TABLE
OF CONTENTS
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Princess
Vidhya of Erode
Erode,
India
by Lara Callaway
Vidhya
is a
bossy, spoiled rotten know-it-all. She is the ten-year-old daughter of
Pragya
and Mr. Puramjayam, my gracious hosts in their beautiful,
multi-servanted home
in a village called Erode in the Tamil Nadu state of southern India.
I was visiting the farming
village as a student home-stay experience, and Vidhya had selected
herself to
be my personal guide around all the local sugarcane factories and
hut-like
dwellings surrounding her comparative palace. Her English was flawless
and
she’d been allowed to miss school for the time we were staying, so she
dragged
me by my hand, lecturing me about all the things that I didn’t know
about her
village, and culture, and religion. It took me a while to put two and
two
together, wondering why she was such a priss, and looking around at how
the
rest of the village lived in comparison before… OH! She’s got “rich
girl”
syndrome! Of course. The association allowed me to relate Vidhya’s
situation
more clearly, and she quickly became my favorite subject. At the house,
she
kicked around her little sister like American siblings do, and in the
village
markets she stood waiting for me impatiently, reaming about how much
she hates
this “horrible, dirty place full of market people. It’s unsafe and
unsanitary.”
Like Sara Dickey observes in her article Lives
in Madurai about the social relations and cultural practices of the
people
in Madurai.
While the wealthy people are free to do things their own way, they seem
to have
very little understanding of what poorer people’s lives are like.
Whenever
Vidhya
got particularly huffy, I’d tease her back and try to throw her, but
she never
lost face. Once while insinuating how much more accomplished and
affluent she
was than other village kids her age, I thought I’d give her some
perspective
and asked, “Have you ever even been to Mumbai, missy?” knowing full
well that
she’d probably never been farther than Chennai. She put her hands on
her hips
and raised one eyebrow.
“Have
YOU ever
been to Beverly Hills?” Touché.
We
went on like
this all day, and finished over tea with a thorough discussion of her
(and my)
favorite books, Harry Potter. Being wrapped up in such a competent
conversation
about something that I had previously considered overtly non-Indian,
I’d
momentarily forgotten that I was, in fact, talking to a 5th-grade
girl living in an area of the globe that largely speaks Tamil
exclusively.
Curious, and knowing that the books are translated in over 65 languages
worldwide, I asked if she read Harry Potter in English or Tamil. Fixing
me with
a stare that was simultaneously defensive and indignant, Vidhya
confessed that
she can’t read or write in Tamil. She can speak it because her parents
and her
village speak it; but in her private school she speaks, reads, and
writes only
in English.
“And
the other
kids in your village?” I asked, full-well knowing the answer. Even if
they did
have the opportunity to learn English in school, few (if any) would
have
friends or parents like Vidhya’s who could speak it with them for
practice at
home.
“Definitely Tamil
only,” she clicked her tongue critically. “So what else can YOU speak?”
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