Mendhi

Every morning, one of my students, 'Sania' and her mother are the first to arrive at school, half an hour before school starts. They arrive with another woman and her kindergarten boy, and I let them run around the classroom and say things in English to impress me while their mothers look on and we adults attempt to chat in Hindi / English - although neither of us know the others' language well enough.

Last week, 'Sania' popped into the classroom with her bright, ever-present smile, and stuck out her hands, with a 'DIDI!'. Her hands and arms were stained with the dark brown paint called mendi, an intricate painting traditionally applied for festivals and special events, but today applied as a pastime and decoration.

I 'ooh' ed and 'aah' ed at her arms in genuine appreciation, and her mother asked me if I had ever had mendi applied to my hands. I replied that no I hadn't, but would love to, and she invited me to her home to paint my arms and hands. She explained (through translation from a co-teacher), that as I was only here for 2 years, and I was doing such a good job of teaching her daughter (opinion only!), she would like to do something for me.

I gladly accepted, and yesterday after school, I walked to her house with her and a co-teacher who came along to chat and help me converse in Hindi / English.

We walked about 15 minutes away from the school, onto a wide, busy road. On the way, we cut through a narrow alleyway lined with small open shop fronts and dwellings to our right, and a row of tied up goats munching on weeds. I gathered it was a Muslim community, as Hindus don't normally eat meat, and mostly chicken if they do.

As we emerged onto the large, busy road, and turned left, walking against heavy oversized traffic, across the street, on our right, were piles of broken bricks, next to which large, orange and blue painted supply trucks were parked in a long line. Behind the decorative bells and paint of the trucks, the remnants of a demolished, illegal slum community stretched as far as we could see.

To our left, our escort (my students' mother) pointed to a small hole in the wall (literally), covered by a pinned-up sheet, and said the name of another of my students. Apparently he lived in that hole, and his mother peeked out and said hello, with a slight look of surprise, as we passed.

Suddenly, we turned left into an extremely narrow passage, where very little sunlight passed through from the two-stories of tiny hovels, the blue paint of the walls casting a dreary glow. Plenty of rain water dripped heavily from the rooftops, leaving little dry room to squeeze through the passage. We walked through muddy puddles, past naked children, women scrubbing laundry on rocks and blaring television sets, and stopped at a narrow, vertical steel staircase leading above us. One by one, we closed our umbrellas and climbed the narrow stairs, (just big enough to squeeze through) to a platform at the top, about 1 foot by 2 feet long. I slipped off my shoes on this platform, and slid into Sania's home.

The dwelling was approximately 6 feet wide by 10 feet deep. At the back right corner stood a small, shiny television, atop which sat dried flowers and a brass container.

Just below the television laid a thin plastic mat, folded so as to fit two people sitting. At the back of the room and to the left of the television, one high shelf ran along two walls, stacked full with metal cups, bowls and pots. Two oversized metal buckets with lids stood at the back of the far shelf, where our host kept clothes and other possessions.

As I sat down on the mat below the television, I turned back towards the entrance. To the right of the door was a waist-high counter, just big enough to hold a large metal pot of water, covered with a lid and a cup resting on its top. One long fluorescent bulb lit the room.

As the three of us sat down - our host, myself, and my co-teacher, two little boys from the dwelling directly next to us came in - one was a kindergarten student at our school. We recognized each other and said warm "hello" 's. Our host handed a small wad of rupees to an older child and told him to fetch a cold drink for her guests. In about 5 minutes, the boy returned with a small bottle of Miranda (orange soda) and a plate of dry packaged biscuits and partly stale potato chips.

Two glasses arrived, and orange soda was poured for us which we happily sipped.

Then, a woman appeared at the doorway, who was introduced as our host's sister. She would apply the mendi to my arms. She was a little younger than our host, and something about her composure and mannerisms suggested, rightly so, that she had obtained some amount of education as a child. In fact, she told us, she had completed the 8th standard in an Urdu-medium school.

As she began to apply to mendi, we all talked, I through my co-teacher's translations. We learned that my 6-year-old student, 'Sania', comes home from school at 4pm, and sits doing her homework until about 5 or 5:30. From 6 - 9, she then attends a local madrassa, where she studies the Qu'ran (which is taught in its original language, Arabic). At 9pm, Sania returns home to sleep. Dinner is not served. In fact, we learned, her only meals each day are the meals we have requested her mother to send with her to school - a small snack and a lunch, eaten at 10:30 and 1pm respectively.

We also learned that the home in which we were sitting had only recently been rented out by this family, as they had formerly lived in the demolished slums across the large busy street. As the slums had been illegally built, the city government had demolished them the month before, planning to plant trees and greenery in a larger project of 'beautifying' Mumbai.

As the dark brown streaks of paint on my right arm turned into wonderfully intricate floral and tribal designs, us women sat and enjoyed each other's company in the small, closet-sized (by western standards) room.



When the artist finished her work, we all stood up, took a photo together, and then I and my co-worker made our way back down the narrow stairs, and out into the stormy, rainy Indian monsoon. Our host walked with us to the train station, and I thanked her politely for her hospitality.

Now, I plan to return her hospitality with some type of gift, but of what, I'm not sure. I've had the problem of buying a gift for someone who has everything, but I have never faced the opposite dilemma.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself on this first true visit to one of Mumbai's countless poverty-ridden communities. While the poverty is very real, I see that life continues as it does in the rest of the world, minus the ability to provide for a family's comfort, and often even basic needs. The ever-present smile on Sania's face is testament that yes, life IS lived, despite the difficulties. Yet her growling stomach, stunted height, and bags under her eyes reveal the sentence of poverty she has been born into and may last her entire lifetime.