It was raining.

Tiny droplets attacked my face as I attempted to shield my eyes with my hands. I knew without looking that the sky was a churning gray, the color of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. As we squelched across the unpaved path, reddish mud swirled around my sneakers. I could already feel the muck seeping into my socks and pervading the holes in my porous footwear. Yuck, I thought. Stupid weather. Stupid mud. Stupid shoes.

We were somewhere in the state of Karnataka, India. Now, being the American-born daughter of two Indian immigrants, I had visited India before. In fact, I’d spent countless summers there since before I could remember - summers fraught with sighs, whines and tears. Why couldn’t I spend my summer like a regular American kid? I’d complain to myself. At home in Boston, watching TV and tanning and parking myself in front of the A/C with ice-cold lemonade to stave off the boiling humidity? Why couldn’t I spend lazy afternoons at the beach, watch the July 4th fireworks with my friends, and veg out?

No, instead, for two entire months every summer, we’d be in India. The land of mosquitos, cockroaches and boredom. We had a lovely house there, I couldn’t deny that. But for its colorful walls, natural light and comfortable atmosphere, it might as well have been a prison. Where else could I go? The streets of Bangalore were pervaded by noisy honks, three-wheeled auto rickshaws, spit and urine, street vendors hawking their goods in unintelligible screams, school children in starched, crisp uniforms with immaculate black dress shoes and matching hair ribbons, the hustle and bustle of hundreds of Indians going about their daily lives. Even my relatives were caught up in their activities – those close to my age would invariably have schoolwork and studying to, and as for those older, like countless aunts and uncles and second cousins - well, beyond five minutes of conversation, what did we have in common?

But this time, it was different. I’d been learning the ancient Indian language Sanskrit (or Samskritam) for the past three years through a course for Indian American high schoolers called Samskritam As a Foreign Language (SAFL). A two week residential camp in Karnataka would be the culmination of the course. And now, we were on our way to my Sanskrit teacher’s in-laws’ house, where we’d stay while visiting an all-Sanskrit Hindu philosophy school (or a gurukulam).

We reached a playing field. Not the American kind, with grass and swingsets and baseball diamonds, but rather a mud pit filled with barefoot Indian children playing whatever games they could dream up. Mentally cringing, I recalled my own attempts at playing street games during one of those endless Indian summers. Unforgettably pale in comparison to my tan, lean neighbors (incidentally, mostly boys), I’d stumble my way across the street, attempting to evade capture by, in turn, the tagger, the wicket keeper, and the seeker as we played Lock and Key (Tag), cricket and I Spy (Hide and Seek). The straps of my sandals would catch on dirt and small rocks as I clumsily navigated my way along parked motorcycles and auto rickshaws in this too-small street. Invariably, I’d be the first one out, the only player to score no runs, and the one all too easy to find. All of this would play out in front of my reddening, sweaty face as I stared at the kids laughing and evading each other with ease, chattering in Kannada all the while. I couldn’t help wondering if they were laughing at me – but then, a foreigner always suspects that people talking in a foreign language are gossiping about them.
Back in the playground, I felt my comparatively pale skin, my awkwardness, my lack of Kannada knowledge lock around me in a shield of utter foreign-ness. I was carrying my own personal prison around me everywhere I went – a prison honed by countless hours of embarrassment, exclusion and shame. I longed for the comforts of my own room, where, at the very least, I was not a stranger.

When we finally reached the house, a modest, typical village home, I spied a flash of black hair. A toothily grinning Indian child with a mop of ink-black hair came into view. She couldn’t have been more than ten years old. She was a neighbor, my Sanskrit teacher told me. Apparently, it was commonplace for neighbors’ children to pop in a visit whenever. Not exactly surprising, since we were in a small village that exuded close-knittedness, from its playing children to its clusters of houses.
We settled down on straw mats and were immediately plied with freshly sliced papaya and mango. According to Indian custom, the in-laws were awfully insistent that we eat more fruits, have a little more food. I noted with alarm that red ants were biting my feet.

The little girl (whose name I’d now learned was Swathi), pushed a wooden board toward me.  I knew she wanted to play something. There was some time to kill before we go, so I thought, What the heck. I’ll bite. The chalk lines she’d drawn on it looked familiar, somehow – a net of boxes and diagonals drawn in the crooked hand of an elementary school child. As she handed me four small shells, something clicked.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “I’ve played this game before!”

It was a game called chowka baara, not unlike the American board game Sorry. You had four pieces that you had to move across the board and into your homebase by rolling four shells instead of dice. The number of shells that appeared facing up were the number you moved.

Swathi handed me a piece of chalk to whiten the already-fading lines on the board. I gulped. I knew very few phrases of Kannada. Hardly any, in fact. As I attempted to re-draw the lines, I asked her the only things I knew how to say: “Here?” She shook her head no. “There?” She nodded emphatically. And so the game progressed.

Once we actually got down to playing, I grew more confident in my Kannada skills. I could count. That was one thing I knew for sure how to do. So I rolled the dice and said confidently, “ondu, eradu, mooru, naalu.” Swathi giggled. I was confused. Didn’t I say it right?

My Sanskrit teacher was quick to correct me. “You said four (naaku) wrong,” she said. She was hiding a smile.

 â€œOh,” I replied. My face burned with embarrassment. I laughed nervously.
I can assure you, though, from that moment on, I never said the number four incorrectly again. In fact, for the rest of the game, it didn’t matter that I was American born. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t play cricket for my life, or hold a conversation in Kannada. With every shell moved one space, with every triumphant laugh and disappointed “Aw” as we rolled a four or a one, my prison fell away. I may not have known how to say, “you’re good at this game,” but I could read that smile on her face as well as any English chapter book. And so, by the end of that evening, as I smiled triumphantly in victory and Swathi pouted (she’d lost), I had not learned a word of Kannada, but I’d made a friend.

The saddest part of that trip may have been leaving Swathi’s village, knowing that there was a very small chance that I’d ever go there again. But I’ve realized that this experience goes beyond a simple friendship between a little girl and an Indian American high schooler. It has chipped away at the shield of hesitancy between me and India. It has made me embrace my foreignness and the knowledge that I may not be anything like a child raised in India, but really, what does it matter? Even if I were a cricket pro or a tad better at Kannada, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Sure, it would have made communication and fitting in easier. But I’ve learned that the really important thing is not your proficiency but your willingness – your willingness to make a fool out of yourself by saying the number four wrong, your willingness to sit down with a village girl and play a game of chowka baara. Because for those two simple actions, I can tell you that I’ve now learned a lesson I will never forget.

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