As I’ve often said, everywhere I travel, I end up with a family. This weekend, I met my Indian family.

This is Jitesh. I was on the beach Saturday, and he wandered up to me while I was buying an ice cream and tried to talk me into buying a purse. I assure him I had no use for one, but he followed me for a good fifteen minutes telling me of the many benefits of these purses, and listing people I might buy one for.


He was still following me when I reached the Subway I had been heading for, so I invited him in for a sandwich. I asked him about the purses he was selling and found out that his family makes them by hand in their ‘tiny house’. His mother, father, two brothers, sister, and aunt all stay in the single room dwelling/makeshift handbag factory. The materials cost 90 rupees (2 dollars) and he sells them for 100 ($2.20) On a good day, he sells one purse, which means he makes 20 cents. I told him I didn’t need a purse, but that I wanted to hire him to teach me how to make them. We made an appointment to meet the next afternoon.

The next day,we went from Juhu beach to his neighborhood, which is about an hour walk for him every day. Today though, he insisted on taking an auto-rickshaw, and paying for it, because he didn’t want me to have to walk that far (I totally wanted to walk)

We reached his neighborhood, which is a brightly colored maze of buildings that seems to last forever. Some of the smaller corridors got so tight that I had to hunch over to shuffle under the low hanging awnings, past the hobbit-sized doorways.

Everywhere I looked were people. Kids hanging off balconies, mothers doing laundry, tiny games of soccer and toddlers playing with stray dogs.

I could have been lost in the maze for days if I didn’t have a guide.


Finally, we arrived at Jitesh’s door.

I went inside, and was introduced to the entire extended family.

Jitesh, his mother, and his little brother Mohesh set to work teaching me the ways of handbag decoration.

And I made the saddest, most pathetic looking flowers that the world has ever seen.

Then I taught Mohesh how to take photos, and gave both of the boys drawing lessons.

They taught me how to play with battle tops, but they only had one launcher, so you could only launch one top at a time.

While I was teaching Mohesh to take videos, he snapped a shot of Jitesh doing pull-ups from the ceiling.

After all the fun was done, I took my new Indian little brothers out for Chinese food, and promised to stop by another time so I could take them to their first movie.

As always, an excellent day.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2006 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.