Prabin. The other half of Arun.

December 2, 2009
Prabin is joined to Arun at the hip. Arun was one of the first kids in the hostel, while Prabin followed a year or so later. Their ridiculous sense of humor and goofy way of teasing and joking makes you want to laugh just looking at them! Imagine two girls who are joined at the hip (for those of you who knew me through college, picture any one of my three roommates and I, going everywhere together and doing everything together, even as far as teaching in the same city!) and that’s Prabin and Arun. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen two boys who are closer friends and brothers than these two!

Anyway, sorry, that was a tangent in this story about Prabin. So, you have your background: think of Arun’s characteristics, and they’ll apply to Prabin 99% of the time! Prabin’s family lives about 30 minutes from here and he has one older brother along with one younger brother (he calls himself the medium child, which cracks me up! I always want to ask which brother is the well done one and which one is rare!). They live with his mom, and I gathered that his older brother does most of the providing. He has a job working at a bookshop, and Prabin wants to take me there sometime to meet his brother. Again, there was no mention of a father anywhere in the picture, which was not surprising or unexpected. Prabin’s grown up here, so Uncle has become a father figure to him.

Another unsurprising element is that Prabin struggles with school. He’s quick to inform me that he’s not “talented” like the other children, which is his excuse for failure. However, I don’t put up with it (it’s that mean teacher in me again!), and I’m quick to point out that most of the kids are only barely passing and they’re working their tails off to be passing! He quickly realized that I wasn’t going to accept failure due to “lack of talent” as an option, so he buckled down, and actually passed his exam for me! There were times when we had our battles studying (he’s one of my students at school as well, so we had double the fun!), and I was sure there was no way he was ever going to pass, no matter how hard we worked. Then there were the days when he remembered EVERYTHING from the previous day, and I was like where was this two days ago when we were studying?! I think it has everything to do with his mood and is probably affected by my mood as well! But, as I checked his test, I was amazed at how much he remembered and he passed with a 60% (40% is passing here... don’t ask how that’s affected my teaching mentality!). This up from 0% last time. I was pretty impressed :).

I think one of his favorite things to do is to stand on the roof and just look out over the city (that is, when he’s not laughing with Arun!). He’ll stand there, leaning on the fence around the roof, just gazing at the expanse of this Hindu valley. And then in the backdrop there are these mountains rising up, cutting the horizon short and creating beautiful silhouettes at dawn and dusk. He can just stand there, gazing at them and it might be the most serious I ever see him. Not that I’m any different; I can stand there just looking for hours myself. There’s something majestic about God’s glory in creation here while people worship idols. I think it makes one more aware of how much He’s done for us, both through Jesus and through the beauty of creation. One day, I’ll shake him out of his reverie while he’s gazing out over the city and find out what’s trudging through his mind, but for today, we’ll just watch the city and mountains together in a reverent silence...