, as I am sure you can guess, is incredibly annoying. The staircase is a wide, sweeping affair, but our guesthouse is on the fourth floor, so I usually take the elevator.
So as I was standing there, waiting for the elevator to creak its way down to the ground level, a guy came into the hallway, and walked toward the elevator, too. It is sort of an isolated hallway, so it creeped me out and I decided to take the steps, just in case. I was still a bit jumpy after the night walk with Mommy M and Student M. But then he started up the stairs, too! So I got scared, and RAN up the steps, even though I had my heavy schoolbag on my back. I reach the top, panting, and ringing the doorbell (we don’t have keys to the guest house, someone has to let us in), and he comes up behind me.
I start to calm down, since I know the door will open soon, and thus I feel safer, and so I look at him, and he says, “I’ve got a key”. It was the cook! I felt SO embarrassed! I’ve been living in the same house as him for 2 weeks, and I didn’t recognize him. To be fair, I’ve always seen him with a chef hat and chef’s coat on, peeking from behind the kitchen door, and today he was wearing a t-shirt. I still felt awful for running from him. So I kept apologizing. But I still feel bad. I know if it were daylight, I would have recognized him.
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