IMPRESSIONS AND OBSERVATIONS FROM INDIA

Children, Garbage, Beggars, Packages, Interesting Jobs and Restaurants

1. Men here are sooooooo comfortable with children and babies it is beautiful to see
...maybe it is just here where they are mostly Tibetans, but it is so beautiful to walk through the streets and see men playing with babies and children...if a child cries, you will see men just as naturally as women run to pick it up and comfort it. Children are so loved here it is a pleasure to walk through the streets and see and feel the love for them. Like now, a woman is sitting using a computer here and the owner of the shop is sitting and playing with her baby for her...and now the baby is crying and so another man just approached to assist him...no panic, no running back
to mommy with him, really nice...and this is not a baby they know, just the baby of a customer...OK, mommy now has finished and taken him back...

2. Garbage collection! -
One day, starting early in the morning I heard every few minutes a loudspeaker announcing something from the streets below and finally asked the guy here what they were saying...maybe the area was being attached from Kashmir or it was an earthquake warning...you never know!! He told me it is garbage collection... they yell to the houses that they are passing through and
to come and dump your garbage...OK so far...a couple of days later I was sitting and waiting for the whole newspaper staff to finish breakfast so I could start working and they work out of a local restaurant and were also eating together with 4 women who work there...when the loudspeaker started outside...all of a sudden, all 7 people jump up from eating (remember, they didn't even move to turn on the computer for me while they were eating) and each ran in a different direction, laughing and giggling, and grabbed garbage from all different corners, ran down to the street, dumped it and came very casually back upstairs, all washed their hands and relaxed back to breakfast as if nothing had happened. Later that day in the street I saw the same thing over and over again as the truck passed, and people from all over , the street, shops,
upstairs apartments, ran down to throw their garbage into the truck!

3. Ordering in Restaurants.
When you go into most restaurants here (except the really really fancy ones and even some of those) you are handed a menu (or you take it yourself off the rack) plus a pencil and piece of scrap paper. Each person writes his own order and the kitchen guys just come around and pick them up making sure they are readable. When you are ready to pay, you find the order you wrote and just show it to the cashier who then tells you how much it cost.

4. Beggars can be very friendly people.
There are my two friends...man and woman, lepers, who I pass everyday at least 2 times a day. They sit on this spot together and are always happy and smiling...say "good day" every time they see me...money or not... they joke and fool around with each other all day. I wouldn't be surprised if they go :"home" together at the end of the work day. One day, they were sitting
and laughing as usual when a whole bunch of monkeys filled a tree above them. The guy picked up his umbrella and started to "shoot" them out of the trees. The lady thought this was so funny she couldn't stop laughing. Next day I went by and asked how many monkeys he killed today and the two of them cracked up again. How they can even think of smiling I don't know, but they have certainly found the way to happiness without pleasure...and true happiness brings pleasure by itself.!

4. SENDING PACKAGES:

Shlepp to the special guy who gets the packages ready for mailing since you could never do it yourself. I had 10 KILO to carry down so it took me 2 trips.

1. fill out forms in triplicate but there is no carbon paper!

2. Guy puts stuff in box and then sews a special muslim "bag" around it, sews it up and then seals it with special red sealing wax which he drips on with a lighted candle and seals with his spit!! Without this special wax the post office will not accept the package. He even admitted it was a "little" primitive but "this is the only way the PO accepts package" Takes about 1/2 hour.

3. Then address the package, pay him and it's on it's way. Come back tomorrow to get receipt.

4. Now this all sounds simple but it took 2 1/2 hours of my morning to complete the process. Sent by air mail it takes about 2-3 weeks to arrive. I have to still send another package of books. Still easier then doing it in Delhi where you have to do all the running yourself from PO to show original package and have its contents approved to fill in the forms, then go to tailor to make the bag and back to PO (all the time shlepping the package with you from place to place) to seal and address and each time you have to wait on line., The guy here makes a living doing this and has been at it here for 6 years. And he only charges 60 rupees for the service!

5. Earning a living..
Tibetans work hard to provide for their families. Spoke to a couple of women merchants - most of the shops are run by women...seems that many of them pack up their entire stock and take
it by train all the way down south for the 3 winter months when there are no tourist here and open shop down south. When I asked if is not hard for the children to change schools each year in the middle of the year, they explained that the families (husband and wife together) that go south, leave their children who are cared for by neighbors during those months. It seems to them the most natural thing and it is very common here.

Then there is the little girl who puts on a full circus acrobat and high wire act on the street corners.. her mother (not father who is also there but his big job is to beat a drum) drives stakes into holes in the street and puts up this temporary high wire and then while daddy is beating a drum she bangs on the back of a metal bowl while breastfeeding the younger child and this little girl (about 6-7) goes through her act...quite well done and scary if she should fall on the pavement below. And then they pass around a plate...I've seen them in 3 different locations since I've been here. It seems like a horrible thing to make a little girl do but I guess it is better than those who shlep their babies around, dirty, starving all day on their hips, begging for
money!! At least this family was clean, well fed and had some semblance of pride and a normal life.