So, kan ya kumari or ar u ppukottai?

Culture shock. It takes two months in India to learn that:

1. I should always carry small food items on my person to give to beggars. I'd rather not give money, but don't mind so much if they are disabled or are begging with an alms bowl outside a temple. Seeing beggars is still painful, and this really made me think about the directions and implications of even my smallest, quietest actions towards other people.

2. If I want people to stop pestering me to sell me things, the easiest way is to tell them I have no money - works ten times better than telling them to bugger off.




















Ramble>>
In India, seemingly every shop on the street sells the same household items and bags and sandals. With shops perpetually full and nobody seeing to buy, I can't help but ask myself how they survive. An army of tea stands sells the same food and drinks ("No natural ingredients - 100% synthetic syrup!"), people at bus stands sell the same silly, tacky toys, Beggars sometimes come in families, and at the same time most construction is half finished, sanitation and hygiene are sorely lacking, the streets strewn with rubbish. Garnish with gaudy, glaring advertising, cell phones, jewelry and movies and music that scream luxury and materialism, and serve piping hot.

On top of that, there's a-whole-nother world of rural and water and agricultural issues I don't completely understand. Pardon me for seeing problems where you might see character, but it feels as if it would take just a bit of redirection and organisation to turn things around.

Of course, there is probably a mountain of inertia behind the current situation.

I think many of India's problems are definitely cultural / social. For example, it seems to me peoples' values and priorities disposes them to litter. Private before public, and convenience over consequence. All this means is that Indians are only as selfish as the rest of humanity. They just don't have trash bins and the public works to service them. A very small part of me pines that it mirrors global pollution, at a personal level.
>>Rant over

At the same time, tucked away in a corner of Auroville, a group of remarkable people sit around the only light on the farm at night, powered by a solar panel, having conversations that wander into the night, interrupted only by their brewing tea and singing a few songs to an excellent accompaniment of ukulele.

There was not really any other choice than to congregate. The (un)availability of electricity brought people together like moths to a candle. Solitude farm has by far the most efficient way I have ever seen people extract quality of life from the resources (social, a little natural, and almost no financial) available to them.
Pardon me for being so hippie dippie, but organic farm work, home cooked food and positive, productive human interaction sound like paradise to me.

4. You can paint and personalise a windmill as much as you can just about anything.