In case you were wondering...sometimes I do feel like a foreigner.

For the last six months or so, I've had some assistance with the housework, a lady named Nassim. Here in India, she would be called 'servant', but I don't like that term and I don't even like to use the word 'maid'. So, I call her my helper, because that's exactly what she does: she helps me!

Nassim is a small, thin, young woman who has 3 kids of her own. She understands more English than I do Hindi, but we manage to communicate somehow. She normally comes early in the afternoon and handwashes the clothes (including Fabi's cloth diapers!), cleans the floor and washes the dishes and cooks chapatis for Ishan. Everyday she comes and also sweeps the terrace, the front garden and the back of the house. Sometimes she also has the initiative to do some additional cleaning if necessary and even cook a dish for Ishan if I ask her to.

She takes two days off every month - one day at a time - and she normally lets me know beforehand.

So...when it appears that she's not going to show up for the third day in a row and it's later than the time when she usually comes, I make a drastic decision:

Instead of eating, reading, exercising, cooking, watching Oprah or blogging, I decide to do some housework during the valuable time when Fabi was taking his afternoon nap. I had already washed the dishes and a load of laundry was in the washing machine. I was about to start hand washing (!) dirty diapers, when I heard a knock on the door. There she was....! And the first thing that she said was....I didn't come because yesterday was Eid Ul-Adha. And then I remembered that I had talked to Sopan - my brother-in-law - on the phone yesterday and he had greeted me with an 'Eid Mubarak'. If I hadn't thought that he was just being funny, I would have realized that Nassim had taken a holiday because she's muslim!... Why didn't I realize this?...

I wonder how much longer it will take me to live in this land of great cultural and religious diversity to know what's going on!...Maybe I should get out of the house more...or just watch some local tv channels!...

A belated EID MUBARAK to all my muslim friends!

BTW, I have a couple of other stories where I've felt like a foreigner in other countries. Just ask me if you're interested in knowing about that...How about you? Do you have any anecdotes similar to this one?