LADLI, No Place Like Home

The faces of Ladli kids

Eileen had heard about Ladli in Singapore from a friend who supported it. It was the highlight of being in Jaipur, a truly heartwarming place. You can see this is NOT institution-like whatsoever. It is calm, clean, simple.  Here is a woman refreshing the entrace- big, bold colorful flowers painted on the ground. A large central courtyard is a meeting place with the activities all around it. They sent a car to pick us up. I read only now that they warn visitors that if they try to take a rickshaw or taxi they may not get there, as there is no commission to be paid to the driver. I suppose when they find out, they either won't take you or drop you quickly.

As we sat in the courtyard, we could see children in the schoolroom, actively listening to the very animated teacher. It was a small enough classroom that you could see each child was directly engaged. Sipping tea, we were told the stories, almost too hard to believe of the life of the children as it was for them on the street, and what Ladli offers them now. It was almost too much to take in. Of course there are too many children to be taken care of here, so these are the lucky ones. However, there is a van that is sent out to various sites in the city holding fresh water and food for children who are still on the street who still have to  make it on their own. Water is scarce for drinking, much less bathing and this van saves children's lives every day.

The children were all so happy to see us, but they did not lose their focus.

Happy and friendly, they did not seem distracted by us. As I went in to work with the kids, Eileen vanished, later I could see her completely engaged with and surrounded by gorgeous children..they had lunch in the courtyard, very clean, very nourishing food. They sat cross legged eating on a mat on the ground, knowing that they were very lucky to have this meal.

Reconstructing the Journey

So I'm home now being a vampire (my husband says) staying up all night and sleeping the day. I'll adjust, or not. As suggested by this photo, I have a lot to reflect on these past 2 months.

So in India this time, along with my 'normal' searching for all things saintly and sacred I had a reason to 'go shopping!' You realize this is not an easy thing when you are in India and looking for things that are unique and different. Every store has the same things. You wonder how a trillion people can sell the same exact thing all strung down the road next door to each other and stay alive. There seems to be no thought of 'maybe someone would like this piece of cloth done in a different way'. No, all women wear either sari or salwar kameez. They may be a little longer, shorter or different fabric but all the same basically. So, jewelry is very hard to find that is not a gold or silver bangle or other common pieces you see over and over. As you can see above, I had to meditate alot on this. Here I am meditating on how to put together my spiritual and shopping life. Actually, they go together quite well. Except that you keep acquiring things and then you have to carry them around, hurting your back and having to keep asking people to help. But hey, aren't I doing a good thing by employing people who need it?? So you see it's really quite spiritual.

As in Ali, our rickshaw driver. You can see that he is also quite spiritual. He thinks his rickshaw is God. He treats it like this, polishing it, dressing it up with mirrors and pretty things inside. He is very proud of his sound system. We got benefit of this as we toured around town with Bollywood blasting us away. He was happy to take us anywhere and had great suggestions, like climbing up a mountain for miles to see a little temple. And he definitely knew where the elephants were. Where they lived, not where to see them riding people around. Here we are at their barn.

Did I say how great Eileen is? She's wonderful, you can see. So much fun and she jumped right in; she's wearing our kurta's that we love so much. That's another business I'm ready to do, but that's for another blog, or life.

So we loved the elephants, fed them and hugged them, Ali always waiting patiently for hours; he knew eventually he would be able to take us to a store where we would buy things and he would get his commission for bringing us there. We weren't supposed to know this.

At first elephants are very scary because they are just so BIG. But after awhile you feel you can cuddle with them. They seem very smart. And they have very large mouths.

So, back to shopping. Here is a photo of the basic store Ali took us to, very 'tourist' oriented, called Satguru. We wanted to buy everything and open a store. No jewelry but the most outrageously wonderful tablecloths in block printing, pashmina's, quilts and these fab fabrics. They walk you through the area where they do the block printing (another tourist thing). We were sold, they didn't even have to do that. Shopping is so advanced there. Even if you don't buy anything, they insist on first bringing you tea, which gets spilled on everything, but they don't seem to care. Then if you stay long enough (of course we did, practically all day) they start bringing you snacks, then lunch, then dessert. And if you ever need a ride, they will pick you up and take you anywhere. We ended up picking out some beautiful fabrics- was so fun to choose coordinating fabrics to use as trim around the main fabric) and had their tailor make us some 'kurta's', the longish tops that look so great with jeans and cover up all those not so perfect body areas like butt and stomach. This is why I think it's a great business opportunity. Anyway, they were ready the next day and as they picked us up across town, they showed us the little street vendor who made us our lunch the day before at the store. It was really far from his store, but he said this was the best and freshest place to get the special and delicious treats we had been given.

Jaipur and Udaipur, October 2009

It is October 17th and after a night at a restored palace, we are in a lovely little hotel in Jaipur. Lucky as it was for us that day,  we were shopping in a very private and upscale area of town, led there for a store that was known to be a good one;  we walked and walked and somehow found a private house that had a sign on it; textiles and jewelry, call for appt. We knocked at the door and a lovely young woman came in who had very little time as she was on her way out of town on a business trip. She had beautiful wooden furniture and slowly I made my way to the few pieces of jewelry she had under the glass. Here comes my question: "Do you have any 'purani' deity pendants; that is old, from the village?" And she pulled out some prizes for me. But they were expensive. I purchased a few that I couldn't resist and she told me 'Don't sell these too cheaply, they are very valuable. They are real gold, and very old." I was in bliss to find these but I had wished I had found them in the village instead of the store.

The next day we hugged elephants, walked and walked everywhere and shopped our butts off as our rickshaw driver took us to all the places that would pay him if we bought. So tired, we were ready to be done for the day and my phone rings.. it's my gem guy who I've purchased gems from a few times. One of my main goals was to go see his factory and get his gems from him more cheaply, rare and unusual ones, I thought.  This photo is me in Jaipur at his house after about 4 hours.  I am throwing up my hands in frustration! I ended up spending all those hours there for him to tell me to just make the order online! He showed me the same stuff you see anywhere, and there is not factory, just his house with his kids oogling at us. After picking out a few and having it add up to more than I even paid from the US, he said 'go online and just make the order like I've done from home! Why did I need to go to Jaipur, I was pounding my head! Eileen shot this photo as I was ready to shoot him.... so all we could do after that was to try to find some elephants to hug. And we did.

But, alas, it was Udaipur that made my jewelry journey all ok. I found a few good pieces of jewelry in Jaipur, but really not as much as I had thought. The fabulous paisley sterling bracelet was from a guy who our rickshaw driver took us to. Inside was a man who seemed to be interested in everything else other than jewelry. Here I was eager to buy and all he could do was tell me he knew my future and could heal me and wanted to see me in the back room to tell me all about it. After all, he said, he has cured so many people and hundreds of them come to his seminars all the time. Really, I just wanted that beautiful paisley bracelet and nothing else in the store. But he made me listen to his ramblings and told me his cure for me was in a gemstone and he threw it out at me on the table. I didn't pick it up, I just looked at it. Then I got up and walked away. I gave the other assistant in the store the money for the bracelet and asked the driver to take me to another place. There I found another few 'purani' pendants, my true love. But it would be later  Udaipur in a tiny, rundown dusty little two room store with swords and knives in the window that I struck 'gold'. How many little jewelry places had I stuck my head into asking if they had any 'purani' (old village) deity pendants and over and over and over the answer was 'oh yes' to go in and find nothing. A youngish man in the store said the same thing, 'yes, maybe I do' and I waited again, knowing if he did have anything it would be worthless. He was gone in the back room it seemed for hours, but it was really about 10 minutes. He came walking up to me in the front room with an old rickety drawer. He said, "I have some pendants in here" and I looked down to see hundreds of little dusty old squares and circles in metals. Little by little, he and I both sorted through them and that day I left with a whole bag of the most wonderful deities of all kinds in both silver and gold, and old gold. Some of them were reddened by the pujari's red tilak's as they were deep in worship. And they had been lying in that drawer for years, so I bundled up the good ones and asked for a 'bulk' price. I was in heaven!

Me in Udaipur