Saleha picks me up on her scooter on the morning of my arrival and brings me to her house to meet her family. When I walk into the family home, several things register. The first is a gigantic photograph that takes up the entire wall. The picture depicts a garden with a pristine green lawn, a pathway flanked by red flowers leading to a fountain. Beyond the garden pine trees and tall mountains rise into a cloudless sky. The photo, apparently, was taken in Switzerland. But wherever it might be, it looks decidedly out of place in this Indian household.
The second thing I notice is a bed. In the middle of the sitting room. And on it lies a body covered by a bright yellow blanket and pink blossoms. The body stirs and a bearded man with laughing eyes stares up at me. I can do nothing more than stifle my gape with a smile before I am ushered to the sofa (strangely close to the man, who turns out to be Saleha's father) and offered hot masala tea and biscuits. Saleha's mum bustles in with the necessaries and smiles at me, perching on a chair, watching rather intently as I eat and mumble something. Thankfully, she doesn't understand any English. The four of us communicate through Saleha for some time. She translates for her parents while I try to explain myself, my reason for traveling, my life in America, my hopes for the future. Saleha's family is Muslim and I ply them with questions about Muslim culture in India. We discuss Saleha's desire to pursue her education rather than to marry, though most of her contemporaries were wed at eighteen and already have children. While her father is eager to find a suitable husband, she hopes to wait until she finishes her law degree. We talk about the importance of family, and how the family structure differs in the west. For me this is like living something I have read a thousand times in anthropological texts. Dowries, arranged marriage and family honor. Change in the face of modernization. I'm thrilled. They ask about my life in America. Do I live with my parents? Am I religious? Why did my family allow me, a young girl, to travel alone? What will I do when I go home? We learn from each other, probing for answers to life's bigger questions by understanding our similarites and differences.
Soon things return to normal in the household. Saleha has chores to do, and she disappears upstairs with an eight year old worker girl to do the dusting. Mr. Khan rises from his flowery bower and heads to work. He owns an automobile shop nearby. A young boy begins delivering countless cans of cooking oil (each weighing 14kg) and bags of sugar (each weighing 15kg). I learn that this is in preparation for Saleha's older brother's wedding, which will take place at the end of February. They are expecting no less than 2,500 guests! And Mrs. Khan will be doing the majority of the cooking. Sohil, the neighbor's two year old son, wanders through the front door wit ha plastic cricket bat. He starts bashing away at the furniture until subdued with a cookie. Then he sits contentedly on the front stoop, gazing out at the open courtyard, legs swinging. I join him, watching a truck fill up the neighbor's water tank. Sohil's mother dusting her front stairs, great clouds billowing up from her broom. The neighborhood children attempting to fly a broken kite. When Sohil and I tire of each others silent company, he wanders off and I find Mrs. Khan shelling mutter beans in the kitchen. She cooks sitting on the floor because, she claims, cooking requires patience,and one cannot be patient while standing up.
I sit down with dim hopes of being helpful. I am handed the pot of beans and eagerly set to work, but it's a slow process as I'm distracted watching Mrs. Khan prepare chapatis. She divides the douch into small balls and rolls each one flat with a dusting of flour, every time a perfect circle ("you can't make India maps," she claims). Then she cooks them one by one over a hot stove, turning and flipping the rounds with bare fingers. When they are golden brown she tosses them into a basket. After the bread she moves onto the main dist, a vegetable curry, and delicious smells waft from the pressure cooker on the floor.
Busily shelling peas, I am left to my own thoughts. It dawns on me that this is the first time I have been in a family house in three months. The first time I've felt like part of a home. I've lived in hotels and hostels. I've met travelers and locals. But here I am reminded of what I've left behind. My home. My family. I am suddenly overcome with emotion and feel the prickle of tears forming. I can't decide the stinging behind my eyes comes out of sadness, feeling a huge gulf of separation from my other life. Or one of happiness, to be a part of this family, just for a short time. A family who has opened their doors to someone so different and treated me with such respect and kindness. Most likely, it is both. I sniffle, but savor this moment of reminiscence and revelation.
The rest of the day is spent similarly. The pattern of daily life seems little disturbed by my arrival and I am happy to watch, occasionally snap a photo, and try to use sign language to communicate with the assortment of people who wander through the door. Saleha finishes her work and I spend half an hour pouring through her wardrobe, gazing longingly at all her salwar kameez suits (and her beautiful closet space). We go to the rooftop where the neighbors are flying kites - with the International Kite Festival just days away, competition is fierce, and children spend hours perfecting their skills, tugging and teasing at bright pink cords attached to flimsy looking kites, nothing more than a sheet of thin plastic held together with twigs. The remains of hundreds of such kites can be seen attached to telephone wires, caught in treetops, all straining to free themselves in the breeze. We stop in to see Saleha's grandmother, who lives just down the road. On the adjoining floors live two of Saleha's uncles, their wives and children. It is clear that in this world, family plays the most important role. Soon, I too feel at one with this extended family. They refer to me as Appa, sister. I am honored. We return home in the evening for a home cooked meal before being driven back to my hotel on the back of Saleha's scooter.
When I curl up in bed that night, I find myself replaying the day in my head. I see it all in high-speed, as if I'm standing still in the midst of this bustling house. Or maybe I'm watching from the mural, hidden behind a rose bush, peering through into this other world. Here I have a front row seat, for the household revolves around this room. I can see the swing of the steel door as people walk in and out of the house. I watch shoes being taken off, and hear the dull thud of bare feet on granite, wandering into the kitchen, sipping tea and gossiping, walking back out. I see washed laundry being brought outside and hung, then later carried in, folded, piled and finally moved upstairs. The floors are dusted and washed, then the windows, then the cushions taken outside to be beaten. I strain to see the kitchen, where ingredients are strewn out across the floor. Someone comes to pick up a snack box to bring to the office for Mr. Khan and his two sons. A curry is prepared for dinner, then dessert. A the end of the day I see the family sitting and enjoying a meal together. Then the boys go upstairs while Saleha and Mrs. Khan prepare the bed in the sitting room,
I imagine most days go by in such a manner. There is a beauty to this monotony. The steady patterns of daily life, while they may not be exciting and action-packed are satisfying and comfortable. I fall asleep waiting for the morning so I can be part of this world once more.