A Real Trip - Part I

Note:  This is less a coherent essay and more a catalogue of the madness of the past month so I don't forget.  Proceed at your own risk.  

India, as usual, was a trip.  Being a young, innocent, demure dame sellin' this dress (or something), I was forbidden on pain of death to travel to my family's house – 3 hours away from the international airport in Mumbai – alone.

(I fully I plan to do this next time.)


Thus, my nanny subjected me to a lecture on my laissez-faire attitude towards marriage within the first few hours of landing.  I was further lectured for my mother's laissez-faire attitude in allowing my laissez-faire attitude, which is actually unfair.  All this was liberally interspersed with various snacks, which is why I will entitle my biography How I Ate Away the Pain.

I stayed with this dear, dear friend of my mom (briefly contemplating marriage into her family just to acquire her constant love and attention – this was infeasible) before descending on my aunt's house and kitchen like the plague of locusts on Egypt.

My food cravings were almost immediately satisfied (I also briefly contemplated becoming pregnant to ensure more of this behaviour – but decided against it as the dead probably have a hard time enjoing masala dosa), and I only had to beg my aunt around a thousand different times to take me where I wanted to go before she gave in and cautiously introduced the subject to my uncle.

In the past, sheer determination has allowed me to ignore the casual misogyny in India, but I must be getting soft in my old age; I nearly lost it when I noticed that, in addition to the separation of the sexes in church, all the men line up and receive communion before their mothers, sisters, and wives.  When I could think clearly again, I vindictively hoped they would soon discover that wonderful little verse that stated that there would come a time when the last would be first and the first would be last – I'm so glad that Christian men are willing to take that place for us.  Luckily, they also receive dowries to marry us, so I guess it all evens out.

On another occasion, my family was just about to leave a birthday party when we received word that our hosts were still eating.  We all sat back down and I was interested to learn that it was culturally polite for hosts to rise when guests left – and it would be impolite to make them rise during a meal.  So we chatted a while longer... until someone gently introduced the topic of leaving again.  A delicate query was made and we found that some were still eating:  “Oh, but it's only the women,” a woman said impatiently.  “Let's go.”

It was in this context that I was consistently asked what my 'plans' were.  While I was flattered that my family thought I was organized enough to plan, the glow eventually wore off and I stated point-blank that I had no chance of getting married any time soon.  Whereupon I was thrown to the outer darkness where there is much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and a zombie-like desire to shackle me into the daily drudge of working a 9-5 to support my husband and ungrateful children and eventually have the privilege of dying in my mortgaged house in a corner of Suburbia.

...Otherwise, though, everything was lovely.

I didn't even have a chance to miss my friends in the DRC as they constantly sent me messages - asking where I was (I'm terrible with goodbyes – so I usually just leave), how I was, when I was coming back, and that it was finally understandable why I sometimes looked Indian - in a mix of Swahili, English, and French. 

I was a little worried about getting enough time alone (a desperate necessity for a human cactus such as myself), but it's true what they say:  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  I have always loved my maternal aunt, but this was the first time I had her attention all to myself and could drag her where I wanted.  One of our adventures involved being stalled on a freeway and then viewing an Indian 'toe-truck' in action.  Of course, this also meant that she and my uncle fed me to the point of bursting and made me cry when I left. 

Truly, love is a beautiful thing – most commonly felt after spending time with people and then being forced to leave while your heart fights its way up your throat and out your dad-blamed eyes in a last-ditch effort to stay behind. 

I made it through this trauma, visited my dad's side of the family, somehow crammed all my belongings into bags that had not expected to hold so many gifts for their owner, and headed to Rwanda and then to Burundi.  Thankfully, the flights passed quickly with three good 1.5-hr Bollywood movies that made me snivel and hiccough so hard I'm certain that my neighbour was terrified for his safety.