Pen Pals

Before I arrived at Mandiram, the girls had just received pen pals in the US. They showed me letters written in bubly, American script, some typed on computers, and almost all with decorative flower doodles. I helped them to read through the funny lettering, and then the letters were tucked away. I assumed that responses had been written, as I had seen some, but I wasn't sure.

A few days ago, I rememberd these letters and asked the girls about them. Some had replied; most had not. It wasn't that they weren't interested, just that their English was, understandably, not at a letter-writing level. The girls then took my hand, sat me down at a desk, and placed the unanswered letters in front of me. "You write?" they asked. Timidly, I uncapped my pen and looked down at the first letter.

Somol worked as the interpreter and reader. "My favorite color is green," she would read, "What is yours?" Then, loudly, she would call in Malayalam, "Shinu, what is your favorite color?" And Shinu would answer, Somol would explain in English, and I would write, "My favorite color is pink." I was the official writer and grammar corrector. But, unofficially, I became a cultural interpreter.

Many of the girls' pen pals wrote things like, "I would like to learn more about your culture," or "What does Kerala look like?" or even "Do you like living in India?" Thes sorts of questions and statements confused the girls. "What do you want your pen pal to know about India?" I would ask, and they would shrug their shoulders. It's like I asked them to tell me something about the air they breathed. The air is there; India is there. It's just there. It's everyday. What is there to know?

So, I ended up taking on the role of cultural interpreter. It began when one letter innocently asked, "What are your favorite foods?" After the interpreter interpreted, we arrived at this girl's favorite foods, poota, chapati and vegetable curry. And I knew I would have to explain: poota (made from rice flour, very crumbly and eated with bananna and sugar at breakfast ) and chapati (like a tortilla). The American pen pal would not have understood otherwise. My explanations continued through the shrugged shoulder responses. My eyes can still see what the pen pals want to know. The girls woldn't think to write about how women here wear sarees or how there are palm trees everywhere. But this is, I think, what the pen pals wanted to know.

It's funny how these seemingly unimportant details are passed over on each end, and yet are so desired. What is culture? It's the air we breathe. Int he US, it's scented with friend fries and pine needles, host to planes, soap bubbles and lightning bugs. In India, it's scented with burning trash and jasmine, host to mosquitoes, florescent lights and bright flashes of sarees. We usually don't notice this. But it's there, and it's important.

One of the American girls wrote that she would like to visit India one day. In that letter, I saw a glimpse of myself - or rather, my August self, my before-India self. What could I tell the girl? What would I have liked to tell myself? "What should I say?" I asked Somol. Somol shrugged her shoulders, then said, "Tell her to come." This time, I didn't do any cultural interpretation.