The Chatwanis

Now that I've been fever free for a few days, I feel like I have enough sane experience in my new household to give a proper low down on my new family, the Chatwanis. We live in a beautiful two-story, four-bedroom, bright green house on a more quiet, greener side of town, which would still be considered unnecessarily busy and loud compared to my quiet suburban streets in my comfortable life back in Texas. Next door, amidst the houses and quadplexes, is a lone slum patchwork home made of cement, metal sheets, and straw. Outside our front door is a cow tied up with a feast of hay at his disposal, which is considered a luxury since most of the city cows have to resort to dumpster diving. In the living room of this comfy home there is a built-in hutch whose glass cabinets are decorated with four black and white pictures of random naked Caucasian babies as if taken from a Sears catalog. The television is tucked in a nook by the stairs, normally broadcasting either Hindi soap operas or the Indian version of Judge Judy. This oddly arranged living room is decorated with beautifully embroidered square pillows sprinkling the long sofa. The peculiar, eccentric style of decoration really reminds me of my home back in Irving.

The Fam:

Uncle- Uncle is a darling old Indian man with the sweetest personality and most glorious round rice belly in all of India. Uncle knows a few English words and phrases, and like a gem we cherish the small amount of conversation that we can muster. Uncle wears long sheer Indian shirts, with a tapestry tied around his protruding midriff like a skirt.

Auntie- Auntie is the mother of the household and a grandmother-to-be whose affection and intensity I truly cherish. The maternal vibes that radiate off of her make me wish that I was six years old and could curl up with my head in her sari covered lap while she reads me Hindi children's stories and combs her fingers through my tangled golden hair. I could sit around for years gazing into the depths of her love and never discover its limit. She has the look of a mother who has suffered unthinkable loss and heartache for the children of her heart. Her gentle love is balanced with a fierce protective instinct. This woman could defeat an army of wild, blood-crazed cannibals to get to her children, and back in the eighties I think she did.

Sweety- When I'm not mindlessly defiling temples with my uterine lining, Sweety is a loving, endearing woman that has the spirit of a child kept lovingly in the body of a middle aged woman. Sweety has had far too eventful a life for a woman who had to drop out of school at 15 to take care of her mother, who I call "Auntie". Often when Sweety is excited about something, she approaches me absolutely beaming, speaking rapidly in her broken English attempting to convey to me the source of her enthusiasm, just to let out a jumbled pile of English words that I can't understand, but with soft smiles we rummage through the pile piecing together its meaning. Sweety spends her days cooking for the family, taking care of her mother, and teaching calligraphy classes.

Goldy- Goldy is a retired model and actor gone business man, and is a total Indian babe. He has the dark sparkling eyes of his stardom aspiring days with the proud belly present in Indian men who can afford the food. At the peak of his career in Mumbai when he was offered a leading role in a hit television series, a break that most aspiring actors can only dream of, he willingly put his dream aside to come home and take care of his family when his father fell ill. Yesterday I was reading an interview with him that was in an old magazine, and when asked what mattered most to him he replied "simplicity" and "humanity".

Lately I've spent my days walking along the quaint streets passed the watermelon men pushing their carts along shouting their publicity, sweet kids dancing and waving from their front porches nearly hidden from the thick foliage blessing this neighborhood, and the dry cleaning men performing their bicycle deliveries. At our house I practice my flute during the power breaks to entertain the family. In the evening I learn Hindi with the help of Goldy and Sweety, while holding in my left hand a coconut with a straw stuck inside to drink the sour wholesome milk.

I type away at a small internet shop where I have to squeeze into a little cubicle and place the keyboard on my lap. Above the monitor is posted a sign that reads "Porn sites are strictly prohibited", but in true boyish form, someone crossed out "prohibited" and wrote "hot", and for a moment after first seeing this I felt like I was back in the states and then wondered "Was D.Z. in here?" .