Neighbors trimming trees, a walking tour of old Ahmedabad and a lazy Sunday

September 12, 2016

Yesterday, Kamla had her trees trimmed for winter. It took two men working for hours to trim, and stack the trimmings. One man was paid 500 rupees, about $7.50. The other man is her gardener so I doubt there was extra pay outside of his monthly pay for him. The tool was a manual curved saw blade on a long bamboo pole. Perhaps they used other tools but I didn’t see them. I didn’t actually watch the process but saw the results.

This morning a beautiful woman showed up with two small children. The
girl is probably two years old and the boy five. As the woman cut the branches off the limbs and cut the limbs to size, the children would carry the wood to a stack and the woman moved the leafy small branches to another stack. She used a curved blade on a wood handle. She worked smoothly and efficiently. According to Rahul they will take the wood home and let it dry for a month then use it for cooking. I asked permission to take photos.

After about ten minutes a tri shaw lorry driven by her older son who was 13 or 14 came up to the work site with her husband and older daughter. The entire family is quite attractive. They loaded the wood into the rear compartment and took the useable wood home. I promised to give them prints of the photos and arranged a time for her return.

I had lunch with my friend Kamaldeep, a textile designer. She took me to a great restaurant in a historic hotel that has been restored. In addition to a delicious meal we visited their fabulous gift shop loaded with scarves of every description. I couldn’t resist a silk shawl in a rainbow of teal, lime and a deep fuchsia. Oh my, so lovely and at a fraction of the cost at home. You have to love that about India. I bought it as a gift to no one in particular but when I got home and showed it to Ron he commented that it would go well with a silk evening outfit I had made in Thailand. Ok I’ll keep it for me. Kamaldeep sells her shawls at this shop as well. Then she took me upstairs and showed me a terrific textile museum and shop which if I understood her correctly is a branch of Honeycomb International where Ron and I went Saturday afternoon.

September 15, 2016

Today it is 98 degrees and with the humidity factor if feels like 114 according to Accuweather.com. I stayed inside other than my morning walk with Kamla. It was already hot at 8:15. This evening at 6:00 will be worse but I am feeling fit with the extra exercise. Ron and I managed to sleep right through our walk this morning. I think the shorter days are affecting us. It is very dark at 6:00 now.

September 19, 2016

On Friday, Ron had a meeting with a CEPT professor who has been asked to put together a training program for sanitary inspectors and Ron was asked to help by doing the soft skills section of the training. We have our fingers crossed that this will come to fruition. Supposedly thee are 500 Sanitary Inspectors that work for Ahmedabad Municipal Council.  Ton said that if that was true, then 450 of them aren't doing their job.

After work, Ron and I went to three art exhibits on campus. Often art exhibits here are for one day only or maybe two days. We don’t know why that is but if we see one that looks interesting we go the day it is announced. Our favorite was an exhibit of photos from India taken with a mobile phone by a young man who was present. He spoke no English but an employee came over and translated for us. We had visited some of the sites he had photographed. Afterwards we went out for an Italian dinner that was yummy.

On Saturday we got up at 5:45 after waking up every hour during the night. Rahul came at 6:45 and by 7:00 we were on our way to a heritage walk through old town. Our guide was Nirav whom we had hired shortly after we had arrived. We hired him to show us where to shop for groceries, books, etc. He said he had never been hired for that kind of service as he is a tour guide. There were about ten of us on the tour and counting the Europeans who were there we have now seen 13 whites since our arrival in Ahmedabad. We did see Europeans when we were in the tourist town of Udaipur.

The walking tour was terrific as it was in the old quarter and concentrated on architecture and pols (self contained neighborhoods sheltering large numbers of people). We learned that the neighborhoods were homogeneous. For example one neighborhood might have Jains living there because they have a strict diet. The only animal product they consume is milk but they also do not eat anything grown underground such as root veggies. But neighborhoods abutted each other and the guide reported that people got along and that the segregation was due to having similar religious or cultural values. Some pols were virtually small villages, traversed by narrow streets and usually terminating in squares with community wells and chabutaras for feeding birds.

Because all the trees had been cut down to build the city, the birds had left.  In order to attract the

birds back, these elaborate bird feeders were constructed in the inner city. The feed was kept in a chamber at the base of the high rise feeders and they were designed and constructed so cats could not get to them. The pols were protected by gates, cul de sacs and secret passages. So we saw very fine Indian Islamic monuments and beautiful Hindu and Jain temples.

The carved wooded houses were amazingly preserved; some over 400 years old. There were some havelis in the pols, large mansions with 45 bedrooms. We were allowed to pass through one of them and see their private chapel complete with holy men in attendance. We learned that the idols’ (three were displayed) elaborate clothes are changed daily.

Ahmedabad is being considered as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and will be paid a visit later this year by the committee to see if it will be placed on the list of World Heritage Sites.

charcoal iron that must weigh close to 10 lbs

Very narrow streets in old town

This cow joined our tour

lazy dogs napping where they can

The local tailor

Typical old town "major street" scene

We came home to rest and to get out of the heat for a couple of hours. We had lunch and went back out to visit a small textile museum housed in a heritage hotel that was once the home of a wealthy textile magnate, Sheth Mangaldas Girhardas. The textiles are from a private collection and beautifully displayed in a well lit venue. There were photos of men and women who make the textiles and good signage explaining the techniques and tribes/villages where they had been made. It was a real thrill to see such fine and beautiful work. In addition they had a super shop of new and antique textiles, an outlet of where we bought our kanjari. Lastly they had a good collection of books on textiles for sale. I was too tired to spend much time in the shops but would love to go again and spend some time perusing them.

We came home and I took a brief nap after having not slept well. Ron read beside me in bed.

On Sunday we relaxed. In the morning I managed to drop one of our glass water bottles and when it hit the tile floor broke into a million pieces and the pieces of glass flew clear across the room. I had on sandals and a small sliver of glass slipped into the sandal and when I took a step I managed to drive the sliver into my foot. Fortunately, I easily removed it and Ron helped me put on a band aid. We spent 15-20 minutes trying to make sure we got all the glass up, particularly since Sankar does not wear shoes. We walked to the nearby mall to get a few things including replacing the two glass water bottles we have managed to drop and found some good stainless bottles. As we were taking the escalator down to the exit a man came running after us and handed Ron a bill for the plastic bag containing our items. I needed to go on down the escalator so I then could take the up escalator to pay the five rupees for the bag. The cashier had forgotten to charge me. Ah Incredible India! Then in the afternoon watched the DVD ’RACE’ about Jesse Owens. It was a good story but not a great film. However it is rare to find anything to see here so we have lowered our standards. Life is good.