Oh Ghori, aapka gaon kahan hai? ... Mei Kalakar Colony mai, meri bhopa bhahen ki sat raheti hung. Aur aap?

(Hey white girl, where is your village?
I live in Kalakar Colony with my bhopa sister. And you?)

All together I stayed in Jaisalmer for nearly six weeks. They were weeks filled with frustration, intense learning, a bit of lonliness and quite a lot of love. All of the love came from Fulli. For one month, I visited Fulli every day. We bought groceries and cooked together. We took tea together. We ate together. We sang together. Fulli taught me, more than anyone else, how the Kalakar Colony functioned, and how the musicans and artists had made a home for themselves. With an amazing heart, a good deal of patience and remarkable openness, Fulli brought me into their community. She claimed me as her ghora and made me her sister.

Me posing with Fulli, Suman and Pinky

Almost every night, I would sigh loudly, shift SUman's sleeping body in my lap and say, Ha ley, Fulli, mei jah rahi hung. She would grab my arm and say, "Sapana, my sister, you are coming tomorrow, right?"

I met Fulli along with the other Bhopa women, sitting in rows at the entrance to the Jaisalmer fort trying to sell imitation silver bangles to tourists. Sometimes they would sing. Other times they would just sit and drink tea. Business was bad. No one ever bought their bracelets.

After listening to her call out to me two days in a row, one afternoon I stopped to talk and bought everyone tea. Somehow Fulli pursuaded me to stay for three hours. Somehow she pursuaded me to come home with her to have tea and listen to her sing with her husband. It seemed harmless enough.

After three days we were eating off the same thali and taking care of her children together. Fulli cooked the subzee and I made the rotis. She would send her husband off to spend time with his friends playing drums or ravanta so that we could be alone. On the few nights when I made other plans and told Fulli that I wouldn't be coming to see her, she declared, If you don't eat, then I don't eat. No eating in a hotel for my sister!

And she meant it.

We were two little girls playing dress-up. It became very important to her that I stop wearing my salwar kameez and khurtas and start wearing bhopa clothing. My lack of jewlery upset her greatly. Fulli had nothing but was constantly giving me things. At first I thought these were all just ways for us to play together, for me to give her money in exchange for something (for sewing me two full sets of clothing and making me jewelery) , for her to teach me a skill (she was the only bhopa girl in the colony who could do the traditional beadwork). But the money only upset her. I bought boxes of ghee and sweets and fruit instead. And if she saw me out of my Bhopa clothing, she would get very upset and sulk terribly. It took me a while to realize that she was actually making me family. She was teaching me how bhopas treat their sisters -- with gift giving, communal cooking, childcare, physical affection. In fact, she didn't have new clothes made for me, but re-sewed her own worn clothing so they would fit my considerably larger frame. Just as her older sister, Rampatti had done for her.

Me, with my hands in the dough. Suman with the ghee pot on her head.

Everyone in town had something to say when they saw us together. Fulli and I would walk side by side through the market street back to the Colony. Suman would cry or pout if I didn't hold her hand. I learned to ignore all the questions and rude comments. Oh, you can't eat with those people... and Do you really drink the water? and You know, they only want your money. You shoudn't trust those women...

I learned to bury my skepticism. All my critical views on power dynamics and hierarchy and manipulation and just open my heart. It is not the worst sin to love too much or too freely. For the first time in my life, babies were falling asleep in my arms and I gained another sister. Fulli and I would laugh all the time -- at the kids, at the crazy colony dogs scavenging for food, at the rats (my special friends), at oursleves. My evenings passed quickly and it bacame hard to make plans to leave. but surely enough, as interviews dragged on, I began glancing at my backpack and giving things away again. Fulli knew what was happening and began to call me on my mobile from payphones during the day to ask where I was and make sure i was coming for dinner. We talked a bit about Africa. And Fulli said once, only mostly joking, okay, you take Suman with you. Another night she asked me, In Africa, everyone is black like me, no? Maybe you will become a kalliwalli. That would be very good. You find yourselve a dark man.

Don't worry, Fulli, if I ever find a man to marry, I bring him to meet you first. If he can live in the Colony; if he can learn to play Ravanta and sing Pabuji; if my sisters like him; only then will we get married. I say this in jest and realize its actually quite a good idea. That such a person would be impossible to find.

Pinky (Niccola) getting into the lentils