美食祈祷与恋爱意大利文化 《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 59 (127):印度女孩图丝

《美食祈祷和恋爱》Chapter 59 (127):印度女孩图丝  

I've made good friends with this seventeen-year-old Indian girl named Tulsi. She works with me scrubbing the temple floors every day. Every evening we take a walk through the gardens of the Ashram together and talk about God and hip-hop music
o subjects for which Tulsi feels equivalent devotion. Tulsi is just about the cutest little bookworm of an Indian girl you ever saw
even cuter since one lens of her "specs" (as she calls her eye-glasses) broke last week in a cartoonish spiderweb design
which hasn't stopped her from wearing them. Tulsi is so many interesting and foreign things to me at once—a teenager
a tomboy
an Indian girl
a rebel in her family
a soul who is so crazy about God that it's almost like she's got a schoolgirl crush on Him. She also speaks a delightful
lilting English—the kind of English you can find only in India—which includes such colonial words as "splendid!" and "nonsense!" and sometimes produces eloquent sentences like: "It is beneficial to walk on the grass in the morning when the dew has already been accumulated
for it lowers naturally and pleasantly the body's temperature." When I told her once that I was going to Mumbai for the day
Tulsi said
"Please stand carefully
as you will find there are many speeding buses everywhere."
She's exactly half my age
and practically half my size.
Tulsi and I have been talking a lot about marriage lately during our walks. Soon she will turn eighteen
and this is the age when she will be regarded as a legitimate marriage prospect. It will happen like this—after her eighteenth birthday
she will be required to attend family weddings dressed in a sari
signaling her womanhood. Some nice Amma ("Aunty") will e and sit beside her
start asking questions and getting to know her: "How old are you? What's your family background? What does your father do? What universities are you applying to? What are your interests? When is your birthday?" Next thing you know
Tulsi's dad will get a big envelope in the mail with a photo of this woman's grandson who is studying puter sciences in Delhi
along with the boy's astrology charts and his university grades and the inevitable question
"Would your daughter care to marry him?"
图丝和我最近在散步时经常谈到婚姻。她即将迈入十八岁，这种年纪的女子被视为是理所当然的婚姻候选人。依照预期——过了十八岁生日，她得穿上纱丽参加家族的婚礼，表示她已是成年女子了。那时将会有某位好婶婶在她身边坐下，开始发问，一步步认识她“你几岁啦？家庭背景呢？你父亲是做什么的？你申请哪些大学？你的兴趣是什么？你的生日是哪天？”接下来，图丝的父亲将收到一个大信封，信封内有张照片，是那名妇人在德里学电脑的孙子，还有这位男生的星座命盘、他的大学成绩以及那不可避免的问题：“您女儿愿不愿意嫁给他？”
Tulsi says
"It sucks."