They’re baacck! As of Friday night, I am in the throws of a kidney
stone attack. I am high on pain killer and pain induced endorphins. It’s taken
me 15 minutes to write these three sentences. I am going to let Rae handle the
blog this week. I’ll just sit here and drool.
Well, we didn’t post our blog yesterday. I am feeling better so I guess
I can’t leave it just to Rae to write.
So, one of the things I think is interesting is the reaction they have
and the advice people give me. I will say that I am often surprised by the
basic lack of understanding about the human body and how it functions, even among
people that are quite educated. This is more than a belief in traditional
medicine because I also have found people who believe in and follow traditional
medicine who are not uniformed about how the body functions. At first I thought
it was just a language thing; even among the most educated, English is still a
second or third language. So, I thought confusing comments were probably
related to language differences. Now, over time, I have decided that, no, it’s
just a lack of understanding about how the body actually works.
Here’s one example. I was told today that rice is the primary cause of
kidney stones. According to this person, (well educated; family in the medical
profession) rice is the culprit because the grains of rice get stuck in the
kidney. I am not exactly sure what causes kidney stones. I have heard just
about everything now but in the States and here, but I am pretty sure it is not
because grains of rice have gotten stuck in the kidney.
Aside from my adventures in stone passing, this week has been fairly uneventful
from my perspective. Progress continues to mostly be two steps forward one step
back and one step sideways. Yes, Larry, I did curse myself when I said we had
turned the corner. The corner appears to have a fairly long trajectory. One of
the things I have noted is how difficult it is for many of our team members to
be truly happy for the success of others. It is as though, somehow, there is a
limited amount of good that can happen. If someone has a good thing happen to
them, it decreases the pool of good they can hopefully draw from.
An Indian friend of mine said, too often his countrymen are like a
bucket of crabs. It they can’t climb out of the bucket themselves, they for
sure are going to pull back any other crab that seems about to make it out.
This post sounds much more pessimistic than I really feel. Yes, there
are challenges, new ones arise nearly every day, but Rae and I believe we are
here for a purpose. If we continue to move forward with faith and positive
intention, everything will work out.
Now, the person you’ve been waiting for… here’s Rae!
The first of this week was pretty routine, but a friend came into Delhi
on Friday and I spent the day with her.
We went to a place that I have been before called Nature Bazaar. It features some of the same vendors, but
they do change a good number of the merchants and feature different things for
a period of time and then change after a while.
This one featured winter weaves.
One thing about India that you can always count on is that nothing is
quite what you think it will be and that was the case with Nature Bazaar on Friday. Their website said it was open from 11 am
until 8 pm so McArthur and I met up there just after 11 only to discover that
only some of the vendors were open and the actual hours were 3-8 that
particular day. The vendors that were
there were more than happy to show us things and sell us things even if they
weren’t officially open.
McArthur is married to an Indian man and lives in a village a few hours out
of Lucknow (about five hours East of Delhi).
Her husband runs a factory there.
Because living in a village is different than living in Delhi, western
apparel is not something she gets to wear often. November-March is the heavy wedding season
and she has many weddings to attend so she is always looking for things to wear
to weddings and events. Weddings in
India are VERY different from ones in the US.
Everyone who attends is dressed in the most elaborate gowns. I’m talking bold colors, elaborate beading,
beautiful silks, brocades, velvets; the more colorful and beaded the
better. So, we spent some time looking
at gowns and then ended up at Lajpat Nagar (a market I’ve talked about in
previous blogs) looking at booth after booth of fabrics and trims.
McArthur has
a tailor in her town that makes her gowns and then someone else who will do all
this elaborate embroidery and bead work.
Needless to say, it was fun and educational going with her to shop for
fabrics and trims. I’m going to post a
few pictures of some of the fabric stalls.
You don’t find fabric on rolls or bolts like we’re used to, but rather
folded and stacked from floor to ceiling. None of the picture show this, but almost
every stall has a large section of white fabrics that can be died the color or
combinations of colors you could want.
These white fabrics are laces, embroidered, appliqued, you name it you
can find it. I’ve done a very poor job of explaining how amazing it all
was. There are beautiful fabrics and
trims and McArthur and I spent many hours there being awed and inspired.
All over the market there are men setting at sewing machines and you
can take things to them and they will sew it while you wait. You can have sleeves added to something, hems
put in, kurta sets cut and sewn into the kurta style you want. If you are wanting them to make something
more elaborate then you would probably need to leave it for a day or two. I’m
hoping to find a tailor that I can have a few things made. I think I would like
to have one person that I could continue to go to rather than just anyone I
find sitting around the market.
(Something I still need to sort out.)
Phil has a couple of employees that are getting married and we are
being invited to those weddings, so I need to find a happy alternative that I
can wear to their weddings without being too plain and western, but something
that I would ever consider wearing anywhere but to one Indian wedding.
There is woman who started working for the people upstairs just a few
weeks ago. I’ve never spoken to her, but
she did say Namaste to me through my kitchen window one day. Well, about a week ago she came to my door
and gave Christina (my helper) and me each invitations to her daughter’s
wedding. The invitation is quite
elaborate and I’m thinking “ this women is cleaning our driveway and front step
and dusting the outside of my windows and, where do they get the money for
something so elaborate”. Anyway, I found
it strange that I would be invited to a strangers daughters wedding, but I’ve
been told it would be considered a great honor to them if we were to
attend. And, that 1000-1500 rupees would
be an appropriate gift. I forgot to tell
you that the invitations was entirely in Hindi and so we had to have parts of
it translated. We aren’t going to attend
this wedding, but will be going to the ones from Phil’s work. Guess I better get going on what to wear
since it is clearly a very big deal.
Well enough of my ramblings. Hope
you enjoy the pictures.
Namaste.
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