Rena is Ratna

India and I are not friends today.

I cracked my big toenail in half during yoga this morning. With bandaged toe, I walked to the Internet café to take a conference call back in the states and discovered no electricity (usual) because a man at a hotel down the street died trying to unplug something (unusual). India telling me to get over the toenail.

I arrived home to find out, for the second day in a row, that Rena is not her name. Yesterday Meena told me it was Retna (with a T), I think she found some of our lessons in the trash. Today Ashish told me it was Ratna. And so we begin our ritual again. At 10, Meena leaves for slimming class (I don’t even want to know what that is) and puja and I spend time with Ratna working on writing her name or numbers or simple words. Then we put together a worksheet that she hides during the day and works on when no one is around ("Clean, clean, clean..." she says when I ask why its not ok to show it to others).

Today we wrote her name “Ratna.” Yesterday, after five minutes of sign language and analogies we got to what a “last name” is and she says hers is Sumalata. Who knows if I am spelling it right?

A friend took me out to some neighboring villages in the afternoon, visiting temples and looking for schools and teachers; despite a stat I read that India’s rural population had primary schools within one kilometer, there were none. Hundreds of Ratnas spent the day running after me – these not so “lucky” to have a job in a middleclass home – asking for rupees and pens and country coins. Exhausted, I decided it was time to go home.

And home brought some hope. Meena says Ratna needs to speak English better. I asked Meena how does Ratna know the alphabet and how to hold a pen and write letters and numbers? She grins widely and tells me that Ashish teaches Ratna, “I am so proud my boy has such a big heart.” Fortunately Ashish has yet to inherit his parents belief in maintaining caste, the cycle is breaking.