Can you keep a secret?

Okay, I’m trusting you with three very precious secrets. Shhh… don’t tell!

One – Nancy, the wife of one of the employees here at Mandiram, is pregnant! Reji and Nancy were just married in June, and are already pregnant with their first child! The live in Mandiram (Reji needs to be around 24/7 to keep things running) so this is big news. The residents here don’t know yet, and it’s supposed to be a big secret (that I almost let slip last week, since I didn’t know that no one was supposed to know!). Nancy has been having some trouble – feeling sick and so on – but I think the couple is super excited, despite it. They won’t know the sex of the baby until it’s born because the procedures to find out a fetus’ sex have been outlawed (there was a high ratio of female fetuses being aborted, so the procedure was made illegal). So before I leave India, I might get to see a brand spankin new baby!

Two – Beena, the head nurse here, got a marriage proposal! She has to send in photos of herself to the prospective groom (pictures which I took), and then they’ll probably meet each other, spend some time together, and see what they think of each other. Quite a different process from the US! Beena said that this was her third proposal, but the two times before, the groom’s family had demanded too much dowry money and her family was unable to provide it. I’ve been trying to keep an open mind about the way marriage works in India. Because arranged marriage is just the way things are here, I often find myself shocked by how lightly it’s treated. Still, I get excited when I hear news like Beena’s. Would I be excited if someone I’d never met thought that he might want to marry me, and asked for pictures to see if I was pretty enough, then asked my parents for money in exchange for taking me off their shoulders? No. I wouldn’t. Even without the dowry situation, I wouldn’t be excited about it. But Beena is excited. And somehow, I’m excited for Beena. Is this a contradiction? I’m not sure.

Three – I played in the rain! Not exactly National Enquirer material, but it was pretty scandalous here. During lunch yesterday, it began to rain. Somol, the oldest girl at the orphanage, suddenly shouted “Tuni! Tuni!” Which I think means laundry, or clothes. She, Anju and I ran back to the orphanage and up onto the roof, which was covered with fresh, previously-drying-and-now-getting-rained-on, laundry. We slipped and slidded across the terrace, grabbing the clothes and throwing them into the stairwell. By the time we finished, we were soaked. So, I took the opportunity to play in the rain. It was great, and I think I, and everyone who saw me, laughed for a good long time.