RUBBLE

I have to say that in my first four days in India, walking and riding around in two large cities, the word that comes to mind is RUBBLE. There seem to be piles of debris everywhere!! Sometimes it is brick and concrete, sometimes it is garbage. Therefore, it is amazing to me how NORMAL it seems to be that children and adults walk around barefoot in these circumstances.The rare sidewalks are very irregular and full of holes; most people walk in the street. Since there isn't literal interpretation of LINES and STOP LIGHTS, it is quite a challenge to cross 4 lanes of traffic (well, as I said, not LITERALLY lanes). In Chennai I watched an elderly gentleman with a staff wearing a short cloth and no shoes try to cross the street. I could tell he was very frightened - that is what drew my attention. No white canes for poor blind people in India I guess. By the time I realized he was blind, he had made it across one "lane" and was stuck, not knowing if he should go forward or not. I watched about 7 Indian people, men and women, walk around him and beside him without noticing his plight. I just couldn't take it anymore, so I walked him across (I wove him through is more like it).

Another disturbing incident that I witnessed was two elderly widows having a cat fight at the entrance of a Hindu temple in Chennai. There were three widows begging, two in front and one behind them. All of a sudden one of the women in front started clawing and pushing and shoving the woman in the rear. A few minutes later, we drove past and I noted that the one that lost the fight (the one in the rear) had moved away from the other two and was being comforted by someone. I imagine hunger makes one competitive. I felt very sad to see women that age have to scramble so desperately to stay alive.

In the food department, we're finally distinguishing a chapati from a dosa. We haven't been proficient at eating with our hands since we were toddlers, so we are still learning to bunch up the food with our fingers, give a twist & lift of the wrist, and get it into our mouths without dropping most of it.
Off to study yoga at an ashram near Trivandrum for a week! The first month of our trip has left me achy (lots of different beds), so I'm looking forward to it!