Attaching the heart

There is a phrase that kind people here ask me which basically translates as 'Have you settled in?'. The barber asks it. Old men ask it in the street. Students' mothers ask it when I am invited over for dinner. It's usually asked very sincerely and accompanied by direct eye contact. I find that very touching.

After almost 5 months in Rajasthan, I guess I've settled in. I recognise most of the people on the street. I go to a regular mobile phone shop, barber and tailor. I get a cup of tea whenever I visit the bank. The sweet shop likes me to take things on credit. I know what to expect and how to behave when I'm invited for dinner.

After 5 months, the novelty of living in Rajasthani village is also starting to wear off. However long I stay here, I'm always going to be an object of curiousity. People will never stop asking why, at the overripe age of 29, I'm not married. Nor will they stop talking about my salary, unable to believe that I haven't come here to profit at their expense.

And I've become much more cynical about my job. It's turned out to be a less charitable venture than I was made to understand at first. Apart from free classes for teachers at the school I'm in, the courses all charge substantial fees. This makes them affordable only for the most well off people in a village which is wealthy by Indian standards

The school I'm in is run by a fundamentalist religious organisation that has been widely criticised for cooking the history books. Students start the school day with an hour of prayer and, very unusually for India, no singing of the national anthem which mentions India's religious diversity. I've learnt to hate Hindu fundamentalism just as much as Christian or Muslim.

The colleagues I'm supposed to be working with closest look at me as a bad influence that needs to be contained. I come from the land of short skirts, divorce, sex outside of marriage, alcohol and meat eating. The project I'm working on is probably destined to fail and they're hoping it's sooner rather than later so that life can go on as before.

So it's a funny time for me to put a first entry on this blog. But here goes anyway.