How are you?

I talked to Rina recently and found out that no one in her family has had a job for the past couple of months. They are all living in one room in Dhaka, surviving on rice.

"How are you?" she asks me.

What would you say?

"Well, I've got more stuff than I know what to do with and am getting more by the minute (since it's Christmas and all). I've got so much in fact that I have to spend significant chunks of time organizing and ridding myself of it. I'm prospering and can be almost certain that I will never see a day of real need in my life. I have so many friends and family that I'm currently pretty stressed out trying to figure out how to stay in contact with them all. Lately, since I am off school for a month, I've been spending a lot of time sitting around thinking and drinking coffee."

Good thing I have no idea how to say anything like that in Bangla.

I tell her I am well. I tell her I am so sorry things are so hard for her. She says, with her fearless (or powerless might be a better characterization) optimism, "astay astay bhalo hobe" [slowly slowly things will be well]. I say that I love her, feeling very much like the hypocrite who tells the starving to be well fed. She she asks when I am coming back to Bangladesh. I don't know. I don't know. She reminds me (as was our joke while I was there) that I need to get married, have a baby, then move back so she can cook for me and take care of my child. Yes Rina, I'm working on that.

I think, "forgive me, forgive me for abandoning you, my sister."

I think, "I have to get off the phone so I can go buy Christmas presents..."