I'm explaining to you so I can confuse you…

We have commented before about how India is a land of contradictions in nearly any way you can imagine: rich and poor; beauty or the Taj and other magnificent structures and hovels that are in complete disorder; spectacular natural beauty and desolation; love of rules and order and chaos. Well, today I am going to start out by talking about another of those contradictions.

The US has anti-smoking commercials, but they are nothing compared to the frequency and in some cases their graphic depiction of physical consequences of smoking. Any time someone smokes on TV there is a banner that runs stating neither the actors nor the channel endorse smoking. At the movies, before the movie starts and during intermission (every movie has intermission) anti-smoking ads are run. The government has raised taxes to an amazingly high level and raises them with each budget cycle. They walk that fine line of officially discouraging smoking and taxing it as much as possible without really decreasing the number of smokers (wouldn’t want to lose that tax revenue). I don’t know if smokers face the public stigma smokers in the US face. Like in the US, smoking is banned in all public spaces but there are some private buildings where companies still allow smoking in individual offices.

It’s not just cigarettes either, paan masala or paan (traditionally betel leaves and areca nut; now betel leaves mixed with or without areca nut and chewing tobacco, coconut and fruit wrapped in leaves) has been used for years as a stimulant. Its use is generally considered vulgar and unclean because the juice of the mix with tobacco is spat out periodically as it is chewed. Tobacco and paan stands are most often found where laborers live and work.  However, some fine restaurants serve paan (without the tobacco) as an after dinner treat to assist with digestion and increase energy. I guess without the tobacco, you can at least swallow the juice without getting nauseated, so the spitting of the juices isn’t an issue. I have seen no one smoking cigars or pipes, although there must be some who do. In certain parts of society, hookahs or water pipes are popular, but there is no public smoking in those cases as hookah smoking occurs in private residences or speciality “bars”.

Clearly tobacco plays a mixed place in society. Officially sanctioned but privately supported. Nothing typifies this more than an article I read in Times of India this past week. As noted tobacco is officially vilified. However, ITC, Imperial Tobacco Company, was named as the most admired company in India. To be totally fair, ITC has now expanded far beyond its tobacco roots (see what I did there?). It is now a vast conglomerate that has companies in tea, hotels, greeting cards, chemicals, and who knows what all. There is not much really simple in India: a land of contradictions.

There is one more slight contradiction I want to talk about. We have written before about traffic and the craziness that can arise. Friday we were on our way to dinner with our friends the Slocombes when we came upon and passed the horse and cart in the pictures below. You do see animal drawn carts fairly frequently but in this case, as you can see, the horse was running at a full gallop, which is not usual. An $80,000 Mercedes Benz in one lane; a horse drawn cart in the other. Yup, contradictions.

Now here is Rae. No contradictions there, she is just simply wonderful!

In past blontries we’ve talked about Phil’s adventure at the hospital and my resulting aversion to ever going there.  I frequently say “if something happens, just let me die, don’t take me to the hospital”.  Well related to that, I’ll be adding my two cents worth about getting to the hospital.  Most ambulances are about the size of a Toyota van, a few are larger and more like the ones we see in the US.  All ambulances are usually marked and have a siren, but not all have flashing lights.  With no flashing lights it is hard to figure out where they are sometimes.  Here’s the thing that I find so interesting, and usually sad.  There are no laws in place, or if there is a law it’s never respected or enforced, requiring cars to move over and let them through. 

Cars can be broken down on the road and somehow cars part, make their way around them and move on.  But when there’s a siren behind them they do not budge.  There is simply no respect for the fact that there might be someone dying inside that ambulance, and time is critical.  There was a video that came out that showed the problem of trying to get to the hospital via ambulance.  There have been cases of ambulances not even being able to get out of there parking place to go on a call.  Drivers think nothing of parking in front of an ambulance, thus blocking them in.  Ambulance drivers can do nothing but wait until the owner returns and moves their car. Sometimes they’ve sat there for up to ½ hour waiting to begin their call.  As a result of all this disregard many people die just trying to get to the hospital.

Many times I’ve heard a siren behind us for quite a long time before it ever makes its way to us. I’ve commented multiple times to our driver about how terrible it is that people don’t make way for ambulances.  I’ve noticed that he tries to get us moved so we are not the ones blocking an ambulance.  Don’t know if he does this if I’m not in the car, but I’m glad he does it when I’m in the car.  I know that if he were to pull over prior to the ambulance reaching us the space he created would simply be filled in by multiple other cars.  So, we have to wait for the ambulance to reach us before we attempt to move for it.  Sometimes that still doesn’t help as other cars just pull into the space we’ve created.  Sad and frustrating.  Poor ambulance drivers and poor passengers. 

I’ve learned that it is slow, if not impossible to change generations of behaviour and attitude.  So, my parting words are, “don’t take, or try to take, me to the hospital, just let me die”.  I’d rather die at home than in an Indian ambulance stuck on the road. 

With that cheery note, I wish you all…

Namaste.                         

Eight days a week, Is not enough to show I care…

Hi all, I hope the week has been a good one for you. It has been a busy one here, at least for me; Rae may have a different perspective. Work is going well but very busy. August and September are the busiest months of the year on the campus. Even though we start groups all during the year, because school starting in August and September is normal in India, this is also the time that students just starting college (called Freshers here) are also most likely to start. Working adults seem to come anytime during the year, but Freshers cluster in August/September. Anyway, you combine our busiest time of the year with the reduced admissions staff I have mentioned before and things have been a hoppin’.

How busy we've been reminds me of an aspect to life in India, we haven’t written about (I think). Most people in India work six days a week; getting to work on five days is quite a benefit. A question you frequently hear when people talk with each other about work is, “Are you six day working or five?” Saturdays are sometimes only half days but often they are also full work days. I was speaking to someone about this once and he said, “A five-day work week is for established, successful countries. India is still a poor country so we have to have six days working.”

I will say that in contrast to the number of days and hours a day they work, the quality of those hours is sometimes quite low. My observation is individual productivity is low in India even with the many hours spent. Individual initiative is relatively low as is the accepted pace of work. It almost seems as if people are saying, well, I may to be at work but that doesn't mean I actually have to do much. Kind of like the quote attributed to Woody Allen, “80% of life is showing up.”

I don’t know, actually, how they get the basic functions of life accomplished here. In cities like Delhi or Mumbai, people often work until 7:00. Additionally, it is not unusual for people to commute an hour and half to two hours each way. You add to the fact that in most families both parents work and you can see what I mean about getting the basic functions of life accomplished. Where's the time? I know in the history of the world, people constantly having to work to survive has been the norm. However, I have been spoiled living my life in the US and in Japan after they had made the shift from six to five day work week. I admire those who not only make a living but somehow thrive in such a situation.

Shifting gears with no attempt at a segue….  Rae has become so desperate, not having any of her daughters or grand-daughters nearby, that I ended up painting her toenails yesterday (see the picture below). I must be getting in touch with my feminine side - she didn’t even have to strip the polish and start over. Well, I don’t know for a fact she didn’t get up in the middle of the night and do it.

Well, with that I will turn the blontry over to Rae. Who looks fabulous, if I do say so myself.

Well, at least my toenails look fabulous.  Thanks Phil for helping a girl out.  My toes keep getting farther away?????

This week has been uneventful, in fact we didn’t even go out on Saturday, just stayed home and relaxed.  Since we weren’t going anywhere I decided to take the time and make German pancakes.  My “oh so wonderful” toaster oven holds my 9x13 pan but with little space to spare.  I’ve included two picture of the surprises I found when I opened the oven.  First, German pancakes touching the sides and nearly the top of the oven and second the color.  Things always bake in less time, even with the heat set lower than the recipe calls for.  I was expecting to turn the pan, to avoid the burning that takes place at the back of the oven, and let them cook a bit longer.  Surprise! No more time needed, they were definitely cooked enough.  Viola, blackened pancakes.  We cut off the burned and they tasted okay.

I’ve tried so many things to make my toaster oven work better.  There is no way to turn off the top element which seems to be hotter than the bottom one.  Even with pans placed on the lowest rack setting, the top tends to burn and the bottom needs more cooking.  I’ve taken the broiler pan, turned it upside down and places it at the top of the oven to block the element, and that seems to have helped. 

Today I made rolls, I guess I’m determined to figure this thing out, and so it was time for another experiment.  After pondering the burning at the back I decided that I’d try moving the pan back further in the oven to see if less heat flow up the back would help.  Seems to be better.  I’m sure some of you are thinking “well, I could have told her that a long time ago”.  While they still were darker than I wanted, and still took less time to cook that I expected, they were more evenly cooked.  Maybe by the time we are ready to leave here I’ll finally have this thing figured out.  I know how I’d like to figure it out, it’s called the trash. 

Well, enough about my cooking headaches.  Time to focus on some more positive things. I’ve started making a list of some of the things that I appreciate about living here.  So, I’ll share a few of those here.

1. Mangoes.  There are several varieties, and I love them all.  I’ve really become a fan of them.
2. The fabrics.  They’re so beautiful and by US standards they’re cheap.
3.  I can call the grocery store and have my groceries delivered.  Sometimes the language barrier results in a few surprises, but it’s still nice.
4. There are a variety of restaurants that deliver for free.  This makes for a very relaxing Saturday at home.
5.  Reserve seats at the movies.
6. Naan and Dal, and Momos and several other Indian dishes that are so tasty.

 

These are just some of the things that I appreciate about living here.

Well, that’s it for me and my exciting week.

Namaste.                         

Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jayehe Bharata bhagya vidhata…

The title to this week’s blontry is the first stanza of the Indian national anthem. I picked that as the title this week because Friday was Indian Independence Day and so it seemed appropriate to talk about. Actually I kinda have the national anthem running through my head these days. I have heard it sung three or four times since Thursday and it had stuck with me.

There is controversy about the origins of the anthem. Some say it was written in honor of King George, who was making a visit to India. Many people believe that is the ruler mentioned in the lyrics. However the man who wrote the original poem from which the lyrics are adapted clearly has stated they weren’t written about “…George V, George VI, or any other George.” Who the ruler actually refers to is open to interpretation. Since the vast majority of Indian citizens are Hindu, most of the population probably assume it means Shiva, Vishnu, Shakti, or whichever god their family particularly worships; Muslim’s of course would identify with Allah; and so forth: each person identifying the ruler in light of his or her own religious perspective. I guess for those who have no religion, the ruler could even be King George or some other mortal leader. In that sense it is the perfect song for India and its multi-culturalism.

Here is an English translation of the lyrics:

Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
Dispenser of India's destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindhu, Gujarat and Maratha,
Of the Dravida, Utkala and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
mingles in the music of Yamuna and Ganga and is
chanted by the waves of the Indian Ocean.
They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
Thou dispenser of India's destiny.
Victory, victory, victory to thee.

It’s actually kind of cool, I think, that the national anthem was written in a version of Sanskrit such that it can be sung without change in nearly all if not all the official languages (other than English) throughout India. It would sound a little different depending on how those Sanskrit characters were pronounced, but still it can be sung. This might seem like a small thing in the US when there is only the official language of English. But in a country where there are more than 20 official languages and fair amount of chauvinism about the “rightness” of their local language, to have everyone sing in his or her own language is a big deal.

For those who would like to hear the anthem sung, here is a video of it being sung at a meeting at our Church on Friday.

As you might expect, saffron, white, and green is as ubiquitous here around Independence Day as red, white, and blue are in the US for the 4th of July. People often wear those colors, particularly on the 15th. Stores decorate with those colors as well. Below are a couple of pictures from a mall we frequent that show the use of the Indian Tri-color in decorations.

Well, that’s it for me. Here’s Rae.

Just a quick note about the activity at the church on Friday.  Because it was Independence Day and most people had the day off, the district decided to have a missionary activity. Even district wide they were projecting an attendance of around 50 people.  When Phil and I arrived just a couple of minutes late (we’re becoming Indian) most of the chapel was already full.  As in true Indian style as the meeting progressed more people filtered in and more chairs had to be brought in.  There ended up being 246 people attend the activity.  It was inspiring to me to see that many people come and be so excited about sharing the gospel.  The church is growing here in India. 

Another note about the anthem that they sang at the close of the activity.  I will give the people here credit for being enthusiastic singers, but usually their enthusiasm is expressed in their own individual key rather than one unified key. Don’t know if the recording really captures this, but it really was beautiful and shockingly in the same key.  I loved hearing it and was moved as I listened to them sing. 

As seems to be my contribution lately, I will share a few random thoughts and pictures.  I’ve talked before about how amazed I am at the size of loads that are carried on the backs of bicycles.  Here are a couple of pictures that will help illustrate. 

These two shots are of a bicycle moving at least a dozen boxes.  I don’t know what was in them or how heavy each box was, but it was an impressive load.  It is taken from the car as we are passing, so not the greatest photos but you should be used to that by now. 

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I’ve never seen trash trucks, at least not like we have back home.  Our trash goes out each day to the guard house and someone travels our neighbourhood, on a bicycle and collects it into a much larger bag.  These bags are later gone through and the trash that has value is removed and sold by the collector.  This is how they make their living.  We don’t pay anything for trash pick-up. These two pictures show a guy hauling a bag that looks like those I’ve mentioned above.  I’m not sure if his is full of garbage but that is what they look like.  It is not uncommon to see someone with two, three or even 4 of these bags loaded behind them. 

My third picture/thought is of a barber set up.  Sometimes our driver brings us into our neighbourhood a back way.  This is a neighborhood street and like most neighborhood streets is very narrow and requires some close maneuvering.  During the day there are always two men/barbers set up next to the wall.  When it is dark there is no sign of them.  Their set up consists of a very small table, a mirror, either propped up or hung on the wall, a chair and their tools.  There is no sign of electricity.  This like most of my shots are taken from a moving car so not the best.  (Further down that same street, along that same wall, there are usually two or three guys sorting through some of those bags of garbage I mentioned earlier.  I’ll try to get a poor quality picture of them some time.)

Yesterday I had to be back at the Vasant Vihar building again for a district training that we were doing for some new YW leaders.  It is not unusual to see cows in that neighbourhood.  There is a park close to the church building and in one corner of the park is a small Dump.  The cows go to the dump to sort through for food.  Within a half block of leaving the building we saw 5 or 6 cows, probably headed to the park.  Here is a picture of one of those guys.  They are not intimidated at all by the traffic and just calmly make their way along. Guess they know no one would dare hit them. 

One last thing to share.  This is not a happy note so not a good way to end, but wanted to mention it.   We have a guard that has been our main guard.  He is here almost every day, even most weekends.  He stays in a room at the back of the property.  There is usually a different guard for nights, some weekends and the times when our guard has gone home to be with his family.  Last Wednesday he was at the gate in the morning, but I guess not feeling well so he went home and a substitute guard came.  We heard Thursday afternoon that he had passed away from a heart attack.  I don’t know how old he was but probably no older than us.  So sad to think that his life was spent standing at someone’s gate and away from his family most of the time.  Life here is hard for so many. 

Sorry about ending on a sad note, but I feel her deserves at least a mention. 

    

 

Namaste.                        

Find a thread to pull and we can watch it unravel…

Well, of course since we are into year two, we are seeing the second round of festivals. So here’s a test to see what you remember from last year: today is Raksha Bandhan; what is the key element of this festival? If you said spraying each other with color, you are wrong. If you said throwing popcorn and grain into a bonfire to cast out evil spirits, you are wrong. If you said sisters tying threads onto the wrists of their brothers to symbolize the bond and responsibility for brothers to protect their sisters, ding, ding, ding; you win!

As I mentioned last year, the basics of Raksha Bandhan are these: sisters put threads or threaded bracelets on their brother’s wrists. The brother covenants to protect and watch over his sister. Originally this was a Hindu religious observance. Now it is fairly secular with people of many religious faiths participating. Also, a brother’s protection has grown to include giving of gifts by the brothers to the sisters. It has also expanded from brother and sister to any male female platonic relationship. In fact some girls use giving a rakshi (the threaded bracelets) as a way of cooling off a relationship or letting a boy know she doesn’t feel about him in a serious way. “Dude, she’s just not that in to you.”

This has been somewhat of a wasted week, at least for me. I have been fighting some kind of bug for about a week and it finally caught up to me. I came home early on Wednesday. Thursday, I stayed home. I went to work on Friday but after a half day I was done in and came home. I was feeling much better Saturday. Even though we hadn’t been out, Rae and I decided to go help clean the church. Well, that was probably a mistake. It was about a 1,000 degrees and 200 percent humidity. After two hours, I was feeling totally wasted and Rae wasn’t in much better condition. I ended up staying home today from church but Rae was a better person than me. She fulfilled her calling and went to Dwarka Branch for their Branch Conference. It took her an hour to get there but it has been two and half hours since church was over and she is still not back. She has been texting me and says the traffic is terrible and there are areas the runoff water from the rain is very deep.

August is the rainiest month in Delhi, and today the rain has been trying to keep up the average. We had about two hours of torrential rain with another hour or so of softer, slower rain. That has mitigated the heat somewhat but given the fact our windows are all totally fogged over, I am sure it is not too cool out there. I don’t suppose we are done with rain. I just hope Rae gets home before the heavens open again. Besides, I’ve run out of things to write about. She has to get back to pick up this hand off:

Here’s Rae….

Finally!!!!! I've made it home.  As Phil mentioned above, I went to branch conference at Dwarka branch today.  I left 1 ½ hours before I needed to be there but luckily made it there in 1 hr.  That was definitely not the case coming home.  After a 2 ¾ hr. ride I’m home. The festival that Phil mentioned above and the rain were the cause of the delay.

Traffic was very dense and slow, and in some places there was deep standing water.  When we lived in Arizona there was a lot of talk about how people there didn’t know how to drive on wet roads.  Well take Delhi drivers and rain and maybe you can guess what the result might be.  On the way to the Dwarka branch it was just lightly raining.  As we went down into an underpass/ tunnel I noticed that quite a number of bicycles and motorcycles had decided to pull off to the side, climb off the bikes, have a seat, and just chill out there for a while, hoping I guess that the rain would pass and they could have a dryer ride.  Don’t know how that worked out for them.  The interesting thing is there is no shoulder or pull off section so all this takes place in what would be a lane.  It’s always interesting to me how cars will just stop wherever they want and generally are not hit or run over.  Somehow traffic just squeezes around them 

Coming home traffic was thick in both directions so I was surprised as we headed up a fly over to look into the oncoming lanes and see absolutely no traffic.  I thought is this piece of road closed, but why?  As we headed down the other side I could see traffic at a dead stop.  Looked like someone had put up an invisible barricade and every car behind that was at a dead stop.  As we got closer there were two men, one from each car, (2 cars side by side) having some sort of heated discussion, or worse.  Made me think of our old driver, just the kind of thing he would do.  Didn't mind delaying the hundreds of cars behind them while they had it out.  There’s always something that surprises me. 

As we came to areas where there was standing water, I’d say 12-18 inches, many of the cars tried to inch over to the side of the road where the water was not as deep.  Some cars took this opportunity to gain an advantage by racing past the slower cars.  Why wouldn't you speed up and race through 18” of water if it got you a few cars ahead?  The one that I really liked was the motorcycle with the man and his wife, in her lovely sari, speeding through the deep water and the water spraying up over their heads.  Wonder what she had to say to him when they got home.  I was relieved to see that they stayed upright and in one piece, although quite wet.  Arizona in the rain times 10. 

Because of this festival and because it was a weekend there were many families on the road today.  It continually amazes me how many people you can fit on a motorcycle or squeeze into a car.  So many families of 4, plus a box or package on a motorcycle.  Quite a few families of 5 and two families of 6.  Amazing!  I saw one minivan, and not the extended type, that was pretty loaded and I think I was able to count 14 separate bodies as we crept slowly along side by side. 

I could go on forever about so many things that catch my attention as I travel places, but I will elaborate some of those in a future blontry.  I will end by sharing a picture that I was able to capture on my way home.  I see this all the time but it is so hard to get a shot of it, and while todays is still not great it may give you an idea.  It is very common to see the auto (tuk tuk) drivers driving along with their legs crossed, sitting on one foot, or one knee brought up sort of under their chin.  Some very casual positions. 

I've also posted 3 pictures of our foggy windows.  One is from our living room looking out into our front yard.  Two are of the glass enclosure that surrounds our stairway into the basement.  This is what happens when it’s warm and humid outside and you have single pane windows.

Until next week,

Namaste.         

Mister Banker, Mister please, how much does money mean…

Rae and I are actively making a list of things we like about India; things we will miss when we go back to the States. Today, however, I am going to spend my blontry talking about one of the things I won’t miss. I don’t think I have expressed how archaic the banking system is in India and how frustrating it is – an oversight I intend to correct immediately.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I hate Indian banks. First, it takes an act of Parliament to open an account. When I first got here, I was told I would need to open an account at the bank that MAII uses, so my pay checks could be deposited. In order to do that, I had to have all of my foreign registration papers, passport and visa; all my employment papers; an affidavit from our CEO; and dozens of pages of banking forms. After all that, it still took a week until my account was actually open. They are so slow and inefficient it is maddening.

This gets reinforced every month when I do the transfer of funds back to the US. Each month I have to go through the same routine of signing about a dozen pages of legalese; I have to provide each time the details of my US banking information (heaven forbid they might retain that information from month to month); each month I have to provide a signed, blank check; and periodically (I haven’t been able to determine any pattern) I have to sign a statement that I am not transferring money for nefarious purposes. To make matters worse, even though there are seemingly a dozen bank officers at my branch alone, there is only one who can do the transfer. So if he is sick, on holiday, or out of the office on business, I have to wait until he is back and available. Very controlled, orderly, and inefficient.

Oh here’s something. There are two kinds of checks. One kind can be cashed but one kind can only be deposited into an account. If it is with the same bank, the funds are available in a day or so. However if it from another bank, good luck.

There is another aspect of this I experience nearly every week when I deposit the funds that people donate at Church. First, you need to have a separate deposit for cash and checks. OK, that seems weird but if you insist I guess that’s okay. The really weird part to me is you need to have separate deposit slips for each check. Further, while the teller will take and process checks from his or her own bank, checks from other banks are examined and information is taken but then the checks have to be put into a separate drop box.

The final frustration - I think we did mention this at the time it happened – when Rae finally arrived here, I couldn’t add her to my existing account; neither could we simply get her a debit card to be able to access funds. No we had to set up another, separate account and transfer funds monthly over to it. Now on that account we could both be signers. So, I could be a co-signer on her account but she could not be a co-signer on mine. If she had been here at the time I initially set up the account, I don’t know if that would have been true. Perhaps then we could have set it up as a joint account. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

Operationally, things seem amazingly disorganized. There are computers, but I am not quite sure why since everything has to done on multiple copies of forms and documents. Consequently, there are piles of papers everywhere. They always seem, after a few minutes, to find what they need. Don’t get me started on their cash drawers. There are no trays or dividers for different denominations. There are stacks of bills, grouped together (but again no dividers) on their sides, so the denominations are not even evident. Once again, this whole systems seems inefficient and prone to error but somehow they seem to make it work.

So, I won’t miss the Indian banking system. The saving grace is they have adopted ATMs, which is where I do all the banking I can. But between my transfers to the US and deposits for the Church, I can’t seem to do everything that way. “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

Now, with her unique and cheery take on life, here’s Rae!

I will start by saying that from my stand point the banking isn’t so bad but that’s probably because most of it falls to Phil.  Since we both have a debit card on my account I had the bright idea that we just close Phil’s account and move to mine.  He had to remind me that it took him almost 2 months, and many forms to get his check direct deposited.  We certainly don’t want to cross that bridge again so, two accounts it is. 

So, as has been my pattern of late, I will share a few random thoughts as my part of the blontry. 

A week ago Monday Phil got a text from our branch president inviting us to FHE at the church at 6:30pm.  President Juriel’s wife, Rimpy, had had a baby boy on the 16^th of July.  He didn’t tell us that this event was for them to introduce their baby to everyone.  We got to the church at 6:30.  When will we learn what 6:30 really means?  There were about 4 people there when we arrived.  As we waited, slowly people continued to trickle in. This is pretty typical of most meetings or gatherings. Some of these people were carrying gifts so we started to guess that this FHE had something to do with the new baby.  After a while members of their family started arriving and finally a bit before 8:00 the Juriels arrived with their baby.  There was a song and a prayer and a few comments were made about families and then the Juriel’s both spoke, in Hindi.  I gathered that they were talking about their adjustment to parenthood.  After this part of the program dinner was served and people enjoyed eating and visiting.

After doing the conversion from grams to lbs. we calculated that baby was about 5 lbs.  You may be wondering why I keep calling him baby boy, that’s because they still haven’t named him.  Naming a baby here is a family affair and all the family members get to weigh in on what this child should be named.  It requires much counselling, conferring and I guess some family consensus.  As of last night our little man still had no name.  They were hoping to make the decision by today but I didn’t hear if that actually happened.  Name or no name, he is a tiny, cute little guy and I finally got my turn at holding him last night.

Last night we had a missionary fireside which was well attended and it was there that I got to hold the baby. Here is a picture of President, Rimpy and baby boy on the night of the FHE.  The other picture is of him in my arms last night.

We left the fireside early to go to Old Fort for a light and sound show.  There are 8 forts here in Delhi, Old Fort being one of them.  The show was projected on a wall of the fort and basically covered the History of Delhi for thousands of years dating back to 3000 BC.  Let me just summarize that there were many bloody battles, a lot of destruction and rebuilding, more battles, the rule of the British and then the democracy of the Delhi that exists today. One thought that kept crossing my mind was how lucky I was to be born in the United States.  I struggled with history in school and I think I would die if I had to take history in India.  How do they do it? 

The show was outside and it was hot and humid and I felt like I was being dinner for a lot of mosquitoes, but I’m glad we had the opportunity to go.  One never knows when you go to things if a camera will be allowed so we didn’t take ours.  Our cell phones were not affective, so the only picture we have is one we found on the Internet. It’s better than what we could have taken anyway. 

   

Namaste.