An American in the Making

An American in the Making

Yesterday, Mena and Ganga left for Ganga’s house, a “three shared auto’s distant way”!  or  “60 rupees away”, is honestly how they described the going!  Sounds reasonable when you figure in order to get to my house, you “go to the temple such-and-such, hang a left down the dirt path, last house on the right.”  Mena said she’d bring me back some eggs; you can’t buy eggs in the vegetarian Vrindavan, and you can’t cook them in the landlord Brahmin’s house, either, so she’s bringing them back hard boiled.  (And I was really hoping for fried…oh well..).  Arti also went back to Orrisa to visit family – that’s a two day train trip.  People are always coming or going in India; the trains, buses, rickshaws and roads are constantly filled to capacity with motion like an ant colony on the move.

So it’s just Johena and I holding down the fort.  Johena is not your typical Indian girl by any means.  First of all, she’s biding her time with me in Vrindavan while she waits for her American immigration visa so she can go to Arkansas to be with her husband that she met on Facebook.  The beautiful thin 19 year old Punjabi has three tattoos; Christ in a cross on her right shoulder, a bible verse across her back and a little floral design on her inside left wrist.  Her long raven hair falls below her waist.  When we go out together, she always attracts attention, stares, whistles and wolf calls; the street beggars make a beeline to her and won’t let up.  This is all so funny because as a foreigner, all this dubiously honorable attention is usually bestowed upon us!!  She’s wearing the tight jeans and little blouses and quietly, softly even demurely, telling them all to kindly bug off in the best of Hindi.