The Happiest People

Tu kay kartiyes? After your name, this is usually the first question people ask you here. The literal translation is ‘what are you doing?’ but it’s meant to ask what you’re planning to do in life. Seems like a pretty pressured question to ask someone you’ve just met, right? ‘What are you doing (have you done) with your life as of now?’ Here, though, many people decided their potential future career somewhere around tenth grade. Like, when the rest of us are busy worrying about who’s asking whom to school dances. I always respond with a sort of stilted, ‘Oh, I’m doing a B.S. in Biology, and am pre-medical.’ This, I think, is getting me into trouble, because then I end up having to give every person I talk to here the five-minute-version of how the collegiate/medical school system works in the U.S. This question, though it seems tough, is usually not meant to judge and here more than other places, I’ve found people asking me out of a genuine interest in my future.

Independence Day Ceremony

In Anadwan, more so than in other places in India, I’ve noticed a distinct abundance of genuinely nice people. I’m not sure if this is something that comes from having faced many hardships, but I’m not used to the amount of friendliness toward complete strangers that I’ve seen in Anandwan. In many of the cities in India, you don’t get many people who’ll nod to you on the street and ask how your day is going, but here, almost every person whom I’ve seen before will at the very least say hello.

Tuhina and I have been teaching several girls in the performing arts program Bharatnatyam because they’ve never had anyone with much classical Bharatnatyam training able to teach here. Many of the girls who come to our dance class are partially blind or cured leprosy patients. The circumstances in which we were introduced to some of these girls were…a little embarrassing and involved impromptu dancing on stage and then being shown up pretty badly, so I won’t go into it. However, this meant that the first day we went to teach these girls, I was expecting some of them to have a little bit of an attitude of superiority toward us. After meeting them all, I was surprised to find absolutely none of that. I think us being willing to make fools of ourselves contributed to their comfort-level with us later, but joking and some cheeky banter aside, they treated us with the same respect they would show to any guru. This was a gesture by which I was genuinely impressed.

This wasn’t the only gesture by which I’ve been impressed. Every single day, the people here continue to inspire awe in me on a regular basis. Many of them seem to really be the ideal of exemplary citizens. They work hard, have a lot of fun, are immersed in culture, are eager to learn and progress, and look out for their friends and community. Honestly, if every community around the world could be like that at Anadwan, I think we’d be significantly happier people.

Lotiraman Guest House

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I think we have discovered the new poster child for 7-Up.