My Cousin's House

Yesterday I moved to my cousin's house in Santacruz, a neighborhood a little ways outside Mumbai proper. She lives in a large apartment (by New York standards) with one bedroom. The road outside passes a mall and an open construction site where squatters sometimes pass the night in the half-finished buildings.

The stairs pass under an awning. She has no manned elevator, but the crumbling steps lead up past decorated wooden doors. The building is mainly families with small children. She describes it as "not a modern compound."

My cousin is an anomaly by Indian standards, but especially by the standards of Marvaris (the community that my family belongs to.) An ambitious worker, she's in her late twenties and single. She works 12-hour days in a bank where she invests money for some of India's richest and most well-known people. The bank has recently offered her the opportunity to travel abroad.

Her neighbors, however, seem uncomfortable with having an unmarried working girl in their midst. One night she had eight or nine friends over for dinner, and afterwards, even though none of the guests played loud music or disturbed anyone, her neighbors complained to the landlord. For a long while I didn't understand what grounds they'd complained on, but I suppose for a young woman to have friends over at night - especially men - suggests impropriety.

Although many Indians have traditional values, she also told me about two of her close friends. They got married two months ago after living together for over a year.

The road outside the compound ends in front of slums. A suburban train runs past her house. People have erected cloth lean-tos in the narrow slice of sloping land between the back of her house and the train track.