Saturday, December 10, 2005
Bill & Sandra: We carry an old Palm Pilot around with us and, when we are sitting and relaxing somewhere, we jot down things we have seen along the way. Yes, I know it would be faster to write it in the notebook, which I bought for just that purpose, but then I would have to type it over again into the computer. This way I can just transfer it . . .
Signs are unusual, sometimes quite graphic, and sometimes obscure in meaning with odd turns of phrase. Painted on the wall outside one shop was, “Saree fall fixing and zig zag under taking.” We assumed this means sewing a fixture onto a woman’s blouse which she wears under her sari to keep the sari end from slipping off her shoulder (most just use a safety pin). (Man, were we wrong! We eventually learned that the “saree fall” is where the saree trails along the ground. When it does, it becomes frayed. Hence, “fall fixing.”) Zig zag is probably a zipper. Other shops selling cloth will advertise “Matching.” Many shops and businesses will often have a sandwich board describing their offerings. The ones for chicken and meat sellers will be large, with a beautiful, but demented-looking, chicken, goat or sheep painted on it. Maybe they already know what’s in store for them.
Sandwich board on the sidewalk.
We couldn’t resist taking a picture of one with a quite denigrating painting of a buxom “babe” on a crutch with one arm and a leg in a cast. The lettering? “Bone Setters.”
It appears to be a requirement that ingredients of packaged food be listed. The most common “ingredients” seem to be “Permitted Additives” or “Permitted Antioxidants.”
People are small here, so many things are built to accommodate. The counters in our kitchen are low, and the doorways are so low that, if I stand in one and press my head against the top, I can’t stand straight. It pays to slouch here! Passenger vehicles are very small as well, except for buses. In those, the seats are small and, in spite of there being a lot of them, there are still people standing.
There doesn’t seem to be garbage collection, at least as we know it. Instead, on the edge of the street across from our apartment building is a large, concrete ring, very much like a 3-foot section of culvert lying flat, into which everyone throws their garbage. There are similar ones on almost every block. They almost never get full because of the dogs, pigs, goats, cows, occasional pony, and raggedly dressed people digging through them to recycle just about everything. Obviously, all the contents go somewhere else one way or another.
Banana Seller
To us, the items and services offered on the sidewalk are unusual: a photocopy machine for hire; a row of typists sitting at small tables with chairs beside them, awaiting the next customer with a letter to be dictated, or an official document to be filled out in quadruplicate; shoe repair shops on blankets; a man bent industriously over a sewing machine. This is to say nothing of the sellers of ropes of jasmine flowers knotted into meters of string and vendors of handkerchiefs, belts, toys, clothing, fruits, vegetables, crafts, and any other conceivable thing small enough to put in a bag or pack. All of these are not beside the sidewalk – they’re actually right in the middle of the sidewalk! Very incongruous to see a Xerox machine sitting in the middle of a sidewalk.
Of course, that is where there ARE sidewalks. In the town center, the sidewalks are wide, so there is still enough left to walk on – most of the time. In other areas, where there is a congregation of shops, there may be sidewalks. If so, they are usually quite narrow and, therefore, so cluttered with vendors, parked motorcycles, bicycles and even cars, that it is easier to walk on the side of the road, trusting that the traffic will make some effort to avoid you.
Tire Repair Shop
The pile of old tires is there to advertise
its presence. It was at the corner of our
apartment building.
Shops of the same type, offering the same items or services, tend to congregate on the same streets, as in bazaars throughout the East. There will be a street where every shop sells sheet metal items; another street where only typing services are offered; another street dealing in meats; another selling only coffee; another filled with tea stalls, etc. You’d think they would spread out a bit to provide more competition, yet every store seems to do a thriving business in spite of the fact that every other shop on that street offers virtually the same goods.
Portable shrines come and go all the time. The most common are set up on small carts and positioned strategically near places large groups of people are congregating – a lottery seller, a group of snack stands, a large store, a group of small shops, etc. Occasionally, a bunch of guys will roll up in a small truck, stake out a square of sidewalk and roadway and set up a larger shrine. Distorted Indian pop music suddenly blares forth from the flanking loudspeakers up on stands. Most of the passers-by seem to stare uncomprehendingly as they walk by. An unknown god, perhaps?
A holy tree in the middle
of the sidewalk.
The god thing is very big here, of course, but what is interesting is they seem to be keeping up with the times. There are shops making framed images of gods with small, flashing colored lights around the frame and outlining the god. They would look good beside your velvet painting of Elvis – very garish and candles not required. It would not surprise us to see an image of Ganesh with one of his many arms and hands pressing a cell phone to his ear. One can also purchase a small shrine or statue of a god, which lights up, to place on one’s dashboard.
It is interesting how plumbing has evolved differently from that in the west. It takes into account the historical shortage of water. Each building has its own storage tank and the water is pumped up from a well or the municipal system. (Our apartment building has municipal water in the kitchen and well water in the bathrooms.) This makes the water pressure low, especially when you are on the top floor not much below the tank.
Taps are small and issue a small stream of water. Same thing in the shower. You have to dance around to get your body all wet. That’s not so bad when the water is hot, but when you turn off the hot to finish with cold, it is sort of like being sprayed by a couple kids with squirt guns on a hot summer’s day.
All the bathrooms here have a drain in the floor, much like an old-fashioned, wide-screened, shower drain, and most don’t have a shower curtain (we put one up in ours, but it’s way too short). So, when you take a shower, everything gets soaked. Interestingly, the sink drains are not directly connected to the drain pipes. Instead, they run down onto another wide-screened drain. Which means, if the screen gets plugged, the water runs all over the floor.
We discovered that this is also the situation in the kitchen, with a difference. We noticed that the cupboard under the sink smelled strongly of mildew, so we opened it to try to air it out. Strangely, there was a big block of concrete underneath the sink. When I looked closely at the top, I saw it had a square hole about 18 inches across and 8 inches deep. The bottom was lined with mungy sand, and in the middle was another shower-drain with the pipe from the sink leading to it. If we dumped a dishpan full of water, the hole would partially fill, and then the water would slowly drain out. I cleaned the screen, but the water still runs out of the hole quite slowly. It will obviously never dry out.
Free-roaming pigs in Mysore.
We were walking down the main street the other day, and nearly got trampled by a herd of cows being driven out from a side street. We have also seen herds of goats being guided right down the middle of a main street. Vehicles just honk (they never cease to honk, anyway) and swerve around them. Small herds of sows with piglets run freely across and along roads, and they run very fast! They’re ugly as sin, very bristly and boar-like. We haven’t seen an animal hit yet, which is amazing. Dogs lie in the middle of roads constantly, and they all look as if they were fathered by the same one dog – identical.
We have mentioned the frequent power failures. We were sitting one evening in the office of Dr. Kumar, the Ayurvedic doctor, when the power went off. Without missing a beat in what he was saying, he picked up a flashlight standing on his desk, pointed it at the ceiling and turned it on. He held it that way, unconcerned and without comment, until the power came back on, as he continued to speak to us. It struck us as quite humorous as we thought about it later.
Ice cream here is delicious, in a very artificially-flavored and colored way, and served in small lumps. Bill’s not allowed, but so far Sandra has enjoyed pistachio (vivid green), black current (a gorgeous lavender color), and apricot (bright orange with actual bits of dried fruit in it). It’s pasteurized and safe to eat, and surprisingly low in sugar.
That’s about it for now. It’s 9 pm and time to start supper – normal supper time in India.