So after much long pleading for visitors, they finally came. Our cousins arrived at the first of November, just in time for Diwali. After a week of settling in, we all decided that staying together would work out just fine and they are settled in for a 5-month stay.
The reaction that we get from most people when we tell them that our cousin and his wife and six children are staying with us for such a long time is typically "Wow," followed by a sympathetic, "So how are you doing?" like one would ask about a family tragedy or illness.
The honest truth is, and we are not just saying this because this is a public forum, is that it's wonderful. The kids have lots of playmates, we get paid in new furniture, the servants feel more useful, and Merinda and I get to hang out all the time with two people whom we have always truly looked up to and admired.
The reason that one might think this sort of thing would be difficult seems to be about population density. I woke up early this morning thinking about this and decided to get out my tape measure.
We have a 4-bedroom house, in which we occupy two bedrooms and our cousins occupy the other two. There is a big dining/living room and a kitchen. On occasion we had a college student named Zach crashing on the couch in the living room (and the ladies have a great story of him walking around in his tight bright green long-johns during Merinda's music class), but we won't count him or the days when other visitors are in town.
The 13 of us live in a house that is 1600 square feet. This works out to 123 square feet per person.
We also have a detached garage and above the garage there are two servants quarters. In one of the quarters, there lives Margaret, the cook, her daughter Pooja, who cleans for us, two other teenagers, Lakshmi and Shiva, and her husband Sunderaj. The other quarters are occupied by the driver, Anil, his wife Ritu, their two small children Anshul and Twinkle, a grandmother, and some other guy I think is a brother. They also frequently have other people staying with them as well, but we won't count them either. As a side note, since everybody, servants and all, have joined the Church, on a typical Sunday, 27% of the attendees are residents of our house.
The 11 of them live in the two quarters that are each 185 square feet, making about 34 square feet per person.
Before the cousins came each of us got about the space of the two servants' quarters, where there are now 11 people staying.
If we were to have the same population density as our servants did in our house, we could sleep 48 people. Needless to say, 13 isn't such a big deal at all.
In thinking about this and talking to our cousins, several thoughts come to mind. The way our servants are crowded into those quarters (which they seemed happy to have) is unfortunately not too far off from the way a lot of other people live here, especially in the cities, so it makes us grateful for the 123 square feet we each have.
It is also pretty sobering to think about the way we live and the shame it is that we really physically distance ourselves from each other in our standard way of living. Driving around lots of neighborhoods back home you see 3000 square foot homes with maybe only 3 or 4 people living inside (1000 square feet per person versus snuggling in with cousins at 123 or living like many good people here do with only 34). Lonely, huh?
