Corners

I was visiting my friends.  I had carried Zana in the Ergo, while half carting Abe through the graveyard, over the low wall, through the cricket grounds near the mazaar, past the meat shop, through a long gulley, through the vegetable bazaar, and down another street, left into a little lane and we arrived.  I was tired from avoiding the street dogs, the sewer, the vehicles and the neighborhood kids that run after us yelling all sorts of things in Hindi and HE-ng-lish

I was tired and a little flustered but delighted to see my friends.  A wedding in the family was coming and the new room had just been finished. 

Walk in with me.  The new room is the size of two single beds with a foot around each one.  It is small.  I walk into the sound of chanting.  I sit on the bed where I am directed and realize there is a full house.  The small room has 13 people in it (all women except one teenage boy) but I can hear men in the next room, lots of them all reading the Quran.  Hmmm. 

I ask my friend if it is alright that I am here visiting at this time.  Of course it is.  I am offered sweets, a special kind, I refuse.  Zana starts to cry.  It is then that I realize I forgot to feed her before leaving as I planned.  Where will I go?  I state my need and that I should probably leave but Auntie just says go there.....
 
Go Where?

I am sitting in the corner with bags of clothes behind me and yet she is motioning behind where I am.  I am confused.  Am I to go out into the gully?  No that cannot be right.  No she means just scrunch into the corner and feed Zana there.  So I do but I realize as I am scrunching that it is not an American gift to scrunch.  I don't think it is just my size but it is part of my cultural identity.  I just don't scrunch well.  When I sit on the hard wood bed three people are displaced by me.  I feel terrible and try to scrunch so that two can come back but there is never room.  When I try to scrunch with neighbors in rickshaws they always hem and haw and one of them is left hanging over the edge.  When I try to scrunch in photos I am always a head or two or even three taller and dominate the frame.  When I turn around in their little home I displace a crowd and usually step on a toe or foot.  Oh well.  I have to nurse so I just jut out my elbows, try to get comfy and displace the teen boy!

Sometimes corners are just not big enough for us Americans!