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.
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