DiDi – Elder Sister

By Aarti Thakkar

We’ve been in Delhi for almost a month now, and are slowly but surely starting to call it home. We now know it should only cost us 70 rupees and 25 minutes of fighting our way through rush hour traffic to get to the head office in our teetering rickshaw. We learned that the best (and maybe only) time to go outside is after a monsoon rain washes away the oppressive heat of the day. We can even hum along to the top Bollywood hits as the kids we are working with show off their newest choreography.

But what really makes this place a home is our partner, Udayan Care.

Most house visits start out similarly. Some children bravely come out the living room, while others are peeking around the doors trying to get a glimpse at the foreigners who have come to their home. From all around we are met with a chorus of shy and timid voices saying “Hi Didi!”

Didi means elder sister.

As an older sister from an Indian household, I’m familiar with the term, but it only felt like another word to say. Over the past month, I’ve started to see how these words Didi, Bhaiyaa (brother), even Auntie or Uncle seem to be ways of saying: Welcome to the Family.  Even before they know who we were, we too were given the title Didi. At Udayan, everyone is part of the family. The children, caretakers, social workers, and so many more people are all interconnected by the goal of giving the children the best care possible.

Somewhere in the course of our day, between joking, dancing, or playing cards with the children the shy voices start to be eager cries of  “Didi look at this!” or “Didi can we play again?” Every time we hear ourselves being called Didi, we know more and more that we too are now part of this family.