Cricket, but not the bug kind

I have just arrived at the house I will be living at during my stay in India. My housemother is very nice and hospitable. After picking me up from the hotel, we arrived at her apartment, which is in an area of Delhi called Vasant Kung. Delhi has small neighborhood communities called “colonies” that are surround by gates with limited drivable entrances. Think of the colonies as “gated communities” though they are much bigger in area. Each colony has a market, which consist of whatever store one might need (mostly). For instance, the hotel I was staying at for the last week was within Defense Colony. Within Defense Colony there were a couple of streets worth of little shops, and each street was a few stores long. In Defense Colony market there were/was: several grocery stands/places selling fresh produce and food staples, an office supply store, several clothes store, a sunglass store (defense colony is very nice $$), several chemist (the Indian, and I assume the British, word for pharmacy*), a couple ATMs, a flower stand…you get the idea. While the shops are fairly nice, it reminds me a lot of china town, with open faced store fronts, or shops that appear a bit run down and rickety.

*These chemist stores actually sell a lot of American products like Neutrogena, Dove, Nivea, Skintimate, etc.

I have digressed. My house is nice. The section of the colony I am in, section C, is clustered around a playground of a swing set, slide, monkey bars, jungle jim, and tumbleweed. The dry, brown, landscape of the playground made me remember that North India is more of a desert region. In front of my house lies a gated, beautiful, garden of flowers in clay pots and neatly kept grass. The complex of apartments itself is a yellow brown color—again bringing me to think of the hot climate—that appears to be a couple stories high. My house is on the first floor.

My house mother has been very kind to me thus far, and in the car ride from the hotel to here she mentioned how happy she was to now have a daughter (she has only a son), and that she is excited to “dress me up.” When we arrived at her house, we had chai (chai tea) and biscuits (sweet cookies for dipping in the chai) and sat in her “living room” adorned in purple, pink, and pale yellow fabric like curtains and burgundy cushioned couches. After Chai, her nephew came over (he is almost 2!) but he wanted to go back to his dad. My housemother, her son, and I walked her nephew back to his father, who lives within the complex, but before we arrived at his house we met him just past the dirt playground I was just describing. There, it was decided that we should play a game of cricket (the Indian sport!) and a bat and ball were fetched. We played with my housemother, the nephew’s father (relation to my house mommy…?) and the father’s two nephews who were around 10 or so.

I believe that all who know me will be quite impressed that I have just played not only my first British cricket game, but my first French cricket game as well. First we played British cricket, which looks much like baseball minus bases. The batter stands at the…batting area (?) and the pitcher throws just like in baseball, but instead of running to three bases and home, the batter aims to hit the ball far enough to be able to run straight to a certain distance in the field, and then back. This is called a “single run.”

Then we played French cricket. This game is much faster paced! The batter stands in a circle (bat length) with his/her legs locked together. The other team gathers in a circle figure around the batter and throws the ball to him. As the batter hits the ball, the other team attempts to catch it, and when someone catches it, they throw it either to another player on their team or pitch it to the batter. The batter has to jump in circles to keep hitting the ball—if the ball touches him he is out.


Pictures of my Bedroom: