Tidbits, Trivias... Share what you want II - Page 17

First picture of nun who had baby when she didn't know she was pregnant (and named it Francis, after the Pope)

• The 33-year-old woman is nun with order of the Little Disciples of Jesus
• Sister Roxana initially claimed to have no idea that she was pregnant

• This is the first picture of nun and new mother Roxana Rodriguez.
  

  The 33-year-old woman, a nun with the order of the Little Disciples of Jesus, stunned her mother superior and local church chiefs after giving birth last week to a baby boy which she has called Francis, in honour of the current Pope.
  

  Sister Roxana initially claimed to have no idea that she was pregnant and thought her labour pains were 'stomach cramps' when an ambulance rushed her to hospital in severe pain after being called by fellow nuns when she collapsed at her nunnery.

  

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  Roxana Rodriguez, a nun with the order of the Little Disciples of Jesus, stunned her mother superior and local church chiefs after giving birth last week to a baby boy

  
  

  Her picture was published in the Italian daily newspaper Corriere Della Sera, who have carried out an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the birth of 9lb Francis and have spoken to the the social worker in the case.
  

  It shows Sister Roxana, who is currently in the first floor maternity unit at the San Camillo de Lellis hospital in Rieti, 50 miles north of Rome, as she took her vows and became a nun in the order last September.
  

  She told her social worker Anna Fontanella:'I am so happy. I feel more of a mother than a nun, I think that's obvious. I decided to call him Francis in honour of our wonderful south American Pope. I do not feel of guilt. I will be keeping him and bringing him up.

  
  

  'He is a gift from God. I am little worried about all the publicity, not only in Italy but in El Salvador and all over the world. Everyone is talking about this and I don't think I will be able to return to my home country, let alone Rieti.'

  Sister Roxana has written a letter of apology to the order's mother superior general Elvira Petaraca - the woman who in September she solemnly promised to follow her vows of 'chastity, poverty and obedience', the three main pillars of the Little Disciples of Jesus Order.
  

  The nun had only arrived in Italy last summer at the nunnery in Rieti and has told officials that the father is a man from her native El Salvador but she has so far not named him.
  

  Father Benedetto Falcetti, priest at the nearby St Michael's church in Rieti, said: 'It all happened last spring, around March or April time when she was back in El Salvador to get her passport renewed.
  

  'She has not said who the father is but I understand he is an, shall we say, old flame of hers from when she was younger. At some stage I expect she will tell the father that he has a son and they will be reunited but I don't know when that will be.'

  
  

  However not all sure Father Falcetti 's delight at the birth, apart from the anger of her superiors, sister Roxana has also upset her fellow nuns at the convent in Campomoro.

  One nun who answered the telephone at the convent and who asked not to be named said:'No we must certainly not be going to visit her. What she has done is not right at all. She has betrayed her vows. She will not be coming back here.'
  

  Since news of the birth was announced the hospital has been flooded with gifts for the nun and her new baby including nappies, clothes and money.
  

  Hospital director Pasquale Carducci said:'We have had to put extra security on the maternity wing because of all the interest. Like any new mum she is delighted but obviously this has created a great deal of clamour because she is a nun.
  

  'There have been calls and gifts from dozens of well wishers and she has passed on her thanks to all these people. Medically she and the baby are doing well and I expect them to be discharged by Tuesday at the latest.'
  

  Massimo Casciani, spokesman for the local bishop of Rieti, monsignor Delio Lucarelli, said: 'At some point the bishop will visit the nun but at the moment he has not yet seen here.
  

  'We shall be investigating the circumstances behind - the child could be the fruit of a consensual rapport but it could also have been as a result of violence. That's why we need to investigate properly.'

  
  Another Virgin delivered😉

Fully dressed Chennai women safe as they visit temples: M.P. Minister

A temple visit a day "fully dressed" keeps rapists away, or so it would seem from what Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Babulal Gaur has to say.

The 10-time MLA returned from a visit to Chennai apparently so impressed by the religiosity of the city's women that he now firmly believes this is the reason there are fewer sexual crimes there.

At a function on Thursday, Mr. Gaur, who has courted controversy before with his remarks on how marriage was not a contract as men were worshipped as gods by their wives, said women in Chennai were relatively safe as they "visit temples regularly" and are "fully dressed."

The Madhya Pradesh capital has one of the highest rates in India for crimes against women. In Chennai, in 2012, the rates of crimes against women " calculated by dividing the total number of crimes by the female population " was 19.32; for Bhopal district, it was 71.38, and for the whole of Madhya Pradesh, 71.38.

During the inauguration of the Ayodhya Nagar Police Station here on Thursday Mr. Gaur, who met top police officials in Chennai during his visit, said: "They said that women are religious and hence, they are fully clothed. That's why the crime rate there is lower than many other States."

Speaking to The Hindu later, Mr. Gaur added: "There is a cultural difference between Chennai and Bhopal" and "crimes such as chain snatching, eve teasing et cetera are low there. People are religious and women visit temples everyday. They are fully dressed and there is no vulgarity. It is also peaceful and Marwari businessmen have settled there for work because the environment is safe."

Asked by this reporter over the phone, Chennai's Joint Commissioner of Police (Intelligence) V. Varadaraju declined to comment on the religious aspect.

He said he and his colleagues had spoken to Mr. Gaur about the Women's Policing initiative. "We have 32 women's police stations which deal with all crimes against women. We engage professionals from NGOs for counselling. Also, there are mobile units which address crime at the earliest and also educate women about their rights. This initiative has changed the public's attitude."

M.P.'s Congress vice-president Manak Agrawal said Mr. Gaur's comments had insulted the way of life of women in Madhya Pradesh. "It seems the Home Minister has surrendered before anti-socials who openly play with the dignity of women and have thrived under BJP rule."

Police had recently launched the "Nirbhaya Women Patrol Vans" which monitor parks, colleges and crowded areas. The initiative has been criticised for moral policing. Bhopal has 37 police stations including a women's police station for a population of 2.4 million. The population served by the 135 stations of the Greater Chennai Police is 8.5 million.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/fully-dressed-chennai-women-safe-as-they-visit-temples-mp-minister/article5562517.ece

How bizarre a state home minister can think 😆

Too scared to turn left or right

There is a tremendous new energy on the streets of Delhi and, almost surreally, it is spreading to other parts of the country. The phenomenon is a tribute to the Aam Aadmi Party, a spunky political debutant already in government in the national Capital and with plans to contest over 400 Lok Sabha seats.

In retrospect, it is clear that the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP tapped into popular resentments bubbling under the surface. The emotions found release with Mr. Kejriwal's promise of systemic overhaul and transformative politics. The stampeding crowds at the AAP's offices, the rush of the who's who to join its rolls and the frightened responses of its political rivals, all speak to the newcomer's emergence as a harbinger of hope in a political environment sullied by greed, graft, waste and incompetence.

Great expectations

Yet the danger with excessive expectation is that it can quickly turn into disillusionment and despair. The AAP faces two potential pitfalls. First is its near free-for-all style of governance, evident in such hasty and baffling decisions as turning the Delhi Secretariat into a Janata durbar (since dropped) and calling upon people to sting corrupt officers. Without a proper structure and discipline, these solutions can degenerate into tools of vigilantism, leading to a blurring of lines between liberty and licence.

The second is the AAP's refusal to define itself ideologically. In an interview to CNN-IBN, the AAP's national executive member, Yogendra Yadav, denied that the party was socialist and said that the "binaries of the 20th century, either Left or Right, do not make sense". An entry in the AAP website, now removed, had ridiculed the demand for ideological clarity, saying ideology was for pundits whereas the AAP saw itself as solution-based, open to using solutions from the Left and the Right.

The attractions of a solution-based, commonsensical approach are undoubtedly enormous, especially to audiences fatigued by the opportunistic aspects of politics. It is also true that there is a jaded, outmoded feel to politics compartmentalised as Right or Left; secular or communal. More so when parties and politicians themselves feel no discomfort in crossing the divide, often for the flimsiest of reasons.

But can a party function without a sense of history, without an understanding of its own roots and why and how it has evolved to its present? The Anna movement had a strongly regressive streak. The AAP has moved away to saner positions without frontally confronting and interrogating that past. The AAP's army of supporters may want to treat ideology as baggage and see the party as a grand standalone phenomenon, but that would be delusional because history has lessons to offer to forget which is to risk repeating it with tragic consequences.

Previous movements

Consider the fate of India's previous anti-corruption movements. Two kinds of popular movements have led to party formation in India " those based on self-respect and identity and the more pan-national ones focussed on political corruption and misrule. The former category is made up of largely regional parties such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

In the second category fall a series of anti-corruption mobilisations of which two are regarded as milestones in Indian political history " the Total Revolution call of 1974-1975 and the anti-Bofors movement of 1988-1989.

Led by Jaya Prakash Narayan and V.P. Singh respectively, both movements targeted the Congress, and the end result of each formed a political alliance " the 1977 umbrella Janata Party and the 1989 Janata Dal coalition " that eventually disintegrated because the leadership mistakenly believed that ideology could be brushed under the carpet. Both accommodated the RSS, believing its involvement to be necessary to fight the corrupt' congress. But there is a curious back story to this story.

The rightward tilt of the two movements can be traced back to 1971 when the Opposition banded together into a Grand Alliance to fight Indira Gandhi's destructive' politics. That alliance was routed.

However, JP's 1974 Total Revolution call and the then ongoing student protests in Gujarat provided the perfect backdrop for the Grand Alliance constituents to regroup. JP gave the constituents credibility and they gave his movement political muscle. This mutual support resulted in the formation, in 1974 itself, of the Janata Morcha, a loose coalition that went on to defeat the congress in the 1975 Gujarat assembly election. This setback, coupled with her unseating from the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat, led Indira Gandhi to impose the Emergency.

The 1971 Grand Alliance was formed by the Congress (Organisation), the Swatantra Party, the Jan Sangh and the Praja and Samyukta Socialist Parties. The Congress (O) was backed by big business, the princely class and the media. The Swatantra Party drew its membership from the princes, wealthy industrialists and extreme right-wing elements. Driven by the RSS, the Jan Sangh had a clearly spelt-out Hindu nationalist goal. The Socialist parties joined this grouping because like the rest they abhorred Indira Gandhi and saw her policies as destructively leftist. The 1974-1975 Janata Morcha, which began as a coordination front for JP, consisted of the Congress (O), the Jan Sangh, the Socialist Party (formed by the merger of the two socialist parties) and the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD). The BLD in turn was a coalition of seven parties, among them the Charan Singh-led Bharatiya Kranti Dal and the Swatantra Party. The 1977 Janata Party was a product of the merger of the Congress (O), the Jan Sangh, the Bharatiya Lok Dal and the Socialist Party.

Confusing? Far from it, what the narrative establishes is a rightwing continuum. The 1971 Grand Alliance, the 1974-1975 Janata Morcha and the 1977 Janata Party all had roughly the same constituents. The RSS provided the logistical support for each of these formations as it would do more than a decade later for the Janata Dal. Indeed, by 1989, the leading lights of the Janata movement had faded away. But, as before, the RSS and its political offshoot, now the Bharatiya Janata Party, would drive the anti-corruption movement.

JP believed that the RSS had changed. He said in March 1975: "I have to admit that the RSS has undergone a change and is still changing... By including these organisations in the movement for Total Revolution, I have made an attempt to decommunalise them and now they are not communal.." Indira Gandhi's response to this was typically caustic: "Anybody who has read the speeches of RSS leaders can judge for himself ... Many of them are positively against certain communities in India... Such forces have been given respectability. They have been given an opportunity to reach out to areas where they had no foothold before. This is extremely dangerous to the future of the country.." (Source: Ajit Bhattacharjee; Unfinished Revolution).

JP's blinkered view of the fight against corruption led to the inevitable. The socialists opposed the Jan Sangh's continuing allegiance to the RSS, resulting in the collapse of the Janata Government. The fall of the V.P. Singh Government in 1989 was almost an action replay, with VP realising too late that his accommodation of the RSS and the BJP gave the latter credibility and a chance to revive itself post its 1984 debacle. The clash of ideologies was written into the script.

Three interesting facts emerge from this. All pan-national anti-corruption movements so far have been against the Congress. All of them have had a strong right-wing content which led them to self-destruct. The Jan Sangh/BJP gained in respect and influence by associating with these movements.

The Anna movement was uncannily similar to the earlier anti-corruption movements. The JP and Anna movements sought to overthrow the system and were set against the same background of corruption, runaway inflation and an explosion of public anger against those in power. V.P. Singh's anti-Bofors campaign struck a powerful chord with the people in much the same way as did today's 2G and other scandals. And like his predecessors, Anna chose to be ideology-neutral, associating himself with Baba Ramdev and holding up Narendra Modi as the ideal Chief Minister. His protg Kiran Bedi has since come out in open support of Mr. Modi.

Baba Ramdev was Mr. Kejriwal's first port of call on his anti-corruption journey. It was later that he turned to Anna. But, since forming the AAP, Mr. Kejriwal has evolved in a more progressive direction, which is surely the reason why someone like Mallika Sarabhai has joined the party. But the AAP also harbours the very regressive and gender-insensitive Kumar Vishwas, the video recordings of whose comic shows make for cringe-inducing viewing.

The fight against corruption is critically important. But the neglect of ideology can prove ruinous for this cause. The AAP has a historic responsibility to make a clean break from the past and emerge as a party that can combine systemic overhaul with a progressive, clearly-articulated vision.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/too-scared-to-turn-left-or-right/article5583235.ece?homepage=true

Look-alike college friends miles from home find out they're SISTERS after discovering they have the same sperm donor dad

• Mikayla Stern-Ellis met Emily Nappi while searching for a roommate for her freshman year at Tulane
• While the freshmen never ended up rooming together, they became friends after meeting on campus
• Over winter break, the two discovered that they were sisters when their sperm donor father's number matched

n a plot twist straight out of the Parent Trap, two freshmen met and became friends at college before discovering that they're half-sisters through a common sperm-donor father.

Tulane University student Mikayla Stern-Ellis, 19, befriended fellow-Californian Emily Nappi, 18, but it wasn't just a West Coast upbringing that the two shared.

Mikayla told the Tulane Hullabaloo that she first made contact with Emily last summer while searching for a possible roommate on Facebook.

'There was an online survey, and we were both interested in Wall [Residential College],' Mikayla said. 'I was looking at the survey, and I was looking at Emily's answers and I saw that we had a lot in common.'

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What are the chances! Emily Nappi (left) and Mikayla Stern-Ellis (right) met during their freshman year at Tulane and discovered they shared the same sperm donor father

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Surprise sisters: Biological half-sisters Mikayla (left) and Emily (right) are both Californians attending Tulane

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Chance meeting: The two met during their first year at Tulane University. They started talking the summer before freshman year while searching for roommates. Above, Mikayla and her mom Debra at the New Orleans campus

By then, Emily had already secured a roommate but the two continued to talk and became fast friends when they met in person on the New Orleans, Louisiana campus this fall.

Both quickly figured out that they were conceived by a donation from an anonymous donor. But neither thought much of it, even when they figured out that both of their donors were Colombian.

When the girls went home for winter break, Mikayla told her parents about her new friend with whom she had so much in common.

Mikayla's mother Heidi remembers looking through the donor list two decades ago and while there were some 1,000 donors on the list, she doesn't remember any others with Colombian ethnicity.

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Different moms: On the left, Mikyala is pictured with mom Debra. On the left, Emily with mom Italia at high school graduation

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Not so cocky: Despite this happy mugshot, People reports that Justin was later seen 'crying his eyes out' on Thursday in Miami

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Couldn't stand still: The Beauty And A Beat singer fidgeted as he stood in front of a sheriff's badge

😆

New book claims THIS picture proves Hitler escaped his Berlin bunker and died in South America in 1984 aged 95

• Fuhrer 'fled to Argentina and then Paraguay before settling in Brazil'
  
• Hunted for treasure with a map given to him by Vatican allies, book claims
• Author Simoni Renee Guerreiro Dias claims fascist actually died aged 95
• Claims he had a black girlfriend to disguise his fascist background
• Says her suspicions increased after she photoshopped a moustache onto the grainy picture and compared it to photos of the Fuhrer

He is believed to have died after shooting himself in a Berlin bunker in 1945 when he realised Germany had lost World War II.

But a startling new book claims Adolf Hitler actually escaped his hideout and died incognito in 1984 in a small town near Brazil's border with Bolivia - and it can be proved by a picture.

Not only that, but the author believes the Fuhrer fled to Argentina and then Paraguay before settling in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso to hunt for buried treasure - with a map given to him by Vatican allies, according to its author.

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Simoni Renee Guerreiro Dias claims this picture proves Hitler lived in the small town of Nossa Senhora do Livramento with his girlfriend, Cutinga

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Old clothes meant to be worn by the Fuhrer: An author claims the fascist actually died aged 95

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German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler 'went to Brazil to hunt for treasure'

As part of his elaborate ruse to escape detection, he also had a relationship with a black woman called Cutinga, which was meant to prove that he could not be the dictator who hated anyone who did not fit his Aryan ideal, the book claims.

Post-graduate student Simoni Renee Guerreiro Dias has outlined her bizarre theory, claiming the fascist actually died aged 95.

The book, titled 'Hitler in Brazil - His Life and His Death', challenges the accepted view that the dictator shot himself in his Berlin bunker on April 30 1945.

She claims he may have lived as Adolf Leipzig in the small town of Nossa Senhora do Livramento, 30 miles from the state capital Cuiaba.

Simoni, a Brazilian who comes from Cuiaba, says Leipzig was known locally as the 'Old German.'

Simoni is now planning to use DNA tests using a relative of Hitler living in Israel, after been given permission to exhume Adolf Leipzig's remains from his alleged final resting place in Nossa Senhora do Livramento.

The journalism student has linked the Fuhrer's alleged arrival in the area to a Vatican offer of ownership rights over buried Jesuit treasure in a cave near his adopted home.

She points out in her book Leipzig was the birthplace of Hitler's favourite composer Bach.

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Hitler's Bunker in the Chancellery, Berlin, where many believe he shot himself

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The supposed burial site: The Fuhrer 'fled to Argentina and then Paraguay before settling in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso'

She says her suspicions about Adolf Leipzig increased after she photoshopped a moustache on to the grainy picture she obtained of him and compared it to photos of the Nazi leader.

According to Simoni, an unidentified Polish nun recognised an elderly man due to have an op at a hospital in Cuiaba in the early eighties as Hitler and demanded he leave - but was reprimanded by a superior who claimed he was there on Vatican orders.

Academics in Brazil have also rubbished the theory Hitler lived and died in Nossa Senhora do Livramento.

THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES SURROUNDING HITLER'S DEATH

Conspiracy theorists have long argued Hitler escaped from Germany and fled to south America.

Authors Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan claimed in a 2011 book Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, that the Fuhrer fled with his mistress Eva Braun to Patagonia and had two daughters before dying in 1962 aged 73.

The claims about Hitler's life in Argentina were ridiculed by historian Guy Walters, who described them as '2,000 per cent rubbish' when the book was published.

He added: 'It's an absolute disgrace. There's no substance to it at all. It appeals to the deluded fantasies of conspiracy theorists and has no place whatsoever in historical research.'

Candido Moreira Rodrigues, a history professor at Mato Grosso's Federal University said: 'There's nothing new in people who claim to be historians coming up with the most far-reaching theories about Hitler supposedly living in south America and subsequently dying in one of the countries in this region.'

Ten of thousands of Nazis escaped after the war, including the notorious Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele.

Investigators probing Hitler's demise were hampered by the lack of any physical evidence for his death.

Fantasists were given added ammunition he didn't die in his Berlin bunker when 2009 DNA tests on skull fragments found near the bunker, believed to be his, turned out to belong to a woman.

Rochus Misch, a former bodyguard of Adolf Hitler who has been named as the last man to see the Fuhrer alive during his final hours in Germany, died last September aged 96.

Misch, who lived with Hitler and his mistress in their underground refuge as the allies closed in, told before his death he saw Hitler slumped with his head on the table after hearing a gunshot behind his closed door.

Source: Dailymail

From cocktail parties to cow-pat cakes: The Californian party girl, 41, who became a traditional Indian housewife after meeting farmer husband, 25, on Facebook

• Adriana Peral, 41, met Mukesh Kumar, 25, online in February last year
• She travelled to Haryana, India, in August and wed within months
• The Californian now lives in a remote farm house 30 minutes drive town
• She has no inside toilet, a bucket for a shower shared with cows
• Mother-of-one said leaving her daughter, 25, in the U.S. was traumatic
• Mr and Mrs Kumar now plan to have children of their own

An American woman has ditched her comfortable, fun-loving Californian lifestyle to become a traditional housewife in rural India.

Adriana Peral, 41, took a leap of faith last August when she flew to the sub continent to meet a man young enough to be her son who she had fallen in love with over Facebook.

Within months she was married to Mukesh Kumar, 25, and had assumed her new role as a doting housewife - sweeping, cooking, cleaning and mucking in on the family's farm in an impoverished rural community in Haryana, India.

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Transformation: Adriana Peral, seen at a nightclub in Merced, California, left, swapped parties for a quieter life in India after travelling to the subcontinent to marry a man she met on Facebook

But despite the radical lifestyle change, she insists she is happier than ever.

The former receptionist at an acupuncture centre said: 'I love my life here with Mukesh - I wouldn't exchange it for anything in the world.'

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In love: Adriana Peral, 41, and her husband Mukesh Kumar, 25, met and fell in love online

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Rural: The pace of life in the remote rural village of Panipat, India, is a far cry from the modern homelife Adriana Peral, left behind in California

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Home comforts: Adriana Peral makes some tea for her husband and in-laws, left, and sweeps the courtyard , right, at her house in a village in Panipat, India, during a typical day as a housewife

Mrs Kumar - who admits she had plenty of relationships back in the U.S., but had never found true love - began talking with Mukesh, sixteen years her junior, on the social networking site in February.

Over the next few months the pair grew closer, until one evening Mukesh unexpectedly called.

She explained: 'Mukesh declared his love to me right there and then on the phone. I didn't know how to react, and at first just laughed it off.

'But after we talked some more, I realised he was serious and so I said if you win my heart, I will consider marrying you. We spoke for around three more weeks and it was during that time I decided I wanted to move to India to be with him.'

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Change of pace: Adriana Peral stands beside a cow at the front yard of her house in a village in Panipat, India, as she gets used to a rural existance

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Culture shock: Adriana Peral stands in front of house old Californian home, left, and outside the bed room of her house in a village in Panipat, India, right

Leaving behind her 25-year-old daughter Lucy Cortez was a heart-wrenching moment, with many friends and family fearing for her safety in India.

Mrs Kumar, whose parents moved to the U.S. from Mexico, said: 'When I walked in and told everyone I had decided to leave and move to India, they were in complete shock.

'My daughter was crying, she was in floods of tears. She was worried something bad would happen to me.

'She said India was unsafe for women. I had to turn to her and reassure her everything would be alright.

'Some people thought Mukesh was a fake, an online scam and that he didn't really exist. I can't describe the moment I finally saw him at the arrivals gate at Indira Gandhi airport - it was a big relief to finally see him in person.'

But she admits nothing had prepared her for the culture shock she was about to experience.

Her new home was a modest farm house in Popran, a large village over 30 minutes drive from the nearest town.

Mrs Kumar found the family used cow pat cakes, made by drying out the excrement of the families herd, as fuel.

And with no inside toilet, a bucket for a shower and cows roaming around the communal area, the lack of amenities was tough to adapt to.

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Day to day: Adriana Peral gets on with the chores at home in her new front yard - a far cry from the Californian house

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Home from home: Adriana Peral, pictured with her husband Mukesh Kumar while enjoying their lunch at their house in a village in Panipat, India, says she has no regrets about leaving California

She added: 'When I first stepped off the plane it was a complete culture shock.

'It is stricter here - women have to cover up more.

'In Haryana many people live off the land, there are few basic amenities. We cook on a stove which is outside, and my living room doubles as the place where we store the cows at night.

'We sometimes use the bull and cart to ride around, and the toilet is a communal one. The shower is just a bucket in a closet sized room with a hole in the floor.

'If people back home could see where I am living they would think I am crazy.

'At first it was a real struggle, but soon you realise you don't need a fancy toilet or power shower to be happy.'

One of the biggest challenges, says Adriana, was being accepted among the largely impoverished locals.

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Then and now: Adriana Peral, pictured during her younger days in Merced, California, left, now lives in a remote rural village in India, where she has adopted the lifestyle of a traditional Indian housewife, right

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Family: Adriana Peral and her mother-in-law Bimla Devi share a moment together at the front yard of their house in a village in Panipat, India

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Home: Adriana Peral shares this home in a village in Panipat, India, with husband Mukesh Kumar

Mrs Kumar, who immediately ditched her favoured high heels and adopted sandals, saree and headdress, said: 'Foreigners are rarely seen in the villages here, and wherever I went a crowd would develop all wanting to catch a glimpse of this outsider.

'Over time I began to get used to it. It was a bit like being a celebrity, but they have accepted me as one of their own now.

'A big part of that was dressing like they do and trying to speak some Hindi. In the U.S. I loved wearing high heels and dressing up for a night out at a club with my friends, but here things are more low key.

'You can't get any of the make-up I'm used to using and women generally don't apply much of it anyway, it is an unnecessary cost.

'The locals respond when you try and fit in and live as they live.'

In November 2013 Mukesh and Adriana tied the knot in a traditional Hindu ceremony, which made headlines in India's national Hindi language media.

The event was a major occasion within the conservative community too - where women are still often expected to be doting housewives upon marriage and normally wed within their own religion and caste.

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Culture: Adriana Peral and Mukesh Kumar celebrate their wedding in Panipat, India, in traditional style

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Bull power: Adriana Peral and her husband Mukesh Kumar enjoy a buffalo cart ride through the fields near their village in rural India

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Leg power: Adriana Peral, works out in the gym in Merced, California

Mukesh, who speaks broken English, but is learning from his new wife, said: 'Adriana is a good wife.

'She is always doing housework and if my mum is doing dishes she say, "No, I want to do - it is my job".

'I am very happy to marry with her. It is true love.'

Crucially for Mrs Kumar, her mother-in-law Bimla Devi, 70, has given the pair her blessings - and even endorsed her housewife skills.

Speaking in Hindi, Bimla said: 'I am happy my son married a foreigner. She respects me. If he had married a girl from our village, she would probably not have respected me as much as Adriana does.

'She works all the house too, I like her a lot.'

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Bedtime reading: A hindi version of The Bible is seen along with some traditional make-up items at Adriana Peral and Mukesh Kumar's bedroom

The couple now plan to have children together and build a family in India, but Adriana isn't ruling out returning to the US one day.

She said: 'I am actually planning to have children with Mukesh and my mother-in-law even wants me to have two.

'I get on really well with all the family, Mukesh's brothers and sisters, his uncles - they have all taken me to their hearts.

'If I could bring the American food and luxuries here it would be perfect. But one day we would like to return to America with our family.

'The people of India are very loving and this does feel like a second home now.

source: dailymail