Singing River

The post from Pathanadi (which means singing river) for Monday, January 4.

  

Today was a nice quiet day around here.  Sanjay has continued his morning walks with his brothers and is so sore by now that they had the barber/masseuse come to the house to work the knots out of his legs.  This was on a bed that they put out on the patio.  Sorry, but I missed the photo op as I was on my own far less vigorous walk with Aunty Sarla through the village and farm fields. 

The kids have been roaming about freely all day and are familiar enough now with their cousins that they are beginning to have little tiffs.  I just now took them down to the village to see the inside of one of the mud houses in which people live—this one belonging to mom’s cook/cleaner Shevanti and her family.  They are having a new brick house built next door to their existing house.

It might be time to talk about food.   Because we can’t live without it, we brought our own coffee and use the press that we left here several trips ago.  Everyone else either has chai or instant coffee.  Chai is the several-times-daily-stop-everything-and-enjoy-drink around here.  Milky and sweet, it is black tea with ginger and a few other spices in it.  Breakfast is usually eggs scrambled with veggies and some other sort of vegetable dish served with fresh parathas—a tortilla like bread folded into layers and cooked with ghee.  It is not mango season right now, but it is guava season, so I eat several a day, along with the good local bananas and papayas.  Lunch is rice and dal, today a fish curry, a vegetable dish, and always plenty of fresh chapatis—a bread that is very similar to tortillas. 

The kids drink a lot of the fresh cow’s milk, and although they don’t go in for the curries, they eat plenty between all of the fresh fruit and the chapatis and dal.  After lunch comes nap/rest time, and then tea time.  Dinner is served very late here—usually around 8:30 or 9:00.  Because we have been having big festivities, these have been grand feasts.  Last night we ate at Sanjay’s brother Ashish’s house.  Lisa had several salads, chicken curry, mutton curry (which for New Mexicans out there does not mean sheep meat, but goat), dal, several kinds of veg, and palak paneer.  Desserts were a cake she baked and and sweet called ras malai.

I don’t think it needs saying that Sanjay and I will be a bit plumper when you see us next.  The girls might be a bit skinnier. 

Tonight is dinner at Mon and Ritu’s house.  Ritu is Sanjay’s cousin.  Like all of the rest of the crew, they are doctors at Padhar Hospital.

Yesterday was a bit busier day.  We went to see the dentist and Sanjay worked on thinking through a waste management program to institute in the village.  I (with the help of Aunty Sarla) worked on cooking some unfamiliar food here.  Mom has grown tons of basil but doesn’t know how to cook with it.  So we made pesto, a tomato basil salad, and a few other fresh salads.  In the afternoon with went to the closest local city, Betul, to do some errands, including shopping for gifts to take home.  Seems like I was just shopping for gifts for this direction!  Daya was too busy mucking around in the cow field to come on this journey.

Pictures will come at some point.  Relatives are beginning to disperse and go home, so it becomes a bit quieter here.