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.