New Host Family!

I'm sitting with my host brothers (Pinnu, 17 & Tillu, 24) right now in the living room of my new house in Jaipur! My host mom also just got back from the market with their servant Kesna, who is 16. It is extremely strange to have a servant in the house. Apparently Kesna is from Bihar, one of the poorest states in India, and his mother was going to sell him to earn money for the family a few years ago. Somehow my host parents found out about it, and took him in as a domestic servant, which is a much better job than the sort of work he would have been sold into. According to my brother Pinnu, he is treated more like another member of the family than as a simple servant, but there is still a very big division between my "brothers" and Kesna that is difficult to get used to. While my host parents and bros speak English, Kesna only speaks Hindi, so I've been trying a little to talk to him. My Hindi definitely needs some serious work, though. The first day I was here, I looked up the word for "brother" in my Hindi-English dictionary. I tried to say hi to my brothers but my entire family burst out laughing. They said I had just called my brothers my "maids"- the word "maid" is almost exactly the same as "brother." They still laugh hysterically every time they think of it.

Both of my brothers are studying to be accountants, and they are exceptionally sweet and fun to be around. Pinnu just came back from his friend's house, and while I was writing my paper, he told me (secretly from his mother) that he had had a few drinks. He started playing his favorite songs (Jack Johnson, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin) and fake-singing in an obnoxious voice. I think I am lucky to have Jenna as a sister, she would never run around the house shouting the lyrics to Nirvana songs. But Pinnu is adorable and I feel so comfortable in my new family.

My mother is searching for a wife for Tillu, who will hopefully be married sometime next year. We listened, laughing, as his mom talked on the phone to someone who had called proposing their daughter as an option for Tillu. Oh! My host father just burst through the door with a rose for his wife! "Happy Valentine's day!" he shouted and gave her a hug and the rose. They are so cute. The dad speaks fluent French with the most excellent Indian accent, and so we talk in French a lot of the time. When we watch the news, my family tells me about terrorism and government in India, (the mother was also a political science major!) and every night we all watch the Indian version of So You Think You Can Dance or Hindi soap operas on TV. I have been learning more about Hinduism from my Mom, and our house always smells like incense and the delicious food she cooks with the help of Kesna.

We celebrated Shiva's birthday the other night at this gorgeous Hindu temple nearby in Vaishali Nagar. I was the only white person I saw as hundreds of Indians streamed into the temple grounds to bow before Shiva and bring him offerings. Actually, it is very unusual to see any Westerners in Jaipur, even though it is a major tourist city in India. We are always surprised to run into people from other countries.

Tomorrow I'll take the autorickshaw to school with 3 other girls for our Hindi lessons and a lecture on women's rights in India. I have fallen in love with this country, and I feel so comfortable walking the streets here, even by myself, in my new Indian kurtas and salwars. My friend Jessica and I explored the streets and neighborhoods for 2 hours this morning, and 3 friends and I took rickshaws around the city to shop for Indian clothing yesterday. While the most dangerous part of living here is probably the traffic, even crossing the street has become much more relaxing and it's actually fun, a word I never thought I would use to describe the swerving cars, motorcycles and autorickshaws. But there are definite laws to Indian traffic, and once you figure out the hierarchy, crossing the street is extremely easy- no one is out to kill you.

I'm off to finish my 3 pg paper on the City Palace in Jaipur...they have clothing on display belonging to Sawai Madho Singh I, a king who weighed 550 pounds at 6.6 feet and had 108 wives!