‘Monday’ – Another lovely day in Jodhpur, learning lots of new exciting things and meeting lots more people!

Today was my first day at work and it was very insightful with plenty of exciting events opportunities coming up! As I wouldn’t want to disclose anything I shouldn’t I shall keep quiet on the details, but I am looking forward to the next few months very much and it looks as if the events will be amazing!!

After work today I took the opportunity to spend some quality time with my landlady, Manju, who is wonderful and ever so friendly. She was cooking downstairs and insisted that I come join her for some food, to which I happily obliged. She is a very good cook! I have convinced her she shall have to teach me how to make chapatis before I leave! 🙂

A part of my reasoning for coming to India was to learn about another culture, and so I really like spending time with Manju and her family – of course it helps that they are genuinely lovely people! To my delight, Neeta (Manju’s sister in law), has kindly invited me out for dinner with the rest of her family tomorrow, which I am very excited about! Her son works for a European adventure company and she is clearly very proud of him for getting such a good job. He is only nineteen and lost his father many years ago, so he has done extremely well for himself! My little brother is nineteen also and I cannot imagine him having to support our family at such an age. Manju described to me how when she was much younger her mother also died of cancer, which meant she had to leave school in year 8 and stay at home to look after her little sister who was then only 6. It was clearly a very difficult time for Manju. Her circumstances at the time were clearly very hard upon her, she told me she was very lonely during that period and I felt very sorry for her. I have to say however I am astonished by how great her English is if she had to leave school! She keeps telling me how bad it is but I tell her she should be very happy with herself! Whether she left school or not, she is clearly a very intelligent woman. She explained how expensive school is in India and she clearly wants much better things for her son, sending him to an English speaking school so that he will have more opportunities in life. One day she hopes he will come to England to study at University and I really hope he does. It would certainly make his mother very proud!

As much as I am falling in love with India it is easy to forget how different life can be for many people here. Now I don’t mean to sound like a condescending tourist or an armchair socialist – which I easily could here-  but it seems such a shame (an understatement if anything) that hundreds of people in the UK every day take their education for granted. Admittedly, when I was younger I never thought twice about going to school, it was something I was made to do and I didn’t always particularly want to do it, but when you see how important it is here to people it really makes you realise how lucky we are. Now I’m older I’m very proud of my education and what I have achieved with it, but that simply isn’t an option for many people here. It’s only my third day in India, but I’m already learning lots about the many different types of lives people lead here and questioning how I look at my own!

Over and Out x