Moving through March

Written on 13/3/15

Recently we were invited to attend an engagement ceremony. The function felt like a meaningful event for us to attend on an almost personal level. We've known Parimala since January and she didn't pause once in considering taking us under her wing when we first arrived. In January she told us she soon had to get married. Being the youngest sister of five means that all of her sisters had already married. When we asked, 'Who will you marry?', the reply was, 'I don't know, my mother will choose'. The concept of arranged marriages seems to run throughout The community in which we are staying, and more than likely a lot of India also. It seems uncommon to be in a 'love marriage' even coming from a Christian family like Parimalas. Luckily the man in which her mother had chosen for her to marry was smiley and young, just one month older than her. The ceremony was full with neighbours, teachers, children, friends and family and the playground of which the engagement took place in the school grounds was quickly swarmed with hungry guests - hundreds of people tucking into rice and curries. The experience was spectacularly colourful, and to my surprise very happy.

Another eye opener which still replays vividly in my mind was a visit to a teachers home. Kalyanni has looked out for us as if we were one of her own. When we arrived at Kalyannis house she told us 'this is the slum area actually'. Those words have ticked in my head ever since. Though the area was not evidently poor in terms of looking any different to the rest of the littered rivers and dusty streets, roam pigs and chickens - her house was clearly much smaller than the others we'd visited. With only two rooms; one room holding a kitchen stove, pots and pans, shelves for clothes, an outside hole in the ground toilet. The other room posed as a bedroom, living room, dining room and the body of the house itself. One bed between four, boxed into four grey walls.

When I imagine children coming back home from a day of school in the UK I look back to my brother and I. We would scooter home from primary with rumbling tummies, tea and toast waiting, sponge bob cartoons on the tele and a sofa to sit on. However returning home from school at 7.45pm throws up a completely different scenario for the children here. For many school must feel like a haven. Be that in front of a blackboard and text book it is somewhere they can study on a desk. The forty hostel boys and three hostel girls (Subashni, Supreeya and Joythi) however all seem perfectly happy and at home just the way it is - and that's what makes India so much easier to accept.

In this coming week the Global Citizenship Day of International Happiness falls, so Jadey and I have planned a week full of activities to do with the children.