Carol and Harold's India trip: October 14

Because of the Games, we did not go to our placement today – Delhi declared a holiday. We left our flat at 9:00 AM and wandered out our gate and across the busy street (which was much less busy today because of the holiday). Although we have walked in this area several times, we could never find the Hauz Khas Village where we ate lunch when we first arrived. But, today we found it and also stumbled upon the most impressive ruins of a fourteenth century reservoir. Sultan Ala-ud-din Khalji had the reservoir built in 1304 to supply water to his citadel. Half a century later, it was expanded by Firoz Shah who added a madrasa (seminary) and a mosque. From there, we wandered around the beautiful, huge park with miles of walking paths, and an area with deer, monkeys and peacocks. The most amazing part was how uncrowded it was. With over 1.3 billion people, we had acres of park and national historic sites to ourselves. We came back for lunch (of course!), and then we wandered around the nearby market for a while. At 5:30, we all met for a dance demonstration by a beautiful woman who is a top ranking professional Odissa dancer. Odissa is a classical dance form of India which places particular importance on the independent movement of head, chest and pelvis and on the basic square stance. The dancer’s facial expressions were magnificent as she told her story in dance. After dinner, a group of us watched the movie “Water” directed by Deepa Mehta. It is a moving account of the life of a widow in India in the days before independence (1930’s). Some improvements have been made in the big cities; however, we’ve heard that life is still difficult for widows in rural areas.

In addition to the disruption of the Games (the closing ceremony was last night!), the Hindus in India are celebrating Navratra, which is a nine night holiday ending last night. So, many of our students’ families went to their villages to celebrate. Only about one-third of our students were in school on Friday. Cloe has begun to join us on Mondays and Fridays and today was her 19th birthday. The staff at our placement got her a cake and gave her presents (and this is only the second time they’ve met her.) So far today, we had breakfast at the flat (granola), our breakfast at the school (bread and an unusual spread), birthday cake and sour cream & onion potato chips, tea and cookies, and then we came back to a full (delicious) lunch which included another birthday cake. So, if no one recognizes Carol, she’ll be the fat one getting off the plane in November. Poor Harold has been having some stomach issues and isn’t eating much at all. He’ll be the skinny one. We are packing now and getting ready for our weekend trip. We will go to an early dinner (!!!!) and catch the subway to the bus station. We’ll leave the details of the weekend until Monday.