Mama-Come-Lately

“Do you like India?”

The speaker was a fresh-faced young woman I had just met. She had taken a shine to my toddler son, and he to her, perhaps because she was one of the few people we met who understood how to play with little kids.

All of that made answering her even more of a sticky wicket. Even though I know it’s an attempt at connecting with me, that question is so reductive that it’s hard for me to refrain from rolling my eyes. Meanwhile, I feel I can’t answer it honestly without offending the asker — while there’s plenty I like about India, there’s more I don’t like. Put another way, the negatives outweigh the positives for me.

I love how children are cherished there. I hate how many children suffer there. I love that opportunities are opening for women. I hate that so many women are still treated as property, or worse. I love the mish-mash of architectural styles on my mother-in-law’s street. I’m not crazy about the trash and smells on those streets. I love to see the street vendors pass with their enormous handcarts, yelling about their bananas, or onions, or noodles. I hate to hear the street dogs yelping in the middle of the night.

But none of that is anyone’s fault — and certainly not the fault of the person asking my least favorite question. So usually I lie and say yes, I like India. This time I laughed and said that I had only seen the insides of a few houses, and I liked them fine. Not a lie, but also not the whole truth.

It seemed like the kindest way to preserve the connection the woman was trying to establish.