"You Are Not a Guest, You Are Family"

It was a joyous return to Mavelikara, with lots of laughter and love.  People showed me that they cared by remembering stories, bringing out photographs of us together and sharing homemade meals.  Many remembered my favorite food, aapam, which was a huge surprise and a repeated treat for me. 

I also felt the frustrations of the year return in an unexpected way, condensed into one-week as if time were flying by and I was experiencing the year all over again. 

I kept imagining the unending, spiraling embrace in Dante's Inferno.  They loved each other, but they desperately needed some breathing room.

During my second night staying at the ladies’ hostel, I sat down to email my Mom and my Joe.  A few of the hostel girls hovered a few feet away chattering together.  Then they came up behind me, so they could see the computer screen and still be able to ask me questions.

“What is your name?” 

I stretched my neck around to say, “Cate.”

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from Chicago.”

Then they whispered to each other and I heard one of them say, “Dear Mama,” as she read the first paragraph of my email to her friends before they scampered up the stairs.

The next morning I saw Kochamma for the first time during my visit.  An ancient matriarch, at least 200-hundred-years old, she was married to a Church of South India (CSI) pastor who died years ago (“Kochamma” is a title that means pastor’s wife). 

She now has a mysterious job at the hostel.  No one is quite sure what she does, but she visits a few times every week to tell people what to do and scowl purposefully as she scans the hostel budget books.

When she saw me she made an “aww” noise and pinched my chin.  Unsure of how to proceed with adult conversation after commencing that like, I went with, “Hi Kochamma.”

She asked the obligatory questions and then disappeared into her office to do important-looking but unnecessary things.

On my last day in Mavelikara, Ammamma asked lots of questions about where I was going and what I was doing, astonished that I was alone. 

She wrote down the name and phone number of the homestay I was bunking at for the next week and I shuddered.  Will she call me daily?  Will she check up on me?

At 29-years-old, I felt like I had returned to high school, except this time my mother is a voyeuristic nun who is very concerned for my well-being but knows very little about the capabilities appropriate to a near 30-year-old. 

If I were married and had children, very reasonable for my age, I would be treated quite differently.  Adulthood in Mavelikara isn’t reached until you’re hitched.

But, now that I’m in Goa watching the sunset over the waves of the sea, I can recognize that I was given an immeasurable gift to have a bundle of Indian friends with whom I’ve shared laughs and tears, who all want the best for me and I for them. 

“You are not a guest, you are family,” Ammamma said when I thanked her for making up my old room so nicely. 

Four years later: My return to Kerala

My time in India was as formative as everyone said it would be.

In August 2007, I returned to Chicago and spent two years working at The Cara Program, a workforce development agency that achieves the high goals that it sets. Cara was an amazing place to come home to, where I felt a small but significant sense of control over one of the greatest faults of the United States: its homeless and unemployed population.

I realized, having worked with people overcoming homelessness, that I would rather be helping them express their incredible life stories than writing their resumes and coordinating mock interviews for them. So I went to journalism school, much to the chagrin of my bank account.

After j-school I moved to the West Bank, a place where Walls are being built. Where families discuss their livelihood over delicious mahklouba meals. Where kids are playing, students are studying and teachers are teaching but everyone is thinking about the occupation.

In three days I will return to Kerala for the first time in four years. It feels like a daunting vacation, returning to a place where a walk down one street revealed mansions, paddy fields and dalit huts. Where cows rule the road and dogs are dirt. Where Hindu temples belt out melodious prayers and rickshaws wheel perilously around tight curves in the road.

Please join me as I return to Kerala, this time as a tourist, hoping to see old friends, eat the comfort food I've craved and tell some stories.