Thanks for your donations. We have enough now.

Thanks so much to you friends and family who donated to our Afghan family. We have enough to give them a lovely Christmas.

A visit from the Dorffs!

A visit from the Dorff's!

Our dear friends Sarah, Michael and Rachel Dorff came to visit for a week! Michael was mostly away doing a conference up north, but Sarah and Rachel stayed with us bringing wonderful feelings of home and security and two blocks of cheddar cheese! Wahoo! and chocolate and cheezits and goldfish.
We were down to 150 ($2.10) rupees when they came and they left us with more than 3000 rupees that they changed at the airport! Plus all their US dollars that we can use to buy souvenirs in certain places. Now we're living on that, plus a grocery store and Uber cabs that take Visa. (We've waited in scarce ATM lines usually to have the cash run out before we get there or to have the machine reject our debit cards. I hardly buy fruit now. Eejit un-checked governance!!!...)Thank you, Sarah and Michael! How wonderful to get a visit from home!

Fun English "word[s] of the day" from Scott's Learn English app:

"only: He arrived home only to find that his wife was dead."
"square: If you regularly do the exercises, you will be like that woman, of square frame."

Kerala, aka "God's own country"

View from our canoe on the Kerala backwaters. No mosquitoes since the brackish water isn't stagnant.

Christy and Danny's paparazzi at a beach near the airport.

Our driver called these "Dubai houses."

Kerala was the final stop on our 10 day travels. Kerala is an interesting state since it has a communist government, the highest per capita income and the highest literacy rate in India. They have a market economy and we saw no beggars. It is about an equal mix of Hindus, Christians and Muslims and they all get along. The money comes from the Middle East, where many Keralan emigrants go to work and send money home. The streets are lined with colorful, single family homes, something I haven't seen anywhere else in my limited travels here.

We did a homestay with Vejeesh and his parents on Munroe Island. His mother made our meals, and the south Indian food was different from anything we've had up north. One breakfast was crepes stuffed with toasted coconut and steamed bananas  with watermelon or pineapple smoothies. YUM! The only bad thing about the place was noise-noise-noise from a local temple that began at 5:27am and continued until after we went to bed. The tinny loudspeakers blasted music and chants that brought to mind audio waterboarding as a form of torture. All was quiet for a couple of hours in the afternoon and we could hear the birds and other natural noises in our tropical paradise. Vejeesh showed us some fun local treasures, such as pepper, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon growing on trees. He stood on  one end of our canoe with a long bamboo pole punting us through the back waters at sunset, where we saw a farmer punt across the water to pick up two little goats who were grazing. Then the farmer went to a different grazing spot to fetch his cow, who jumped clumsily into the water and swam home beside the farmer's canoe. Vejeesh said that not during, but after the big Tsunami in 2014, the water has slowly risen, and is flooding out many of the homes. We saw brilliant blue kingfishers and kites (birds of prey sacred to Hindus), herons and fireflies.

The Western Ghats mountains at Ponmudi. (Elevation 3400 feet.)

This photo doesn't do justice to these verdant, mountains beyond mountains in Kerala's Western Ghats. I really am a mountain girl, and these hills fed my soul. The sky was blue and there was no litter! We hiked around for about an hour before we had to come down and drive to the airport. On our drive up, our driver told us that people had seen a tiger cross the road some months back! "Tigers are available," he said, but we had no such luck. We did see many rubber trees, with small buckets attached. Every day a farmer slits the bark and milky rubber drips into the bucket like maple syrup. We saw a man who mixed acid into the rubber and poured it into 15x19 pans where it congealed into stinky white sheets. He hung them over a line to dry before packing them up for delivery to the next person on the rubber chain. You learn something new every day.

Mumbai

Taj Hotel and the Gateway of India from Mumbai Harbor

The happy couple and the Taj Hotel

Mumbai was the second leg of our journey since Scott had work there. We stayed at a clean and comfortable  guesthouse where they generously gave us free meals at the canteen since cash was so hard to come by. (Maybe they would have anyway, but it was a life-saver.) We rode a ferry out and got a good look at the city from the harbor. Mumbai is home to Bollywood. It's also the financial center of India, so it's sort of like LA and NYC combined. I loved the skyscrapers and Victorian architecture. We toured the Sassoon Fishing Docks where we saw women sitting, shelling great piles of shrimp on the side of the road. Trishna's restaurant (they take VISA) cooked up some of that "frash feesh" for our lunch and the maitre d' brought out a prawn as big as his forearm. We walked through the 150 year old Dhobi ghat, the worlds biggest outdoor "human washing machine," where men  wash, dry and iron tons of laundry for hotels and hospitals. We renewed our admiration for Ghandi at his former house in Mumbai and found the only working ATM of our travels. I like Mumbai.

Google images: Dhobi Ghat

Pushkar Camel Fair-Rajasthan

Camel taxi-we rode around the fair in it to get oriented. How could we resist?

 These are scenes from our once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Pushkar Fair where we spent two days, which was plenty! We rode southwest across India in a train for 6 hours, then "camped" in a big white Swiss tent with a flush toilet, real beds, electricity and ac. We ate under a tent with other tourists from Germany and the UK. At night the Royal Heritage Safari lit a campfire and brought in musicians, dancers and fire eaters.

Driving camels to market

Musician at our Royal Heritage camp site-we saw men dressed like this everywhere.

Tightrope walker with mother and babe spotting.

Scott and  I rode this camel. The infant beside Christy held the reins. He claimed to be 15 years old.

Riding the camel was a terrifying adventure. Its legs are about eight feet long and when he/she stood on his back legs we had to hold on tight and lean back like a rodeo or slide onto his head. Then up onto the front legs and a wobbly gait around the fair into the sunset. We talked to a man about riding our camel but once we were up he handed the reins to this child! The boy acted as if he's been leading camels around since he learned to walk. He probably has! We have no picture of Danny and Christy riding their camel since Scott and I were focused on staying on our own beast.

At the fair we saw three giant ferris wheels  and many expat tourists. The constant press of hawkers holding their trinkets in our faces and beggars clutching our arms and the crush of people was exhausting. We missed the snake charmers and the camel races and the moustache contest. If you're bored check out the Pushkar Fair 2016 on google images. That's what we experienced with all five senses.

Google images: this was typical dress for the Indian women at the fair.

Long ago Brahma, the creator, dropped some flower petals in Pushkar and a holy lake formed. Perhaps the  most dramatic part of the fair was watching thousands of Hindu pilgrims walk down to the lake and wash or take a dip for remission of their sins. Nearly every woman was draped head to toe in flowing red, hot pink, orange or yellow fabric. Men wore white with a turban or western clothing. No photography allowed.

Here's one more from google images that I can't resist.

Wow. They tuck these up into the turban.

sub for Santa

If anyone is still looking for a Christmas helping opportunity, I've got one. My Afghan family is living on very little and I'd like to give them a big Christmas. In addition to cash for clothes, shoes etc. I'd like to go shopping with the mom to get them some specific gifts. They're all hungry for books.

For the grandfather: the family had a pistachio tree in their old home and he has talked fondly of how much they enjoyed it, along with other fruit trees in their garden. The older kids talked with bright eyes about how they got some pistachios a few years ago and they were SO delicious. Pistachios are expensive here, so I'd like to get them 5 lbs which will cost around $40. They also love almonds and walnuts.

For the father: I don't know. I'll ask my friend to choose something. Did I mention that the Taliban broke his back? It's a common cruelty/torture that the Taliban is known for. Maybe a book in Farsi. Any suggestions for a Christian who already has a Bible?

For the mother: I don't know either. I'll probably just give her cash plus a little something to remember me by.

For the oldest daughter,age 14: I'd love to buy her an electric keyboard and some sheet music for Frozen and other Disney songs that she requested. They've borrowed a keyboard  but have to give it back. Before that they would walk 45 minutes to the church when they knew it would be unlocked for her to practice. A cheap but not rubbish keyboard would cost $200. The girl has taken piano lessons from senior missionaries when there happens to be one in the area who plays. She can play simplified hymns and seems completely self-motivated.

For the son, age 12: He loves all things Spiderman, so I'll find a very cool shirt. I'll also consult with his mom.

For the son, age 10: He loves Hulk and Big Hero 6 and books. I'll find a T-shirt and maybe some action figures.

For the two younger daughters, age 5 and 7: They love Disney and Barbie princesses so I'll get the mom to help me pick out a Barbie and maybe dress-ups. The Barbies are around $15 each here and dress-ups are probably about the same.

If you would like to sponsor a child or donate money, please email me. We are only taking Paypal donations at Scott's account: bradford@byu.edu. In the unlikely event that we get a ridiculously large amount of money, I will donate to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or the Red Cross. We are working with both of these organizations to see about getting legal documents for the family.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas and thankful, happy hearts.

Black Money

Queuing up at the ATM/

On Tuesday evening ten days ago, Prime Minister Modi came on the news to announce that as of midnight, all 500 and 1000 rupee notes would be officially useless. These two bills, worth $7.50 and $15 respectively, are used in 85% of transactions in this cash economy, so everybody feels the inconvenience or devastation.  It's an attempt to root out and render useless all the "black money," the ill-gotten, un-taxed crime and corruption money that is making Pakistanis and gangsters rich, or so the rumors go. Modi added that the following day all banks and ATMs would be closed and after that people could go exchange old bills for new in small amounts at banks or draw money in small amounts from ATMs. He admonished us to ignore the inconvenience for the good of the country.

But guess what? The new bills are a different size and they don't work in ATMs so people can only get stacks of 100 rupee notes, 20 at a time, which equals about $30. Banks are handing out new 2000 rupee notes, but without 500s or 1000s vendors have trouble making change. A billion Indians are queuing up at banks and ATMs all over the country. Everywhere we go we see people lined up. The newspaper shows desperate people sleeping overnight in lines. Most ATMs are empty. Even though there's an ATM on every block, armored  trucks that can transport money are in short supply. 100 rupee notes take a lot of room in the ATMs. We've stood in line with all the others, only to have the machines run empty before we get to the front. I spent two of our recent vacation mornings walking around looking for working ATMs in Mumbai, with no luck. (Scott was there on business, and we all went along. I told Scott that living through this kind of an economic debacle should be an economist's dream, but he's not so sure.) It's quite the disaster. The government cancelled all public parking fees and tolls. Farmers and fruit and vegetable vendors have food rotting because people don't have cash. People have trouble paying the rickshaw and taxi drivers. It's tough for us because we don't have an Indian bank account, but Scott's colleague in Mumbai kindly gave us part of our reimbursement in cash to help us get by. Gangsters just hire people to exchange money at the banks for a small cut, and it's not surprising that the people at the bottom of society are hurting the most. The crisis is by no means resolved. Badly done, Modi!

Two days later: We have a government owned bank nearby with an ATM that gets loaded every night. We can walk over at 8pm and stand in line for about a half hour and get our 2000 rupees. Yay!

We're #1.

We're #1. In air pollution. One account said it's the worst it's been in 17 years. You would not believe how toxic and smokey the air is. Our Utah air quality website says that any fine particulate/PM2.5 above 250 is hazardous: a red, no burn day. In Delhi we hit 999; maybe that's how high the meter goes. People are walking with their heads down and I hear sounds of respiratory distress all around. My eyes sting. I don't want to hang my clothes and sheets in it. It's bad in the house too.  We have to stay calm. Not many people wear masks. Do they even work? I looked for one today in my market but they only had surgical masks. Now I know what it's like to live in the  most polluted city in the world. It stinks. 

Mentally processing a lizard in the kitchen (This was my first entry in September. It jumped the queue.)

Blog Schmog.
But it's a good way to record and communicate our experience here in Delhi--in India! So I'll start with my most lasting impression today and work backwards and forwards from here.
We've been here more than a month and today I saw our first house lizard crawling across the kitchen wall. We knew lizards lived indoors, but this one was a little bigger and courser skinned than I might have wished. Do lizards avoid humans the way mice do? Are they interested in fragrant lotions and shampoos? Will  lizards drink from the water glass I left on the counter the way cats do? These are the questions keeping me up tonight.

Nizamuddin

The alley leading to Nizamuddin's tomb. 

Lucky me. I went to the Nizamuddin neighborhood with friends who wanted to "buy meat," meaning water buffalo. My friend brought an extra scarf. I talked them into visiting the holy site. Nizamuddin was a 14th century Sufi mystic admired for his "piety and disdain for material desires...His daily assemblies drew both the rich and the poor." (That's from my DK India tour book.) Several hundred years later Muslims still read his sayings and go to his tomb with prayers and offerings. We saw supplicants, but not until we had walked through a long covered alley with several right angle turns. It was a little claustrophobic. All along the way men in white sold colorful Muslim alter cloths, flower petals and for ten rupees, wanted to watch our shoes while we were at the tomb. You can see the ground is covered in rugs or tiled. Photography was not allowed at the tomb, where women prayed outside of lattice-work walls while men knelt directly around what looked to me like a bed. It was very foreign and a little scary. A man approached me with a guest book to sign and asked "what he could put me down for." (That's paraphrasing Dickens.) I left a hundred rupee note on a separate table where others had donated. On the way out my friends told me they had never been "inside" before and they marveled at my courage. Fools rush in?

Diwali!

I wrote about Diwali at about 8pm, which was way too early for a proper assessment. The fireworks got more intense so we went up on the roof again, where an exhilarating scene of chaos and lights burst all around us. On  the ground and on roof-tops people were lighting fireworks and crackers in such profusion that we felt like we were at Provo's Stadium of fire or at the National Mall on the 4th of July but with fireworks from every direction lasting for hours. Here the fireworks appear to be completely unregulated; there was no fire marshal to create a fallout zone. We had some enormous gold fireworks explode in the sky directly over our apartment. We saw several floating lanterns, like in the Tangled movie. I especially liked the fireworks that shot in a horizontal arc to explode seconds later on random rooftops. Our landlady and husband came up with a gift box of  nuts and dried fruit for us. YUM! Even as we reveled in the reckless abandon of our neighbors and people all across the city, we were choking on the smoke, but some things are just worth the consequences. The next morning our floor was lightly covered in dust and I could taste and feel the dust on my teeth. It's a little better today, and I can see the Lotus Temple, our air pollution gauge. We're SO GLAD we got to experience Diwali from our rooftop in Delhi!

I've been forgetting to mention that humidity is down and our days are in the high 80's now with nights in the 60's. It feels lovely.
Word of the day from Scott's English for Indians app: "knee: She kneed to open the door." 

Christy's birthday and Old Delhi

We love our Christy!

Happy Birthday to Christy!
We gave her a capo for her ukulele and some very scarce and therefore highly prized cheddar cheese with crackers with a promise to take her shopping for another Indian kurta and leggings. We ate out at a Moghul restaurant with delicious chicken curries and breads. Some foods they cook slowly in clay pots sealed with flatbread dough. I bought a fudgy buttery chocolate birthday cake that is so dark it will probably keep me awake tonight.

This week we went to a Halloween party at the home of an international arms dealer. Captain Rambo Wallace, US State Department, is our young men's president at church and a really nice guy. (His name has been changed...)He hired a dexterous magician and a less skillful caricature sketch artist and spread a variety of Indian and American foods on three tables in his big house on his wide empty street. His family has three floors of a house with big trees, a gate and a guard. An embassy couple lives on the ground floor.  That's where the living is easy!

Traffic is in a snarl this week because India's biggest holiday of the year culminates on October 30th. Diwali is the festival of lights, signifying the victory of good over evil, light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance etc. My online source says Diwali is an official holiday in Fiji; I wonder why. Many shops and a homes hang Diwali lights, so our city looks festive at night. Maybe related: a couple of nights ago our landlords family went out in their most formal blingy saris and suits to celebrate the end of a day of fasting for the women. It was the day women fast for the long lives of their husbands.

We've discovered a Taco bell that delivers.

Bulk pulses, rice and tea.

I felt ridiculously lucky because some members offered to take me to Old Delhi with them to do their monthly food shopping. I thought I'd be getting the inside tour, but we just made a beeline from the Metro to the street with pulses and rice, pushing past people and watching out for dogs on the sidewalk and for every kind of conveyance imaginable in the streets. We even saw a big high cart with two men swinging branches to keep two big bulls pulling. I just don't seem to like noisy crowded cities, although I did see some wondrous interesting things. Don't believe for a minute that the sidewalks were as un-crowded as in the picture. Also note three different common clothing styles of the women on the right. My friends asked if I wanted to go look at the rows of clothing shops but I was already paralyzed and just wanted to get out.

Here's what I really loved! Tree nuts and dates in bag-barrels. Can you see the proprietor?

Later: October 30th. Tonight people all over the city are lighting off "crackers," or "cracka's" as they say it here. The skies have been thundering for over an hour and it just got dark. Word on the street says it will go on all night. Some of the crackers are fireworks but most are industrial sized firecrackers. Diwali is a festival lasting a few days. Yesterday morning the air was so smokey from pollution and crackers that for the first time we couldn't see the Lotus Temple from our window. We all have sore throats. If Pakistan wanted to start bombing Delhi and not get caught for awhile, tonight would be the night. Now we've got Indian drums going in the neighborhood. Festive!
Fun fact: Danny and Christy's school plastered posters all over the school: "Say no to crackers." We're about ready to call in the ACLU, since Danny and Christy are the only cracka's  at Bluebells.

Acknowledging the Lord's hand

From the beginning of our "next sabbatical quest," Scott felt guided to come to India and we've been blessed by the Lord throughout this whole India endeavor. On this page I will write about a few things that make us truly thankful.

Scott went to India a few weeks ahead of the rest of us, then he came back to the Oregon Coast for a Bradford family reunion. Then we all flew from Portland to Delhi, via Amsterdam. In Oregon, he developed a high fever (without congestion or sore throat) and terrific pain all over his body, especially in his joints. He was very sick for 4 days, hardly eating or getting out of bed. We diagnosed him with dengue fever, a common mosquito-born virus that was afflicting Delhi-ites in August, but we never did a blood test. Now we know that chikungunya fever is also a possibility; it has similar symptoms. Dengue fever is far more dangerous because if you get it twice your chances of bleeding to death internally go way up. You can only get chikungunya once. (Scott says he wants to have his blood tested when we get back to the States.) Scott still has pain roving through his joints, but he's a trooper, and otherwise very healthy. Here's what I want to give thanks for: that the illness struck while we were together and in the US, where mentally, I knew we had access to good familiar medical care; that we were staying right on the beach in a well-ventilated room with plenty of clean water; that we were supported and distracted by the Bradford clan; that many Bradfords fasted and prayed for Scott's recovery in time for our flight to India; that Steve Bradford gave Scott a Priesthood blessing of healing and comfort that was realized; that Scott's fever broke on Fast Sunday and we were able to travel on Monday morning.

There are some little things. Danny has access to a piano at school twice a week and he is our LDS branch sacrament meeting accompanist, so he's fairly motivated to practice. Fulbright-Nehru reimbursed our hefty Bluebells tuition, even though we learned that Bluebells had not officially enrolled our kids but recorded our payment as a donation. Bluebells is letting D and C ride the bus to school as guests, which was a huge relief those first few weeks. Christy is most grateful for the friends she's made at Bluebells; she was worried about being socially isolated. Danny is most thankful that McDonalds delivers. From the Mission Home we got the referral for the woman I hired to help me set up my Indian kitchen and teach me how to cook several things. We have a wonderful family renting our house who has been alert and gracious about an outside pipe bursting.

Stepping into church our first Sunday here was such a relief. The building is air conditioned; it's so much easier to feel the Spirit when you're comfortable. :) The hymns were familiar. The branch members were friendly and I got my favorite church calling: primary music teacher. Church still feels like a haven from the noise and bustle of the city. By the way, the congregational singing doesn't sound great here, especially in Relief Society. It's kind of funny. The women and men who lead the branch have a good understanding of the  doctrine and strong testimonies. I've been very impressed. The meetings are in English but some talks and  many comments are given in Hindi. We've done some socializing with members. I love going to Church.

Finally, I have found an occupation!  I've become friends with a family of Afghan refugees that live near me. The father and some of  his extended family converted to Christianity in Afghanistan, where they had to hide out in their house and rely on brave and generous neighbors to bring them food after the word got out. As I understand it, the grandmother had to go to the hospital and was shot en route. The man's brother also got killed and this family, comprised of the grandfather, the two parents and five children got on a plane and landed here. That was in 2007. India is not a signatory to the United Nations refugee laws, but the UN has a refugee office here and there are some NGOs. For reasons that remain unclear, the family has no Documents, and their children, ages 6-14, have not attended school regularly in several years. Think of it! Five children, spotty school and no books, very little money and no legal jobs.

I connected with the Mom, who is gentle, hopeful, indefatigable, from our first meeting. Maybe it's because we're both strangers here. My happy occupation, which is very useful and not at all draining, is to walk to their tiny apartment (it's down a tiny alley and then down an even tinier alley) four mornings a week and teach them English for a few hours. Every morning when I walk in, the children, who are standing around a low table say in chorus: "Good morning, Sister." The mom and the oldest daughter are my most diligent students, but all the kids are enthusiastic and cooperative. The oldest daughter has excellent English.  She wants to be an ophthalmologist. I bought English workbooks and reading books with a donation from a friend at home who told me to "find someone who needs it in India." As we work, I realize that they need to learn math and science too, and really, their situation is intolerable, even though they have a happy home as far as I can see, and they're all grateful. About once a week they serve me lunch. Last week it was savory rice with raisins and delicious red beans with a raw tomato and onion salad. We have a deal that they'll pick up a sheet of their favorite Afghan bread for me twice a week. The two little girls like to sing the "Let it Go" song like shy Broadway stars. Yesterday I picked up some math workbooks, but my curriculum is helter skelter and my time here is limited. I've begun research in earnest on options for improving their situation. It will be very  hard to leave them here in their current state. I wonder if the Lord led us to India or to this particular neighborhood to help this family. I know He loves them and they have been praying for a long time for relief from their problems. Whatever the reasons, our coming has opened our eyes and changed our lives forever and we feel God with us every day.

Flattering photos

Here's a couple of sweet photos. We're making India look good!

Fish tacos and curry. Yum!

This auto (tuktuk) is rare because it has curtains and beads at no extra cost. Not to mention the handsome driver.

I saw it on the streets of Delhi

I need to go live in New York City for a month so I can determine what is unique to India and what is just part of being in a big city. I've been thinking about what I see at the side of the roads here. In Provo I could actually drive for several minutes and possibly not see a human being outside, except other drivers. Here the streets are teaming with life. I've seen women sitting near stacks of terra cotta pots, barbers shaving customers, dogs sleeping or scrounging, cows resting or trotting along in traffic, people cooking over fires and sleeping, everywhere colorful fruit stands and peddlers pushing carts of coconuts or papayas or vegetables, men coming out of what appear to be public showers, dressed and rubbing their hair with towels; tea and ice cream and popcorn and roasted nut vendors, people ladling milky brown tea and fixing flat tires, people selling flowers or flower petals, people going into the temples to ring a bell and pray, bikers hauling trailers with huge loads of piled up boxes or flattened boxes for recycling. People walking and shouting, rickshaw and auto drivers looking for fares. I was traumatized by one terrible street fight we saw from a cab.
Two roadside visions are sticking in my head today. Yesterday I was riding along near the American embassy and saw a sari-clad woman kneeling in the gutter pulling weeds. (Even the female street sweepers and city clean-up crews look beautifully dressed to me.) Near the woman a 6ish-year old boy was holding a plump looking baby and another tot was nearby. I drove by in a flash, but I imagined that this woman was working and tending to her children all at once by the side of the road. I thought what a challenge it would be to do what that woman was doing every day, then of how some young mothers I know in the US have such different challenges of loneliness or boredom or depression.
The second vision still fills me with astonishment. Again from a cab, we saw scores of long tour buses parked at the side of the highway. They were piled on top with bags and blankets. Men walked on top of the buses rummaging. Our cab driver told us they were Buddhists on pilgrimage, but I couldn't find anything about it online the next day. Suddenly we noticed that the "pilgrims" were sleeping on blankets by the buses, on the ground right along the side of the road. They slept with their heads nearest the road, some between the buses and the road. It felt like traffic was whizzing passed just a few feet from their heads. How could they possibly sleep in such a vulnerable position? Why on earth would they assume that cars would only drive on the proper road and not go barreling onto the shoulder to get around jams? It still agitates me.

Bluebells Annual Day

Students from Bluebells dance at Annual Day

Imagine a song and dance variety show and a school musical and awards night and local dignitaries making speeches all combined into one 4 1/2 hour celebration and that sums up Annual Day at Bluebells. It was for grades 5-12 in a big rented auditorium. The play was very well done in Bollywood style, extolling the virtues of a united, peaceful India where Hindus and Muslims and Pakistanis all get along. Danny played keyboards in an "orchestra" consisting of drums, electric guitars, flutes and violins. They rocked the house with Soul Sacrifice by Santana. Christy sang MJ's Man in the Mirror with the Western Vocal group. We entered the auditorium through lines of crisp school-uniformed first graders waving golden pompoms. They all cried out "Good evening, Ma'me. Good evening, Sir", as we passed. Adorable.

High Tea and the Indian Music and Dance Festival

Today is Ghandi's birthday.

Flower petal art at the theater!

Here's another word from Scott's app that teaches him one English word per day:
"Sorbet. This sorbet of fruits is excellent."
Other words last week were "strategem", "countertenor" and "nudist."

Last Friday  Scott's office hosted us and other visiting scholars for High Tea. My mouth watered in anticipation of an English scone with whipped cream and jam. We arrived to find a buffet of Indian snack foods instead. The food was tasty and it was fun to try a variety of deep fried snacks that we see on the street but don't eat for fear of getting Delhi belly. The chutneys were savory. It was a tasty spread and we met another American couple that we might get together with over dinner sometime.
From Scott's office we walked to a theater to see a dance troupe as part of an Indian festival of dance and music. The dancers were elaborately costumed and wondrously talented. Christy  put a bit of video on facebook. We also saw a bit of a puppet show and India's most celebrated flutist playing very trippy timeless tones. (Imagine a jam session for flute and Indian drum with an electronic drone throughout.) Scott quipped that George Harrison of the Beatles would have loved it. The performance got livelier and the flutist really was amazingly talented and expressive.

The drummer and center flutist had extraordinary talent.

I'm inserting this low quality photo which shows a cow, green and yellow auto-rickshaws, commonly called "auto" and sometimes called "tuktuk." In the rear you can see bicycle rickshaws lined up. There are also Uber and Ola cabs, and regular taxis, the occasional horse or mule, and our favorite, E-rickshaws, which are electric 4-seaters that shuttle around in the neighborhoods of the metro/subway stations. The metro is cheap, air conditioned and clean enough. The first car of every train is reserved for women only, but women can opt to ride in any car. We came home from the theater on the metro, then got on an e-rickshaw for a 5 minute ride back to our neighborhood market then walked about 3 minutes to our flat. Easy.

Humayan's Tomb

Humayan's Tomb

September 10, 2016

Today we got an eyeful! After hours of research and discussion, we decided to visit Humayan’s tomb in New Delhi, only 15 minutes from our apartment. This is a 15th century Mughal mausoleum that looks like a palace and hundreds of VIP Mughals are buried there. (Mughals were Muslim Turks and Persians who occupied northern India for a few centuries.)We were disgruntled at the ticket counter to learn that domestic visitors pay 30 rupees while foreign visitors pay 500 rupees for entry! Inside the gates were several ancient buildings and a splendid stone wall. There was one brownish stone domed mausoleum that matched the wall. We saw a Muslim man in his white hat and robes talking on a cell phone walking on top of the wall with palms and other massive trees behind. So picturesque. Another group of friendly Indian teenagers literally told me to watch as they did daring parkour jumps along the wall. I was charmed. Of course we had to find the ancient stairs and walk the wall as well.

Isakhan's tomb near Humayan's tomb.

Through another gate and we saw Humayan’s tomb, which predates the Taj Mahal and which locals say is about 70% as magnificent. Under the domes were 8 arches with lattice stone work to let the breeze through. While it was brutally hot and sunny outside, the tomb was cool and breezy inside. Several rooms held raised stone coffins. We spent an hour or two looking around then walked across the street into a totally different world towards Karim’s restaurant.

The sun shone down on hundreds of men wearing immaculate white hats and tunics/salwar-kameez talking and going about their business. Vendors at the street side were selling fruit and purple flowers and the street was lined with shops that as usual gave me sensory overload. A boy walked by with two decorated goats on a leash, and dozens more goats grazed in a tiny area behind a fence. We asked for directions to Karim’s and were pointed down stairs into a tiny alley of shops selling clothing and handkerchiefs, with tailor shops and bead necklaces. The amazing thing is we were the aliens walking through normal life for these people. I felt like I was in a national geographic movie, but this was real life. So I didn’t try to take pictures of people. Little children selling flowers and persistent beggars followed us with babes in arms. A few sat on the ground, maimed or crippled. Christy says one woman with a baby asked for money for ice cream for her child.At Karim's we ate mutton, which usually means goat meat in India, and I wondered if we had seen the source of our meat.Our lunch was superb and a bit problematic. Even though the goat was boneless, it wasn’t sinewless and we had to pull shreds of meat from other parts. The power went out twice during lunch but never for long. With our curries, they served us a plate of sliced red onions with lemons and green chutney. When I asked the waiter what the chutney was for he said it was for the onions. It took me a minute to realize the onions were a salad. I had been mixing it all in with my goat and roti and that worked too. I think it was a clean neighborhood. I don’t remember trash strewn about or bad smells. I feel so blessed to have witnessed such a scene. I wonder if even God is fascinated with His variety of children. His view is infinitely wider and deeper than mine.

I lifted this from google images but I swear the kids are even cuter in real life.

From this marvelous scene we took an Ola cab back to our favorite, modern materialistic air conditioned upscale shopping mall and movie theater. We wanted to see Sully, about the pilot who landed his plane on the Hudson River, but it’s for 18 and over in India, no exceptions (PG 13 in the US.) So we settled for Pete’s Dragon in 4D. It was a fun escape but nothing like walking through that old neighborhood by Humayan’s Tomb.

P.S. Scott has a Hindi-English app that sends him one English vocabulary word a day. Today's word is "crop" and the example sentence is "This land is out of crop." :-)

Big Basket and IMAX

I'm a Big Basketeer! Big Basket is an online grocery service that I love, although I still try to do most of my shopping in the local brick and mortar shops. Prices are comparable to physical shopping. Delivery is free if you spend over 1000 rupees (about US $15), otherwise you pay a 20 rupee delivery charge. Express delivery in a couple of  hours also costs 20 rupees (30 cents). Big Basket requests that we don't tip the delivery men.
Scott is convinced that Snickers (35 rupees/ US 50 cents for a big bar) is a nutritious snack for those wanting to gain weight so he takes pleasure in eating one every day. He encourages Danny to eat one daily, and surprisingly, Danny doesn't want to . He craves variety. In any case, one week all the shops in our market were out of Snickers. We quickly ordered some from Big Basket and the next week both our market and BB were out of Snickers. We're convinced that we caused a Delhi-wide shortage. My friend the grocer alerted me when I showed up at his shop and Snickers were back on the shelf. I've got a deal with this grocer that if I spend 2000 rupees in his shop then he'll have the groceries delivered. That's when I load up on 1 liter cartons of Tropicana 100% juice and unrefridgerated milk, peanut butter and jam, tomato puree and bags of flour. I carry the eggs, loose in a  plastic bag.

We've been to the movies twice. We've only found one theater that shows movies in English and it's in a huge new 3-story mall about 30 minutes away. They have a giant IMAX theater where we saw Interstellar. It was awesome! The mall is clean and air conditioned and full of glitzy shops, including Fabindia. It's more ultra-modern than any mall I've seen in Utah. I imagine that Dubai has malls like this. I suppose the US probably does too.

Fabindia has great traditional and western style Indian clothes.

First Impressions

We have two of these loveseats. Our apartment came furnished.

I'm going to copy from my first impressions of India and our apartment from another file.

15 August 2016

Snippets

When I look out our new living room window, this is what I see. It’s a 4^th floor view, with a narrow white marble balcony across the whole front. Directly across I see roofs and sides of more apartment buildings. We might call them condos. The taller ones look pretty run down, but our neighborhood is mostly made up of 4 story apartments of different design. It's urban, which I'm not used to.We have some green vines dangling down from pots on the roof, and better yet, a park across the street. All I can see of it from my window is tall trees, but inside is a small oval brick walking path and many flowers and benches. There’s a run-down paved section with a miniature volleyball or badminton court. No net. [I’ve since seen young men playing cricket there.] Just outside the front door is a generator or some electric noisy box that I’ve dubbed Hell’s evil exhalations. It’s not on today, but usually it’s blowing out hot hot wind right onto our front door in already hot hot weather. You know that lovely feeling that you get on a hot day after a cool shower when you step out and your skin feels cool and tingly with evaporation? Well, here you don’t get that because it is so warm and humid. Today it rained early, and the sun is shining now for the first time all week almost. Our apartment has cool white marble floors, two big bedrooms and a small one that Christy is sleeping in. Each of the big bedrooms has an attached bath with shower heads high and drains on the floors. There's no division between the shower and the toilet. The toilets have a separate sprayer on a hose for hygienic convenience. I think being able to wash down the whole bathroom and squeegie it down the drain is a good system.  One more closet holds a toilet, sink and mini washing machine. Our full baths have a glassless screen window that lets hot air in all day. I’ve seen chipmunks and pigeons preening on the window sill. The beds are very hard. Is that supposed to be good for us? The air conditioners work, but the landlady keeps telling us to turn them off when we’re not using them. (She lives with her family on the first and second floors.)The ac units are the same style that we just had installed at home. [Silly me. Hell's evil exhalations is our living room ac condenser unit. It drips into a bucket that we have to dump twice a day. All just outside our front door on the landing.] We're very happy with our apartment.

We have a maid named Meena. She comes every morning to mop the floors and dust. She speaks little more English than I speak Hindi so we cannot communicate. Except I did ask her using body language if she has children and she said Yes, holding up three fingers. I held out a hand low and then high. She held out her hand high, then low, then in between. We pay her 3000 rupees ($45 US) per month and she gets two days off. We told her thru the landlord that she can have every Sunday off as well. A man comes every morning but Saturday to pick up the trash from outside our door. I think he’s called a picker. He sorts thru the trash and recycles and composts what he can and sells any scraps that are valuable. We're paying him 150 rupees per month. Can that possibly be right? That's less than $3. I hope he services the whole block. We'll have to give him a bonus.

Buying chicken at INA

Mutton, or goat meat.

Yesterday I slept a lot of the day with a mysterious dizziness and fatigue. It occurred to me that I might just need more calories. This heat flattens the appetite and the food is simply much less rich here; very little meat or cheese. We've all gone down a size or two.

Today I triumphed by making myself go out to the meat market for boneless chicken breasts. We're eating chicken about twice a week and virtually no other meat. Any time we go out or order in we get meat.  I've never seen beef for sale in any form. The sale of beef is illegal in some parts of the country, since cows are holy to the majority. I rode in an auto rickshaw for about 20 minutes to get to the famous INA Market. This is upscale and has goods from all over the world. Every shop has someone with excellent English and many employees speak other world languages as well. I saw a Chinese couple today but no other white people. The produce is more varied than in my neighborhood; they even sell lettuces. In addition to chicken, I bought Nutella, Japanese medium grain rice and a few plastic storage dishes. But chicken was my main object in going. The guy in the back of the photo below cut off some breasts for me. The guy in front weighed my chicken on a balance scale and took my money. INA is a covered outdoor market with concrete floors and tiny ally-ways with mini-shops shelved floor to ceiling with wares.The ground in the market is wet, because they clean the floors every morning. But by the meats, you can see that the water is mixed with blood from the slaughtering. I felt my skirt wet against my ankles while I was waiting for my chicken. Ewww.

Chicken.

My most tender beggar day

Today I had the best encounter with a beggar ever!

The day started well. I took a bicycle rickshaw to Bluebells to exchange my library books (another important perk). My rickshaw driver was young and healthy and he sang Indian sounding songs as he peddled along. From Bluebells I walked towards Modern Bazaar, an upscale grocery store that sells boneless chicken. I hadn't actually been there, but I'd ridden past it and I sort of know the area. I never found Modern Bazaar, but I did find myself at Kailash Colony metro station, and from there I walked to an uppish-scale market that I like. They have Grand Bazaar, a grocery store that sells some foreign foods, The Big Chill, which sells safe/clean milkshakes, and Maxim's Bakery. I bought a footlong pizza at the bakery to try for dinner tonight, along with two pieces of "squidgy" Belgian chocolate cake. Outside of the grocery store I smiled at the cutest grimy little beggar boy ever. He looked about 10. He had bright eyes and a dazzling smile and I shook my head.

Dealing with beggars here is tricky. Organized crime has organized begging, a subsection of human trafficking complete with women holding drugged droopy babies and cripples and children who hold onto you and plead with their eyes. It's pretty awful. My sources have said try to find other ways to help socially in India so you don't support human trafficking. It's pretty grim and I've mostly steeled my heart against it. (There are also children selling dish towels and trinkets and such at intersections. They walk among the stopped cars knocking on windows trying to earn a few rupees. There's usually a supervising adult in sight. I don't know if it's legal or not.) Anyway, this kid was pointing into the grocery store and looking at me and pointing. I thought, maybe he's hungry. I'll go see what looks good to eat. He was pointing at the ice cream freezer. That's fun. I chose a little cup of mango ice cream and held it up to see if that would win me another smile. The kid was standing outside the store because the ubiquitous door attendant wouldn't let him in. He shook his head and pointed again with big gestures. I asked a store clerk to find out what he wanted. The first clerk said no but another clerk stepped out to talk to the boy. It turns out he was pointing at the big bags of whole wheat flour used to make flat breads here. The clerk held up a bag of flour. The boy jumped up and down and smiled happy communication success. The flour cost 180 rupees, less than $3. I paid for it along with my microwave popcorn and chocolate milk powder, and the clerk took it out to the boy. I followed shortly and the boy was waiting with the flour bag on one shoulder, to say "Thank you," the way they do with the drawn out short a sound. Pretty sweet. Even if he is working for someone, they've all got to eat. How much sweeter if he has a mother to take it home to. God bless the children on the street.

Eid and The Hindu news

Seen in The Hindo: India's national newspaper since 1878:

"City hospitals quiver under chikungunya strain". That's a mosquito-born virus that is here in epidemic proportions.  Hospital patients are even having to share beds.

The Indian Supreme Court has ordered that the government finalize a policy to end mass sterilization camps by December 31, 2016.

Three cheers for External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj who intervened to help a Pakistani refugee girl attend school here.

I read that Nepal's Prime Minister is a former Maoist Rebel leader. That doesn't sit well with India's government, but EAM Sushma Swaraj is reaching our to find common ground.

US soldier Chelsea Manning made it into the paper. It seems the Army caved in to her hunger fast and has agreed to let Manning have her gender transition surgery.

We had two holidays last week.
The kids were out of school for Eid. When I asked the fruit wallah at the market what it meant he said "It is for the Muslims. It is for the cutting of the goat." Google confirmed that there are two Eid holidays: one celebrates the end of Ramadan; this one is connected with the pilgrimage to Mecca and commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac where a ram was provided. Muslims sacrifice lambs, buffalo or goats and donate the meat to the poor.

The other holiday was a whole festival honoring Lord Ganesha (the elephant god of prosperity?) and it climaxed in people all over India going down to the rivers and immersing Ganesh idols in the water. Something like that. We saw colorful plastic elephant gods for sale on roadsides and in markets all week.

A typical day and Bluebells

The grounds at Bluebells:an oasis from urban noise, crowds, even cows.

Friends at home say they want to hear about my day to day life here. That suits me because it's my day to day life here that I truly enjoy. On the good days. Most days.

On a typical weekday, I wake up to my alarm at 6:35 to be up for Danny and Christy as they get ready for school. One fantastic perk of Scott's Fulbright-Nehru grant to teach and do research here at the India Statistical Institute is a connection with the Bluebells International School, It's an academically rigorous K-12 with forward thinking teachers and a beautiful campus. Even though we came in mid-term, Bluebells Principal Mrs. Suman Kumar agreed to let D and C attend some classes  for electives credit at home and also use the school's research/computer lab to do their online classes from Timpview. India has a lot of very competitive national testing that D and C are skipping. They like going to school even though they are the only white kids, except three kids from Turkey. They're hanging out with bright teenagers from  Cuba, Laos, Madagascar,  Indonesia, Vietnam, and of course, India. Generally,  the schools in Delhi are English immersion.I think. At Bluebells, if the kids get caught speaking Hindi, they have to write a 1000 word essay, but it's not enforced. On Teachers' Day, students from class XII taught all the other students while the teachers prepared a talent show assembly for the students. Danny taught 4th grade English and got a major award, well, a certificate for "secured 1st position in teaching primary school." We're so proud of our boy! Christy is the star of the soccer team. They've had two practices and the only scheduled game got cancelled. They put Christy on forward and the coach told the girls the kick off strategy was for Christy to boot it straight into the goal. Hmmm. Christy also got to make an announcement on the school radio. I definitely get the feeling our kids are , what, mascots? Show and tell? In any case, they both have a safe, clean, beautifully landscaped place to go every day with kids their own ages and lots of  work to do.
Which is more than I can say for myself.

The classroom building at Bluebells.

Back to the schedule:
Danny and Christy walk out at 7:10 to catch their bus in front of the nearby market and they're home most days by 2:45. At 7:10 I offer to make Scott a PBJ for work and he always says yes. He goes into work sometime between 8am and never; he usually works one day a week at home and otherwise he's gone by 10. Or 11. And home by 6:30. Or 11. That's my Scotty.

My washer.

I do a mini batch or two of laundry every day and haul it up one flight to the roof to hang on the lines. I'd enjoy the gentle breeze and the views up there if it weren't always so blasted hot, and it won't be. I learned to pay attention to weather from inside the house after my clothes on the line were soggier when I went to bring them in than when I had taken them up. I had to start over, starting with the spin cycle in my mini-machine, for which I am most grateful.

I go to the market almost every day. I've made a few friends there: the fruit wallah; the Mother Dairy man; the tailor who parks his sewing machine under an eave; the adult son of the owner the main grocery shop; the boys in the copy and printing shop (the boys are between 20 and 40, I'd guess, and only one is friendly, but I'm there all the time since we don't have a printer.) There are very few women working in the market. I know which store has 4-packs of toilet paper and which has Lays potato chips for Scott and which has good shampoo options and which has envelopes. Today I found facial tissue. A triumph. I'm genuinely pleased with my problem solving today. Bless all the people who can speak to me in English. I'd be helpless.Or I'd study Hindi in earnest.

After Danny and Christy come home we talk a bit and they both escape to their phones for a while then have a snack then dig into homework. I read or start dinner or fall asleep.

We often watch a netflix episode together before bed. I'm only now feeling settled enough to realize I need to find something meaningful to do outside of this flat. Teaching English is probably what I'm most qualified for and I don't have a work visa so it will be service.

That's enough drivel from Delhi for one day. I'll post it and see if I regret it.