Around the Neighbourhood

We’ve been eating pretty much as vegetarians since we got to India. We’d read that the meat quality can be questionable and with most of the population being vegetarian, most of the grocery stores don’t even carry meat. The food has been awesome and there is a lot of variety of vegetarian curries. We’ve been enjoying it so much that I thought I’d better get a little exercise this morning to counter the effects.

We were up slightly earlier than usual and we all set off on our walk so that we could return by 9:00 in time to start our school work and to avoid the heat of the day. It’s a nice neighbourhood with some very nice houses and others much more modest. There doesn’t seem to be much zoning in India so you have some shops, and other things in what would otherwise seem like a residential area.

India is a land of contradictions. You see fine new cars on streets that also have cows and ponies. You see the ever present rickshaw. Nadim says they haven’t changed in thirty years. Even the meters are the same, except they now start at Rs 14 instead of Rs 5. You see women in saris and Punjabis talking on cell phones.

We went back to the school this week. We’ve been meaning to take a picture of the rickshaws loaded with kids and their school bags. It looks funny to see them coming down the street. It makes our school buses look like luxury vehicles. Normally the back of a Rickshaw sits three adults tightly. When our family rides in them one of the girls has to sit on one of our laps. I’m not sure how they do it but they must squeeze a dozen kids in them for the ride home. It’s so funny to see the school bags hanging from the side mirrors and hooks and the kids all squeezed in!

We’ve learned that this will probably be our last week with the kids because next week they will be busy studying for their final exams and after that they will be heading home for a couple of months. They return in June and we spoke to the Mother Superior about some of the local Baha’is beginning a youth group with them. The local Baha’is had suggested that they could continue working with the kids. She seemed very interested in beginning that in June so I hope everything works out.

CM