A Visit

Tuesday morning after class I went out to put some more minutes on our phone and to have my shoe stitched. I grabbed the shoe and kept a note card with the phone number in my purse, (I still don't have it memorized). I went to the shop down the street and took care of the phone and then went to the cobbler. The cobbler doesn't have a shop; he spreads out his tools and sits on the ground in the shade. He'd already stitched my shoes twice, so I knew to give him my shoe and wait for him to fix it.

As he was stitching my shoe another woman came and stood by the cobbler. She seemed very nice. She was probably around 30, pretty, well groomed, and well dressed. She wanted to take my picture, (which is pretty standard), and she showed me some of them she took. She wanted to talk to me, too, but I speak no Telugu worth mentioning, and she apparently spoke no English worth mentioning.

After the cobbler had finished with my shoe I started walking home, but as I turned onto the street she called out to me and pointed straight, as if I were going the wrong way. After some confusion and a lot of us repeating ourselves without either of us learning any more Telugu or English than we already knew, I realized that she wanted me to go somewhere with her. I figured she must live in our colony and want to take me to her home to give me a glass of water or something, and since she seemed very earnest about me coming and since I didn't have anything particular I was doing, I decided to humor her. She kept trying to communicate with me as we walked through the colony and then out across the road and down the street, seeming to be continually shocked and dismayed at my ignorance of Telugu. I did manage to understand that she wanted to know my telephone number, so I took the note card out of my purse to show her for her to copy or something. She immediately took it and put it in her saree, which I guess means I'll have to ask Jain our number again. We turned down a narrow lane into another colony.

This was her colony, and she took me to show me how close the beach is and also to show me to some of her friends there. They pointed out all the small children to me and seemed to expect me to pick them up or pinch their cheeks or something, but I mostly just waved. I didn't want to scare them to death, and I'm also never quite sure that that's what they were trying to get me to do. We ran into one guy who spoke pretty good English, and he translated one or two questions people wanted to ask me. After a few minutes, she motioned for me to follow her back.

A different guy fell into step with us as she took me back and told me that my friend, whose name I think is Ishri, was telling me that I should come and walk on the beach in the evenings. I think this guy also wanted my number, but Ishri was making motions to me to tell me that I was not to give it to him. I couldn't have, anyway, because it was in her saree. She dropped me home, and I went inside. The whole thing probably took less than twenty minutes.

India leaves me a little shell-shocked sometimes.