Meera's House">Meera's House" border="0" alt="" />
IndependanIndependanIndependence Day was Wednesday, August 15th so it was time to do our dance at Orya Basti. It was a pretty intense day of activities, because apparently Independence Day festivities start at 7:30am here. School kids get up extra early in the morning and they go sing songs and march around with their schools in uniform. I took some pictures of one school all dressed up in their uniforms so you can see what I’m talking about. We were asked to be at the school by 7:30am, in order to get dressed up in our costumes and whatnot. It turned out that they didn’t start to get us dressed until much later, so we got to watch the beginning of the ceremonies. It started with a flag-raising and singing the Indian national anthem, then some of the kids recited poetry and sang little songs. After that some older guys came and did some traditional warrior-style moves with spears and stuff. It was really neat. At that point Anisha and I were told that we needed to go get suited up.
They had a costume that was big enough for Anisha, but they decided that I was small enough to fit into one of the costumes made for the little girls!! The elastic waist couldn’t have been more than about six inches across, but somehow I managed to squeeze myself into it, fat spilling out from every angle! The costume itself was a somewhat garish pink, with silver shiny polka dots all over that made me look about the same age as the rest of the kids that we were dancing with. They eventually found a sari big enough for Casey, that actually made her look quite stately. You can see in the photos… anyway, the dance itself was pretty hilarious. The little girls didn’t remember the moves any better than we did, so the whole thing looked a little garbled. Masaum took lots of photos with my camera, so when I can get things working again on the photo end of my blog I’ll put them all up. Biju. Dr. Jay, Ritesh and Devaker all came to watch the performance, and Biju video taped it, so hopefully I’ll get a copy that I can bring back with me.
After the performances were over, we went back to the clinic for a little while and rested. Then Masaum came and got us, and we went to Meera’s house. She lives out pretty far from the city centre. I wa glad that I got to go with Masaum on his bike, because everyone else was on the bus, which took quite some time longer. Masaum’s family actually lives quite close down the street. His dad is a guard at the Bhopal prison, which is apparently one of the biggest prisons in India. He pointed out where the perimeter starts and ends, and the prison seriously goes on forever! Meera’s house is nestled in a little community of houses at the foot of a large Mont Royal-sized hill. She decided almost immediately after we got there that we should go for a hike up the giant hill!! It looked okay from the bottom, but I quickly realized that the only way to the top was to do some actual climbing on the rocks, which proved difficult in my flip-flops.
We walked around on the top of the mountain for a while, since it was really beautiful up there. It was strange that we were so close to the city, but it was so quiet and peaceful up there. There were so few other houses around, you can see it in my photos, there’s so much green around. Anyway, I almost killed Meera on the way back down, because she decided that I needed help o the way down and kept holding my hand, making it infinitely more difficult to get down. After that we were brought around to a bunch of different people’s homes (who I think were all of Meera’s sisters, but I’m not really sure). After that we decided that the day had been long enough and we headed back to Sambhavna. Anisha and I were decided that we wanted to go and pick up the shirts that we had had made though. I had also bought some really cool material from the Chowk, so I brought that and had myself measured for three pairs of pants and another shirt. The shirts that we picked up were really nice. The material is nice and light, and she had made them a bit loose fitting, so they’ll be perfect for hotter days (which we still are having sometimes).
Phew, I can’t say that I’m not glad that Canada doesn’t celebrate Canada Day with so much enthusiasm… as just the one time was exhausting enough. Apparently everyone does it all over again on the day that the constitution was signed, but I think next time I’ll refrain from doing any dancing….
No comments:
Post a Comment