Loving where I live little by little

I know I've been hard on this country, I think perhaps even harder than people who are completely foreign to it.  I tend to be less forgiving, more embarassed by the lack of progress, quick to criticise, mortified by the lack of manners, the lack of civic duty and quick to point out all the in equities and injusticies.  I do it very often, I know.  Too often, I know this too.  So often that it's likely that people think that I dislike my entire experience of India and that's not true.  I am growing to love this country, (country of my birth), even this city.  This very difficult to navigate and love city. 

Much of the credit for this love goes to this great group of ladies from Powai that I've managed to find through another OIS mother.  The Powai Explorers they're called, started by another intrepid lady who said to me the other day, "I needed more than a once in a month book club and a coffee morning", and so she started this, and in doing so changed my experience of Mumbai dramatically in a matter of a few months.  Through this group I met a whole group of women and you know what, I found out?  That most of my initial, "ohmygod what was i thinking moving here?  This was an awful decision! the worst decision ever!" Was not really an India thing at all, it was more of an adjustment thing.  Just knowing that, assuaged so much of my anxiety.  I think it freed me up to just let go man...to quote Mel Brooks, "you got to let the coolness into your vertebrae" Except hey, we don't do that, I'm a mom. Right?! Right!   So this post has really become so stream of consciousness, I began it with the best of intentions...it was going to be a well thought out and rehearsed post and now look at it..it's gone to hell in a handbasket...

My friend...She said to me, on a car ride home from our most recent jaunt into Goldeval Market and Chor Bazaar, that the most important thing for her right now was to have helped, even if it was just to have helped one girl stay in school, be educated and become something, instead of having to go the leave school in the 10th grade, get married, have children route that seems to be the only bleak option for the majority of girls in the slums, that will have been something...

I marvel at her spirit.  International Women's Day was last week and the women of Mumbai celebrated by getting spa treatments and pedicures and drinking champagne and going shopping.  I would have done the same really, well ok, only the champagne part, a whole lot of the champagne part!  So with my champagne in hand, and shakily standing up (you kow because of all that champagne) I think of women like her quietly fighting the good fight. 

Peace out.

quick one before i go

After a while, it becomes easier to have the google search page as your home page.  It is easier not to be assaulted with the, "three minor girls raped, and dumped in a well", "minor raped by police constables", "No arrests in rape case", it becomes much easier to indulge in  Highheel Confidential or Fashion Scandal.  Who wants to read about News when everyday all I read about is how awful it is to be unlucky enough to be born a girl in India.  I skyped with one of my very good friends yesterday and she asked me if I could see myself making a permanent home for myself here.  I find myself conflicted despite the perks that my husband's job affords us.  The richness of history and language and family that we are afforded in India all are no match for the freedom that women are afforded in the States.  I want my daughter to be able to make the same rotten choices that my son will be allowed to make.  And for that reason I don't know if I can continue living here; I don't want my daughter being limited at every turn.  My cousins tell me, India is different now, but it's not, not in ways that matter to me.

I know that my friends living in the States, who have grown up in India won't ever understand what that means, because they haven't done their growing up in the States.  But the idea of limitlessness is something that doesn't exist for women, really any young person here. I don't want my daughter to worry about duty, or worrying about whether her in-laws will accept her, I don't want her to come 2nd to her mother-in-law, EVER.  To that end, beyond a longish engagement, there's not much I require from either of my kids as far as marriage and beyond are concerned.

So then, what's left to do?  Live the best you can while you can, we aim to soak everything up, see as much as we can, be with as many relatives as we can.  Enjoy the hell out of India because there is sure a hell of a lot to enjoy.  We've already got a trip to Kerala in the works, though at the end of sweltering March (I don't know what I was thinking)!  And of course when this school year ends we will have our granddaddy of trips, the trip home! Our trip to the States!   In the next few years here hopefully we will get to travel further East, something entirely impossible when India was our final destination.

So, I sit in my Bombay pad in the  Eastern suburbs, sipping my morning tea, wondering what the day will bring.  I did not bypass the front page today, and did read the rapey news.  It's disheartening to see that nothing is changing, people are calling for the resignation of officials...like that will quell the rapes..*sigh*  shakes it off
Haji Ali today!