And Aya is not complaining! She lived in the southern Indian town of Mysore in the state of Karnataka for three years because she chose to study the Royal family of Mysore for her PHD in History and Anthropology. Following this, she flew to England for more research and stayed there for a year. Now six years after having started her PHD, Aya is getting ready to submit her work to the university of Edinborough.

It was while she was doing her research that Aya first heard of Mauritius. “Anything that concerned India was important and I knew that Mauritius had an important Indian community.” So it is no wonder then that everything Aya sees here is judged and compared to India. “I was pleasantly surprised to see that skin colour was not important to Mauritians. In India, everything has to do with how dark or how fair one is.” Aya talks of her surprise when she saw how easily people went off swimming here without worrying about getting sun burnt.

Aya is likewise impressed with the postal service, with the rubbish collectors and with the Internet connection in Mauritius. I was glad she did not understand my initial surprise when she expressed her satisfaction with the “service” in Mauritius!

She has so many good things to say about Mauritius, it’s really quite refreshing! “It’s so good to see people from different ethnic backgrounds mixing here while India is so obsessed with caste!” You see, Aya’s cleaning lady is of Indian origin. After her dad died, the mother married a Creole man and so Simi, the cleaning lady’s family is Indian on the one side and Creole on the other “and this is wonderful” says our Japanese lady.

Aya and her boyfriend love the food here but their favourite is Creole food. The last time they went to an Indian restaurant, they were told an Indian “thali” cost Rs 850… and they both burst out laughing! “I come from Tokyo and my boyfriend comes from London, two of the most expensive cities in the world and yet you can get Indian thalis cheaper there!” says Aya.

The couple will be spending an original Christmas and New Year here. They are looking forward to the fireworks on the 31st. Unless of course it rains… because apparently we can blame Aya’s boyfriend for the bad weather we’ve had because “wherever he goes, it rains!” Well, we know where to go when it rains now, don’t we?