She responded, “Yes, I am in my 22nd year of life.”
She’s 21 years old.
Her typical day used to begin at 5:30 when she would go to college. She’s in her last year, trying to get her Bachelor’s in Management. For the first week that I lived here, she got up religiously, 6 days a week and was at school by 6am. Then, she just stopped going, claiming that classes are almost over. Kind of reminds me of my dad in university, hah! Anyway, the only two things she has to complete now are a 20 page report (thesis-style) and a final exam in one month.
She’s been working on her report since I arrived. When I first saw her copying, word for word, from her sources, I didn’t know that those exact words were also going to be in her report. She’s been using my laptop for the past few days to write her report, and she often asks me what a word that she is typing means… Yeah… But she claims that, “everybody does it”, so what can I say?
Anyway, at 8:30a.m., she leaves to go to work. She’s a grade 4 English and Social Studies teacher at a nice, private, Catholic school where she was once a student. At 3:30 she comes home and watches Hindi soap operas until 5pm, when she tutors 6 students at her home until 7pm.
Jyoti is loud and silly. She loves to laugh so much that she’ll laugh at almost anything. And loudly. But it’s nice – it makes me laugh. She loves to stand in front of the mirror and look at herself. I wouldn’t call her vain, at least not in a negative way. She just likes clothes and makeup and jewelry – very girlie in that way. She likes to be the center of attention. She loves having people take pictures of her and if she could be a runway model I think she would, just because that way people would be watching her intently.
I have gotten closer to Jyoti than anyone else in my family, probably because she’s so close to my age and she has such an infectiously light-hearted personality. I feel younger and more innocent when I am around her.
I like her also because she shows many hints of a modern-day woman. She has no plans to get married soon, her ideas of religious tolerance and freedom are totally untraditional, and she is completely un-judgmental of me and anyone else she comes across.
Jyoti doesn’t seem to know exactly what she wants to do in the future, but she does seem eager to explore. She now wants to teach in Thailand AND go to Lake Forest College in Chicago to get a degree in English. I truly hope that she does do one of those things, and I have even helped her gather information on the process for applying for these things.
