Safety

Friday after an “all clear” report from the doctor, Natalie and I celebrated by “escaping” for the weekend and visiting our Indian friends Sonali and Sukanta Maity. They are on scholarship to a school in the Toronto area and their visas expire at the end of the month. I stayed with them and their extended family last year for several weeks while I was in India. I wanted to have them take some items back to India and shipping is “hit or miss” at best. Even more importantly, I wanted them to finally meet Natalie in person after talking to her on SKYPE via the magic of the internet.
They are wonderful people and Sonali especially is a joy. She is a little wisp of a “girl” of twenty-five who makes Natalie look tall. Sonali is like a cute tiny kitten; you just feel like patting her and then scooping her up to take her home to see if your mother will let you keep her! She gazes at you, shyly, with big expressive dark eyes that dance when she gets excited. I was perplexed when she fell on the floor and just laid there when she first spotted me but she got up and gave us both wildly animated hugs.
Both Sukanta and Sonali were extremely excited to have visitors. With typical Indian hospitality, they suddenly “weren’t hungry” so that we could have what would have been their breakfast in the “café”. Although they have been in Toronto since early September, they have been virtually prisoners in their room and the school next door. When we ventured out on a driving and sightseeing expedition with them, the ever present Ontario snow started with increasing intensity. I smiled to myself watching Sonali in the rear view mirror singing softly and praying silently because of the anxiety of the snowy ride. If she only knew what it was like to experience Indian driving in Kolkata for the first time!
We retreated out of the snow to the safety of their dorm room and Natalie gave them a small album of pictures I had taken of their families. They were both very obviously quite homesick as we reminisced. We shared about my visit to Sonali’s home “out in the jungle” of rice patties and banana trees. I fondly remember her family’s gracious hospitality. Her sixty four year old father, barefoot and clad in only a type of loincloth (displaying “six pack abs”), took me to cut down a stalk of bananas to take home. Her ninety-six-year-old grandmother crouched, sitting on her heels, to cook me eggs over an open fire. (And was able to get back up!) What pleasant memories of truly wonderful folks in a steamy place half a world away.
One picture gave me a different memory. As I balanced, trying to somewhat gracefully cross a small bamboo footbridge leaving their home, her father was still carrying the machete that he used to cut my banana stalk. He casually mentioned the big snake he had “dispatched” with it earlier that morning in that very spot. Sonali affirmed in a very serious tone, “Yes, he usually deals with about ten to thirteen big vipers each year.” She recalled hearing the chickens get very excited during the night and then hearing a loud hissing sound in the darkness. (They sleep in a home with no doors and no outside walls.) In fact her father often sleeps in a hut fifty feet from the home to protect the family from troublesome slithering scavengers and pig thieves intent on stealing his two big sows.
What a father! It made me suddenly very grateful for my own safety. Thank you Sonali; you’re special!