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.
Ali takes us to his favorite little funky restaurant, owned by his sharp little friend. You can see that Ali is so happy that we bought him a beer, and was just so sad to see us go.
As he drove us back to the hotel on this last night in Jaipur, he stopped and said 'wait just a minute', ran out and came back with these very fresh flower mala's, putting them over our heads. In this photo you can see his little heart light, part of his rickshaw decor. I thought he was going to cry when we said goodbye. The next day he called us on the phone and said, 'Mothers, i miss you. How are you? I only made 200 rupees today'. We said, 'don't worry, Ali, just get some rest, work hard and you will be fine." We missed him, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment