Auntie Sabira

During my time in Udaipur, I have been living with a wonderful host family, which consists of one woman. Her name is Sabira, which in Arabic means "have patience." She is a widow, and her two sons live in Delhi and Mumbai where they are attending college.

Auntie and I are very close, and she is very easy to get along with. I feel very comfortable in her house, and I can fix myself chai or toast or watch television whenever I want, for which I am very thankful.

Auntie's house is very roomy and big, though it is sparsely furnished. For the first two months I was sleeping on a mat on the floor, which I didn't mind at all, and is very normal in Indian homes I think. (Now a bed has been moved in my room only because I was having trouble sleeping for a few nights and she thought it might help.) I have my own bathroom - complete with a Western-style toilet and shower, quite a luxury! However there is no mirror except at the sink in the dining room. It's odd. Auntie also has a very nice front yard and garden and patio. There is a big papaya tree that is constantly giving us ripe fruit, and it is in season all year long! It's a nice ending to every meal. There are other herb plants and fruit trees, and she keeps a small compost pit to fertilize the trees and flower beds.

Auntie is obsessed about maintaining a zero-waste household. All the extra food from our plates we put in a pile and throw outside to the cows each day. Plastic bags are a big no-no, and she always carries an extra shopping bag in her purse when she goes out. There are no trash cans in our house (or anywhere in India, for that matter), so I keep everything in a bag in my room until it fills up. Then Auntie helps me sort the trash. She keeps sheets of plastic wrap (neatly folded) and plastic bottles in boxes under the stairs, either to use for crafts or to give to poor people to recycle for a small sum of money.

In fact, Auntie is always remembering the poor people. I gather she comes from a relatively wealthy family, but she lives a very simple life with very few luxuries. She chooses to buy fruits and vegetables from the farmers markets rather than the fancy new grocery store in town, even if it means making an extra stop when she is running errands. She doesn't mind packing herself in a crowded tempo full of farmers and goats, as opposed to taking a more comfortable autorickshaw or taxi. And sometimes she buys papads from a poor woman she knows in Udaipur, rather than making them herself, because she realizes they need her business.

The food at Auntie's house has been amazing. Though I have been getting sick of eating heavy restaurant food, which is the same gravy dishes with naan you find in the United States, I never get tired of Auntie's cooking. Lunch and dinner usually consist of some vegetable dish full of Indian spices and eaten with roti, a light, fluffy wheat bread. Other times we have yogurt-based curry with rice; sometimes we have dal. We never eat with utensils, so even if its soup for dinner, we tear up pieces of roti and stuff them into the soup bowls until they soak up all the juices and we eat it with our hands. Auntie is very health conscious, so there is very little oil in our food. She often opts to use sunflower oil instead of ghee, because it has less cholesterol. Also she usually cuts up fresh cucumber and carrots to eat at lunch, and there is always papaya or some other fruit for dessert.

My favorite part about our home is the milk. Every evening around 7:30pm, a boy comes to our house on his motorcycle and delivers milk, which is maybe an hour fresh from his farm. We carry a bowl outside and he spoons out a half-liter of whole, unpasteurized milk. Then we heat the milk until it boils. In the morning, Auntie scrapes the cream off the top, and with that she either makes ghee (a yummy, soft butter) or yogurt or chach. The rest of the milk we use for chai or the occassional cornflakes.

Auntie speaks English because she lived in Dubai for 14 years when her husband was alive. Granted, her English isn't the best, and sometimes I don't know what she means when she says things like, "What this thing in our hand we are doing otherwise?" Sometimes she gives me a simple task in the kitchen while she is on the phone or otherwise occupied, and will come back to see that I have completely ruined the meal because she gave backwards instructions in English. In any case I love talking to Auntie about about all sorts of things. She is full of kindness and wisdom, and I never cease to be amazed and inspired by her.

We often talk about religion, and though she is Bohara (sp?) Muslim, she insists that she doesn't like to talk about the differences of the sects of Islam, because it is all the same religion and same God. She speaks in the same way about other religions, saying she does not concern herself over what religions her friends practice, and prefers to talk about the similarities they all have, such as showing kindness to all people. When I asked her if I could accompany her sometime to the mosque, she said it would be no problem, and when I pressed her to make sure it was okay, she said, "Mosque is God's house. It does not belong to anyone else. So how can someone say you cannot enter?"

Auntie can also be surprisingly open about her past and her private life. She has given me interesting insight into the lives of Indian women. She tells me stories about how her girlfriends used to follow her around and beg her to fix their hair just like hers, or how when they hit puberty they would meet in secret behind locked doors and talk about getting their periods. Auntie also whispered, "Then, when we are married, like this we talk about the first time, too!" and then burst into a fit of giggles. And then she added, "And, our friends who are already married, they give advice!" We have also talked a lot about arranged marriages, and she goes over all the details with me about how she was matched with her husband, how she felt, when they met, what the engagement was like, and so on.

My second week at Auntie's house, she gave me one of her own kurtas - a long traditional shirt. I had been admiring hers all week, and she knew I liked blue, so she gave me a nice, cotton, blue stripped kurta. I asked her why, and she giggled and said, "Because you are like my daughter." And it's true, she has treated me just like a daughter. I can barely sit and read for five minutes without her bringing me tea and plopping down and asking me about my day. If we are watching TV in Hindi at night and she senses I am bored, she'll pull out a board game or UNO cards. This week Auntie went to Delhi to visit her son, and when she left she gave me the sweetest hug and repeated kisses on the cheek, and I will be very very thankful to have her back tomorrow.