Aryan

I’ve been really blessed to develop some great friendships with a handful of the ladies I work with at school. These are the women I’ll keep in contact with, that I’ll beg to come and visit me, and hope to visit again someday. But oddly enough, the two people I think I might miss most can’t even write full sentences or pronounce my name.

It all started when I had to find a way to fill the tail end of my days here at school. I have a pretty light teaching schedule. The administration wanted to keep me available for substitutions, guest teaching periods, and other activities befitting my bizarre pseudo-celebrity status. But those obligations leave me free most afternoons. A couple of months ago, I began retreating to the library to do some writing on one of the two available computers. I generally think of writing as a way to excuse my solitary, anti-social tendencies, but something surprising happened as I sat at the keyboard day after day.

I made some friends.


Aryan is five years old, Vasundhara is four, and their father is the assistant librarian here at the school. Because the junior classes finish an hour and a half earlier than the other students, Aryan and his sister share my dilemma. Every afternoon, they skitter into the library, drop their giant backpacks and empty tiffins at their father’s desk and try unsuccessfully to whisper. When he first saw me, it was like he’d discovered a new species. He approached me the same way, sort of circling the space where I was working, smiling broadly. When I looked up and asked his name, he proudly thrust out his chest, smiled even broader, and squeaked “Aryan.”


Since then, we made it a routine to visit every afternoon. In fact, I knew we were friends for life when on his birthday, he found me right after assembly and offered me a sweet. (It’s customary for children to give others a special kind of candy—made of sweetened condensed milk, cardamom, and covered in edible foil—in exchange for best wishes on their own birthday.) His father later told me that the night before, Aryan decided he would give me the first one. And even though those sweets make me a bit nauseous, I popped the whole piece in my mouth and smiled. Because that’s what friends do.

Vasundhara often joins us, but Aryan is always here. Yesterday, I asked him where his sister was, and he just smiled and pushed his glasses up his nose. I then asked if she was ill. He shook his head no. “Fever,” he replied.

That might have been the most detailed conversation we’ve enjoyed. I’ve managed to learn his favorite animal (a tiger) and a few other things, but mostly we just hang out. Sometimes, he’ll pull a picture book off a nearby shelf and we’ll read a while together. Sometimes I ask him what he did that day. His answer varies between “played,” and “maths.” Sometimes, he’ll talk animatedly in Hindi and its my turn to just smile and nod. Often he likes to show off his patented floor sliding technique (see the action photo below), flex his muscles, or practice counting on his fingers.


No matter what, his visits are one of the highlights of my day, despite the language barrier. When we were preparing to visit, so many of you wondered how we’d get along without speaking the language. That hasn’t been a problem as so many Indians speak excellent or enough English that we can communicate. But Aryan and Vasundhara have reminded me that sometimes conversation is way overrated. Laughing at the way the cards fly on the computer solitaire game (they always request this—I swear I’m actually working up until their arrival) is better. A smile (and an enthusiastic floor slide) can never be mistranslated.


Jen