"wedding." Your
shaadi
was your wedding and your marriage, a small distinction, but in the early days of my marriage to Hindi, I was acutely aware of what was missing. "Privacy" most of all.
Once, on contracting a bug, I hailed a rickshaw to take me to the doctor's. The driver was uncertain of the address, so he waved over a pedestrian, who looked at the slip of paper, looked at me, leaned into the back. Was it my head? the man wanted to know. Just a slight fever, I answered. What about my throat, did that hurt? No, that was fine, I replied. Had I taken anything for it? he inquired. I gave a quick nod yes. Allopathic or naturopathic? he asked. "
Mujhe jaana hai,
" I said, which loosely translates: "I know this is a silly idea, but I was thinking we could leave some questions for the doctor."
"There's no word for 'privacy' in any of the Indian languages," we'd been told during orientation, though I surely would have figured that out pretty fast on my own. A month into moving here, I'd begun to suspect that the whole town belonged to the Central Intelligence caste. "Madam, you are living in Sector Eleven?" a rickshaw driver asked. "My friend said he took you there from the bank two weeks ago." "Madam, who was that man who walked you home last night?" the candy shop owner inquired. I had to think, then rememberedâjust Swami-ji. "He is my teacher," I said with an extreme annoyance that went unnoticed. The guy was too busy nodding, as if calculating implications.
"There are three things you can't hideâhappiness, a cough, and love," a Hindi proverb goes, but I think the list got truncated in the retelling. In Udaipur, in any Indian town, the list could be amended to include where you are going in this heat, how much you paid for that lamp, why you were wearing a fancy sari two nights ago, whether you've put on weight. The notion of off-limits is alien. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that here, as Indologist Diana L. Eck writes, "the 'individual' as we think of it in the West does not exist. A person thinks of himself or herself not as a singular entity, but rather as part of a larger interdependent whole, in which parts mirror one another in an infinite, intricate pattern." Or maybe it is because, as a friend said, "in India we share everything, even privacy."
Eventually, I'd come to like it when a cybercafe wala would boot up the computer and automatically log me on to my server. I'd grow accustomed to strangers on the street giving me updates on my appearance: "I am thinking your skin is looking dry?" a man I'd never seen before said, as I was waiting at a corner to cross the street. "You have not been applying oil?" Though I continued to draw some lines, as on the evening I came home to find the Jains debating how much money I had in the bank. "No, you misunderstand," Dad 2 said when I refused to answer. "We don't want to take your money. We just really, really, really want to know," he said, as all ten family members nodded emphatically, in complete unison.
Â
MUCH FARTHER OUT along the spidery web of time, long gone from the Jains' now, I begin a list of words missing from English:
Leelaa:
the acts of a deity performed for pleasure.
Vidya:
translated as "knowledge," but which a friend explained as "having characteristics of knowledge but not itself knowledge. It's symbolic of God's world. A person who knows
vidya
knows everything." And
advait:
roughly, non-duality; and
aanand:
broadly, joy or bliss; and then I toss the paper away. Departure's looming. I can't bear to see, spelled out in black and white, what will become unspeakable once I cross back. Transcendence: that's what I'm going to have to lose.
Â
RENEE PHONES TO see about an outing. She's been invited to a performance at a deaf school at 3 P.M. Do I want to go? My afternoon plans so far extend to sitting in the kitchen and exclaiming over the neighbor's baby, so yeah, I say; sure, I'd like to.
The rickshaw guy who drops me off scolds me
shaadi
was your wedding and your marriage, a small distinction, but in the early days of my marriage to Hindi, I was acutely aware of what was missing. "Privacy" most of all.
Once, on contracting a bug, I hailed a rickshaw to take me to the doctor's. The driver was uncertain of the address, so he waved over a pedestrian, who looked at the slip of paper, looked at me, leaned into the back. Was it my head? the man wanted to know. Just a slight fever, I answered. What about my throat, did that hurt? No, that was fine, I replied. Had I taken anything for it? he inquired. I gave a quick nod yes. Allopathic or naturopathic? he asked. "
Mujhe jaana hai,
" I said, which loosely translates: "I know this is a silly idea, but I was thinking we could leave some questions for the doctor."
"There's no word for 'privacy' in any of the Indian languages," we'd been told during orientation, though I surely would have figured that out pretty fast on my own. A month into moving here, I'd begun to suspect that the whole town belonged to the Central Intelligence caste. "Madam, you are living in Sector Eleven?" a rickshaw driver asked. "My friend said he took you there from the bank two weeks ago." "Madam, who was that man who walked you home last night?" the candy shop owner inquired. I had to think, then rememberedâjust Swami-ji. "He is my teacher," I said with an extreme annoyance that went unnoticed. The guy was too busy nodding, as if calculating implications.
"There are three things you can't hideâhappiness, a cough, and love," a Hindi proverb goes, but I think the list got truncated in the retelling. In Udaipur, in any Indian town, the list could be amended to include where you are going in this heat, how much you paid for that lamp, why you were wearing a fancy sari two nights ago, whether you've put on weight. The notion of off-limits is alien. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that here, as Indologist Diana L. Eck writes, "the 'individual' as we think of it in the West does not exist. A person thinks of himself or herself not as a singular entity, but rather as part of a larger interdependent whole, in which parts mirror one another in an infinite, intricate pattern." Or maybe it is because, as a friend said, "in India we share everything, even privacy."
Eventually, I'd come to like it when a cybercafe wala would boot up the computer and automatically log me on to my server. I'd grow accustomed to strangers on the street giving me updates on my appearance: "I am thinking your skin is looking dry?" a man I'd never seen before said, as I was waiting at a corner to cross the street. "You have not been applying oil?" Though I continued to draw some lines, as on the evening I came home to find the Jains debating how much money I had in the bank. "No, you misunderstand," Dad 2 said when I refused to answer. "We don't want to take your money. We just really, really, really want to know," he said, as all ten family members nodded emphatically, in complete unison.
Â
MUCH FARTHER OUT along the spidery web of time, long gone from the Jains' now, I begin a list of words missing from English:
Leelaa:
the acts of a deity performed for pleasure.
Vidya:
translated as "knowledge," but which a friend explained as "having characteristics of knowledge but not itself knowledge. It's symbolic of God's world. A person who knows
vidya
knows everything." And
advait:
roughly, non-duality; and
aanand:
broadly, joy or bliss; and then I toss the paper away. Departure's looming. I can't bear to see, spelled out in black and white, what will become unspeakable once I cross back. Transcendence: that's what I'm going to have to lose.
Â
RENEE PHONES TO see about an outing. She's been invited to a performance at a deaf school at 3 P.M. Do I want to go? My afternoon plans so far extend to sitting in the kitchen and exclaiming over the neighbor's baby, so yeah, I say; sure, I'd like to.
The rickshaw guy who drops me off scolds me
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