Family Dinner

When I found out that I had been chosen to participate in this program in early December I did what any college kid would: I immediately looked at the other names that the email was sent to and stalked each and every one of them on Facebook. As I looked through everyone’s pictures I quickly realized that while I knew of many of the people and would consider several of them acquaintances, I was definitely not friends with any of them. After a few group meetings in Baishakhi’s room laughing over sandwiches or pizza I found myself really looking forward to getting to know these 10 strangers. It was obvious that we were all different, there were 4 different sororities represented, one fraternity, three selective living groups, different dance groups, club sports, and multiple different friend groups but that no matter what background we came from there was one link between us, the desire to serve the community of Kolkata. Sitting with Michelle and Celina in the LAX before we got onto our flight to Dubai we discussed how it was amazing that we were about to spend more time with people we hardly knew than we had with some of our closest friends. The thought both excited and frightened me.

Flash forward almost four weeks, three more plane flights, hours sitting in a car on bumpy roads, one taxi ride, hundreds of stares from strangers, several gallons of sweat, and hours of furious typing later it is 8:30pm and we are getting ready to have dinner. The boy’s room became the designated dinner room from day one and after a few weeks we have finally moved the furniture around into the optimal position to eat food. There are three large armchairs, one couch that seats 3, an end table that is used as another seat and those left without seats perch on arm rests or sprawl out on the floor. We all huddle around the brown coffee table that is always overflowing with bowl after bowl of home cooked food. The Manovikas and Tulipdale kids get home before the Future Hope kids but we always wait till they get home so as to make sure that no one feels left out. The second we hear their voices drift up the stairs from the first floor we all reach for plates and silverware, ready to dig in.

Dinner is one of my favorite parts of this trip and it is not only because of the amazing (and spicy!) dishes that the Transit house cooks us. It is the company. We came into this life-changing trip being complete strangers but if anyone watched us as we sat around in a circle sharing food and passing napkins they would never guess that only 6 weeks before we would often pass each other at school and not even say hi. Over the exclamations of what foods we think are the best on a particular night there is always the overtone of someone laughing. I don’t know if I have ever smiled as much as I have on this trip. I can honestly say that each and every person on this trip has surprised me in some amazing way and it is only the fourth week.

I have begun to call dinner “family dinner” because that is actually how I feel. I grew up in a family with a severely Autistic brother so I never really got to exerience normal family dinners since mine were usually filled with screaming or nonexistent since 5-7pm are usually filled with my brother’s in-home therapists. This doesn’t mean that I have never had a dinner with my family but it was honestly never really anything I would look forward to. Here, we go around every night and tell some of the things that happened to us at “work”. Every time Michelle does her impression of the teacher’s at Tulipdale scolding a child or Sean describes the daily dose of antics that a particularly naughty child named Animesh did that day I can’t help but laugh. We are a group of people who could literally sit in a room and talk about anything and not get bored, and we do. It is an amazing feeling to be able to have conversations with people my age about politics, religion, pop culture, gender roles, and even Harry Potter without ever feeling attacked or bored. As we share experiences and opinions over pieces of chicken tika and bowls of sliced mango we are creating a bond that I know will stay with us for life.

When Baishakhi said to us in January “Do not expect this to be easy. After all, you are going to India in the middle of the summer” I don’t think I really understood what that meant. Now that I truly understand the weight of her words I couldn’t be more grateful to have this spectacular group of young men and women to go through these experiences. 6 weeks ago we were basically strangers but now as I joke with Lindsay over our massive consumption of mango and watch as Stacey demonstrates one of the songs that they learned at Tulipdale while simultaneously teasing Sean about his fear of “non-domesticated animals” it becomes obvious to me that not only are we now friends, we are a family. A quirky family it may be but a family nonetheless and I can’t wait to see what the next four weeks bring us.