I don't have time to write a full blog, so...
Last week some of the girls were over for computer class and I took Manisha into my room to read. She asked if one of the beds was mine, I told her no, my mom slept on that one and I sleep on the adjacent one. "You don't sleep in the same bed?" She asked. "No." "Why?" she asked with perfect puzzlement. "Because we have two beds" - hardly an explanation. In a culture where a person can spend their whole life without ever once sleeping in a bed alone, the idea of sleeping alone just because one has the space does not make sense. Just one example of how our cultures differ. In more affluent families, children do have their own beds. I know that Manisha shares a bed with both her parents and her little brother. I don't know what Piya does though. Piya has two beds in her house (they take up all the floor space in the whole house). And as far as I know, she, her parents, one sister, two brothers, and a sister-in-law all sleep in that tiny space. I do wonder how they arrange themselves. Of course some of my students don't have beds at all, they just sleep on straw mats on the floor. Who would have thought that in something as simple as sleeping, people can differ so much?
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2 comments:
what did you expect, really?
Of course I wouldn't expect them to sleep any differently than they do. What really surprised me was Manisha's surprise that I would choose not to sleep with my mom. With two beds, I would never think to sleep with my mom. With two beds, Manisha would still never think not to sleep with hers. Its the differing thought processes, a product of differing cultures, that I found remarkable. Perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough.
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