Bhuj and bye bye India

So here I am! We arrived back home at 6.30am from Bhuj. I didn't sleep at all. My bed was so narrow on the bus back I had to lie totally straight. The window kept opening and I was shaking with cold despite wrapping up in every single item of clothing I'd taken with me to Bhuj - not much I can assure you! The road was horrific and the one service station we stopped at to go the toilet was open squat booths which stank of piss and shit. Not impressed. Fine if you're a guy, but I'm telling you it was not pleasant. The time for a She-Wee was never more right than last night.

I am thoroughly exhausted, we've visited the Sun Temple which is a day trip outside the city, therefore it's a day where nothing else can be done! Yesterday we went to Darpana to say our goodbyes, pick up our tailoring, I bought camera film, we had the most delicious meal we've had in India for lunch at an old friends and picked up the footage of the film we made and went out for our last tasty Dosa! Phew! But, first Bhuj...

I had a wonderful time, but it wasn't the best place I've been. It's too small and is more suited as a place to rest in between going to little villages around it rather than to stop and enjoy in itself. I've decided that Gujaratis are probably among the friendliest people in India as it's just not a touristy state at all. Even in Ahmadabad which is a huge city everyone is just lovely. However, the craft we saw in Bhuj was amazing. Elsa had been to a lot of places especially to witness Indian crafts and traditions so had a few recommendations of places to go and people to meet. We saw block printing being done which was an astounding level of details, we were shown how they do bandhani (tie dye) which is unbelievably amazing and we saw people making all sorts of jewellwery - we just chanced upon it walking down little tiny streets. Two or three men in workshops that consisted of one bare room only supplied with the tools they were using, making anything from gold rings with the finest detail to carving silver ornaments. It was pretty fantastic.I was very impressed with the handicrafts we witnessed. We also went to see an amazing exhibition of Indian handicrafts which was unfortunately a little depressing as most of the traditions are dying out. The new generation have no interest in keeping the knowledge on and their focus is what can make a lot of money. We did witness one skill, Patola of Patan, which only 3 families in India know (this was actually just outside of Ahmedabad at the Sun Temple trip today) which is incredible. They dye the individual silk threads using natural dye with the pattern already decided. So, like bhandani, they dye the silk in stages using wrapping techniques, so that when the thread is loomed together it's already in the correct pattern. This means they can't get a single inch wrong when they dye it as the thread needs to match up exactly when it's woven. And it's all learnt in their heads! Unbelievable. But, this craft isn't dying out as they've managed to create a market in which they can charge a lot of money. The only problem, potentially, is that it's kept within the family so if there was an earthquake and that family died that tradition would die too! Amazing anyway.

We also went to this fantastic antique shop in Bhuj, which had the most amazing antique fabrics, Rabari (tribe) shawls, etc. It was beautiful. And the father and son who ran the shop were total legends. They gave me trimming of beautiful old mirror work for free because we knew Elsa (their first ever customer who came with her sister on the 8th August 2008 - very auspicious!) and I've backed it and turned it into a strap for my camera. It's lovely! I also bought a Toran from them which is from the 1920s. It's a little tatty, but totally stunning and only 100 rupees. It's also made by the carpenter tribe, and considering my last name is Macintyre (meaning carpenter) I thought it was fate!

The Modhera Sun Temple and Step Well was an excellent last day in India. I had been to both before when I was younger, and it immediately came back to me when I arrived. The only thing I didn't remember was paying to get in! That was a little disappointing when it came to visiting the Step Well as you used to be able to go down to the bottom, but they had shut it off and so we were barely allowed half way. I also didn't account for the hoards of children (it was a Saturday that we visited) who surrounded us asking for, or just taking, photos and chatting to us so much that it did get a little bit annoying. It took me about 10 minutes to get through the entrance gates to the Step Well and it wasn't until I was asked by one girl if I was enjoying the beautiful Step Well that I actually had to tell them to leave me alone because I hadn't seen any of it yet!

However, despite those gripes it was absolutely worth it. The Sun Temple is beautiful. The pillars are intricately carved with fornicating figures, much to our amusement. The Step Well is hundreds of years old. It was preserved by salt and only uncovered in the 1960s so is in fantastic condition.

As it was a whole day trip outside of the city we hired a driver to take us around. There is no other way of doing it really. We thoroughly confused him by asking him to take us to a dhabba for lunch. A dhabba is just a little cafe on the street serving basic, but often delicious, food that you don't really have much choice over. It's vegetarian, tasty and incredibly cheap. Our driver didn't speak English, which we often find is fine as from my experience you can still communicate with someone on a basic level even if you don't speak the same language. But, he wasn't a communicater. He looked blankly, gave no indication of whether he understood us and didn't even speak in Hindi or Gujarati back to us. We've had very chatty English - Gujarati conversations with rickshaw drivers and sometimes there's an understanding, but not with this driver. Anyway, we said dhabba and took our fingers pressed together towards our mouths to indicate food, so what he understood was that white westerners want fed. He ignored the dhabba part of our request and started driving us out to a restaurant. Of course none of this was communicated so it wasn't until we started driving up to some air conditioned, probably bad-average, restaurant that we cottoned on to where he was taking us. I was desperate to go to a dhabba as we had hardly had any decent, simple street food since we'd been in India so I said, more clearly, 'dhabba'. He looked at me with surprise, repeated the words, and with my smile, nod and repeat again, he drove us back off with pleased confusion. So he dropped us off and much to the bewilderment of all the men (you only really see men around on the streets, I imagine the women are working or looking after children as you only see lots and lots of men hanging around eating, smoking and drinking) we went into a little dhabba and had some delicious, spicy food. It was tasty and the chapatis were unbelievable.

A nice way to end our Indian trip. Home tomorrow, via Dubai. Goodbye India; I look forward to when we next meet!

Last days in Ahmedabad

Filming finished. I can't believe it! It went very well, very quickly. All the scenes were set before hand and were mostly very short; a second or two, merely for the image. I worked some shadow puppets, held some lights and at the end I performed the silks routine I had choreographed for Papin and me. It all seemed to go very smoothly - I can't wait to see the photos and the footage!

It really feels like the first day of my holidays. We got home after the filming and I finally got to bed about 1am last night and we were all up again at 6.30am to do the Old City tour. It was well worth it. There was Kim, Indira and me, then two australian women and an Indian man and his son. We meet at the MG Hotel which is a fairly top end Indian hotel (about £60-£100 per night). Pretty swish. The guide started us off at a havela which is an old wooden house with really intricate carvings on the pillars and walls. It was 200 years old, but the style of architecture is 400 years old. These houses are so beautiful!! Then he took us around all of the back streets, in amongst these old houses, tiny secret passageways, all full of rubbish, dogs, shit and piss and people just living there brushing their teeth. It was pretty cool. You are shown through tiny passageways you would never find on your own, even if you were a bit of an explorer. I would definitely recommend it. They offer the tour with breakfast at the end as well for an extra 250 rupees, but that's quite a lot and I think you could probably find a much nicer breakfast nearby for a fraction of the price. We just went home and had chai and toast. Yum!

So after breakfast I showered, chilled for a bit and then headed back into Darpana area. I went back to the istri wallah to put in a couple of things for me and Kim and got a friendly "kemcho" as I suppose I'm pretty easy to remember. Then Indira and I headed off to Satellite - which is miles away - to pick up the tailoring we've had in there since our visit to Gamti Wallah, right at the beginning of the India trip! We had been looking forward to getting our Indian outfits and we've finally managed to get them less than 1 week before we have to go home. We did all of this while Kim had a meeting with Mallika Sarabhai to discuss the future of the project from the result of the rehearsals and filming. All of our clothes from the tailor came out fine; she still didn't really listen to a lot of the things we'd asked for, but fortunately the end result (after a few changes here and there) was good and overall I'm pretty happy. As we all are.

The place we're staying is opposite the railway tracks. As you come out, if you turn right you get to the Calico Museum which is the old textile museum with the crazy tour guide. Opposite that is a not particularly amazing, but very big, Hindu temple. Indira is very into her incense and ashrams and temples and stuff, so she'd been interested in going since we arrived. There are also, dotted around the city, lots of little shrines; from ones in the middle of a roundabout to tiny little ones at the foot of a tree. Indira has stopped to take a picture of the little shrine on our street when this couple, who were on their way to the temple, invited us (in Gujarati) to join them to pray. It was while pooja was going on so it sounded as if there was a huge party of drums and bells. As we approached it just got louder and louder, and when we got inside it was deafening. You ring the bell if you're going to pray at a shrine in order to wake up the gods, but this was crazy! Inside there are lots of little shrines leading up to the main one where all the drums and bells are, and by the time you get to the top of the steps outside the door I couldn't even hear the bells and drums; just a blanket of noise wrapped around my head! And the smell of incense was overpowering! Anyway, Indira prayed to some shrines and reluctantly, but to the delight of the other temple goers, waved a feathery mop thing side to side which we thought may be to waft incense up the gods, but we weren't sure. We were chatted to by an enthusiastic old man about Hinduism, but it was in a mixture of English and Gujarati, drowned out by the deafening clangs, so I couldn't really understand what he was saying. I managed to make out that going to pray at a temple is recharging your soul, like going on a walk is recharging your body, but that's about it.

When we got home we saw Kim who was pretty pleased with her meeting with Mallika. She had expressed her concerns about wanting to create a four person show, but knowing it would have to include the entire company if it was performed at the Sarabhai Festival in December. She was obviously worried about doing that, then scaling it down suddenly and quickly for touring in Scotland. But, Mallika seemed to think that'd be fine, saying she'd done it before. Mum was also worried what role Mallika would want in it as she didn't have a particular role in mind for her, and originally she thought of her as a producer, but during the project she thought Mallika may want to perform as well. She was quite pleased to perform the lead woman if Sonal wasn't chosen for the role (she had been playing it during the development). Anyway, the final word was that Mallika wanted it, but she wanted to have a little think first before she made up her mind; she wanted to know what the best thing for the project would be. Her doubts about turning a full company show into a four person show were quite strong and she wanted to make the best decision. I have been hoping she does it, because despite all the struggles of working here to do it here means not only would it finally happen, but it would be fully funded by Mallika. Most of all, it would be an utterly amazing experience! If we didn't do it here, we'd have to raise the money at home which could take a considerably long time and it means we don't know if and when the project would happen. Kim would have more creative control, but she may want Mallika's input in the end. Anyway, she is going to think, talk to Puppet Animation Scotland, British Council, Mallika and her partner to see what she thinks the best thing for the project would be.

We shall see...

Off to Bhuj! Holiday time!!

Dil to Pagal Hai

It really feels like the end is drawing near now. We had dinner at Papin's this evening. He's very excited about his new home and has been keen to have us over for a while. He was baffled, again, that we were vegetarian. It's a religious thing in India, he's also Keralan and Christian, so they're often surprised when we say we're vegetarian. We're white westerners, how can this be possible? Even though he stayed with us in 2010 when we worked on the initial development of the project, he still seemed surprised. Also, as there's no alcohol in Gujarat, he approached us secretively asking in a hushed voice if we drank vodka. Imagine the pronounciation of the 'v' to have slight softening, near to a 'w', but not quite as exaggerated. We agreed on the vodka after failed attempts to explain gin or rum (of course wine is not an option, this is straight into the heavy stuff), but brought along our own stash of gin in a bottle. But honestly, the culture here isn't a drinking one and even though I've had alcohol readily available as a tourist I've not had any desire to have any. So one sip and I'm pretty satisfied; feeling as if I'm properly treating myself to something very naughty.

He cooked a tasty egg curry, rice and his neighbour and head musician at Darpana, Jain, made idlis and dosas. Very tasty.

We're filming on Sunday, then we're doing some last minute bits and pieces on Monday if they're needed, off to Bhuj on Tuesday, get back to Ahmedabad on Friday morning, Saturday we'll do the Sun Temple and Step Well which is a day trip outside the city, then on Sunday we leave! It'll go quickly I think, I don't know if it sounds exciting or not when it's listed like that. We then have a couple of nights in Dubai before going home! I forgot to pack my bikini for Dubai, but Elsa's lent me hers which is teeny tiny so I need to either post it to her or give it to her personally when I go to France...if I go to France this year. I'd really like to, but I have no idea what the plans are for the year and if I can afford it. She may have to put up with me posting it.

I'm feeling very good today. I had been a bit down the last couple of days; I think it's because sometimes it can be quite hard to work here and I felt frustrated with the pattern and lack of communication. I felt like that on Elsa's last day, which was a shame, but she was super chirpy and happy so she was fine. She was best friends with everyone at Darpana and had a big party to send her off. We'll all miss her now she's gone!! I do hope I see her again, and wonder what it'll be like in normal circumstances...I always think of how it would be when you see someone in a completely different situation, especially when you associate them so much with it.

Here's a song from Dil to Pagal Hai which was out in the cinema when I first came here. We had to get a bus an hour (or maybe more) to the only cinema and it was a Hindi film with no subtitles. The film is 3 1/2 hours long and my brother and I pretty much made up our own storyline while watching it. It turned out after when we got it on DVD with English subtitles that we weren't too far off the real thing. Anyway these two characters are seperate and in love with each other. The other girl at the party is in love with him. But they're saying something along the lines of somewhere, someone is made for you! So the other girl finds her love in the end, don't worry!!

The Istri Wallah

I'm sitting in my bed in the dark. Writing this blog before I go to sleep after another long day. There is no silence. A few birds, the horn of a rickshaw, the guards bell. I hear a wedding party in the distance and up close the tapping of my keyboard.

My Tuesday was good. My day seems to finish at 9.30! I get the bulk of my work done for the project in that first 1 1/2 hours, then I have my tea break and by 10 I'm unsure of what to do. I help Kim with whatever she needs doing, but that's not much at the moment as she's really on top of everything herself. We had finished making the props and puppets yesterday, but we have a few more repairs to do tomorrow morning as two of the puppets fell apart. They're old Andhra Pradesh puppets made out of leather that are punched with holes of various shapes and sizes resulting in such amazingly intricate detail. But, they've not been looked after at all and have been left for years, dried out and crumpled up in a dusty cupboard. Although we've done a small restoration on them; oiling them and stitching back on broken limbs and sticks, they're just in really bad condition and today a hand split in two. I've fixed it again, but don't know how long it'll last...

But, today is the end of my Wednesday, and not my Tuesday which seems so long ago now. Time passes very slowly here. The best part of my day was when I went to the Istri Wallah (istri is iron) to get our clothes ironed. They're all into ironed clothes here and our stuff comes out pretty wrinkled after Kumari washes them. It also sometimes comes back stained - all our whites are now streaked with blue! D'oh.
Anyway, they'll sometimes take it to an istri wallah if we want to and give them extra but when we last did our clothes came back just as bad as before so we thought we could find one near Darpana and just get it done ourselves. After finding out where one should be, but never was there, we finally discovered she only turned up after 4pm. So today I took the two pairs of trousers and kurta to the istri while mum and Indira were rehearsing as I didn't have much else to do. I thought I'd go on a wee adventure!

At about 5 I headed down the street and, it's only round the corner from the theatre, found the lady who irons the clothes. Her stall is opposite the barbers. I love the barbers. It's just a wooden shack with a chair, I think I've described it before. It's excellent. Her stall is just a plank of wood propped up to be a table under a tattered rag to shade her. Surrounding her are piles of ironed and unironed clothes wrapped in bundles made up of older clothes. This old lady turns to me as I arrive and mimes to me to put my items on her table. She speaks not one single word of English and I can still only say a handful of Gujarati words which are of no use in this present situation (they're mainly for rickshaws, dabi-baju, jamni-baju etc). She looks at my 3 items, looks at me, shoots out a red stream of Pan spit from her mouth, turns back to me, confirms it's 3 items, says something in Gujarati and starts to iron my clothes. I take a seat on a stone bench and watch. I love it. The iron is heated by coals, I've never seen one before. It's so heavy and I can see her using her entire body to lift the iron on and off the clothes. It's also very big. There's little care in details such as pleats, but maybe that's because it's impossible to pay attention to such details with such a hefty contraption. She pulls the iron from one end to another, heaves it off as she adjusts the clothing, on again and pulls it back. She looks at me and smiles. While I wait I gather a small crowd of people. One man, teeth stained with pan, asks me "what country?" and sits down on the bench with me. His mouth is full of tobacco leaves and they fleck his teeth and his lips. I keep thinking he'll spit all over me while he talks and it distracts me from what he's shouting at me. Like a stereotypical english speaking tourist travelling to a non english speaking country, he thinks that if he shouts at me in Gujarati/English I'll understand what he's saying.

Where I'm from repeats like a broken record as both he and the istri wallah are convinced i'm from London or USA. I know I shouldn't be stubborn about Scotland, nobody knows where it is, but I don't want to be confused with being American. I say UK, then do a little England is next to Scotland mime. They nod as if they understand and say "yes, yes" but it's not long later we have exactly the same conversation again. At one point the man seems to get angry that I don't know Gujarati and only know English and doesn't accept that I can say "kemcho?" as being even nearly good enough to warrent a smile. But, when the istri wallah asks me "kemcho?" and i say "majama" he suddenly shouts something along the lines of me being able to speak Gujarati after all and why did I not tell him, so I have no idea...

Anyway it was a pretty interesting experience! And my clothes came out ironed at the end of it.

The Third Week

There is a Kerala festival on at Darpana this week and it was kicked off yesterday by what was described on the poster as "traditional folk dances and music". I'm not entirely sure how best I could describe it, other than I don't entirely agree with that particular definition.

It was opened by an item that was not programmed and was very last minute which consisted of the Darpana musicians and Papin dancing (they're all Keralan). This was very good! Papin was dancing a bit of Kalari, which is a Southern Indian martial art, but he transforms it into a dance. And the musicians are great. So that was really enjoyable. I really would have like it to stop there.

The scheduled act came on. It was a musician who played a variety of traditional Keralan instruments which no doubt had a fascinating history. The problem was he only spoke Malaylam and while he blabbered on to an audience made up of about 95% of people who didn't understand him, a translator was sought after, only to find one who was a sweet, bumbling Ayurvedic doctor well known to chatter for 3 hours after your appointment is finished. So he comes on stage and starts speaking really odd English which I couldn't understand at all, elaborting on whatever the Malayli musician had been saying and adding in his own anecdotes, which from what I could understand where pretty bad. Though, as I said, I didn't really understand much.

The whole thing was pretty damn hilarious, but the humour did wear off after a while. Plus, the instruments may have had an interesting background, but the two we were treated to played essentially one note over and over again resulting in song after song after song sounding exactly the same. Well, how was the dancing, you may ask? As it was a dance and music festival. I can only reply that it was fairly non existent! There was one spectacular moment when a man appeared at the back of the audience screaming, his face painted fantastically in black with white markings all over it and red lips so still we initially thought he was wearing a mask. He looked amazing, but didn't really do anything after that. Then there was more chatting and more same song singing. Then the musician invited some children on stage to do the Peacock Dance. This audience participation was opened up to us in a very unclear way and when a few bewildered children finally shuffled reluctantly on stage they were given no further indication of what they were meant to do. Suddenly the same previous dancer now dressed in a very odd peacock costume, came screeching towards them, feathers flailing wildy towards the children's faces, grabbed their hands and started strutting around leading the kids in a sort of uncertain and confused dance across the stage. Amusing, weird and most of all not so good. After that was over he said he was going to sing a song and said it was open for anyone to come up on stage and dance. No further explanation again. This should probably have been planned a little in advance as nobody told the western tourists they needed to take their shoes off before going on stage (performers will touch the stage with their fingers then place their fingers to their face as a sort of blessing before they go on stage, even to just rehearse, to thank the floor for letting it be used). So I sit back and realise I'm watching an Indian girl who looked pretty high, two white western tourists and a really geeky looking Indian guy dancing terribly on stage to terrible music. What the hell am I doing? So I got up and left. It's pretty awkward to leave a show when there's so many people we know in the audience, but I honestly couldn't stay any longer. We blamed Indira's stomach and made a run for it. I think tonight I'm going to sit at the back. This morning Papin turned to me and said that it was no representative of Keralan folk traditions (without me asking him or saying how I felt) and we both agreed it was pretty god awful.

So this morning I got to Darpana at 8, half an hour before mum and Indira, and did a warm up, worked on a routine with Papin and taught Manoj and Kisho, then cooled down in time for chai at about 9.45. It was a pretty productive morning and we've almost entirely finished the puppets and props, so when Elsa asked if I'd like to go with her to the Art Book Shop I agreed. I'm so glad I did it was totally beautiful! It's on the corner of this gorgeous, quiet little street next to the railway bridge (so not THAT quiet). You go through a metal door painted yellow and red and up a small staircase to the balcony of this little building decorated with mirrored hangings, patterned postcards and miniatures of traditional paintings. The shop consists of a tiny room off the balcony totally filled with books, more cards and various nick nacks including a good collection of time pieces. The guy who owns it is great; really chatty. Under the stairs there is a cupboard opening out onto the street with enough space to fit a man and his sewing machine in it. And that's exactly what's in there. Brilliant.

Now I'm heading back in to Darpana to help out with whatever is needed, maybe go on the silks again as Papin seems to think we can (although there's a show on tonight so I don't know!). Hopefully we'll get some time and continue with the teaching and choreography!

Pancakes on a ravi vari

Elsa came over for brunch this morning and we made crepes. We had crepes with nutella, yoghurt, orange syrup a la Kim, fresh pineapple, bananas, plums, apples (they don't really do good apples here) and oranges and honey and sugar. Obviously not all at once, but they were all there to sample! Indira went to the doctor in the morning and was told she wasn't allowed to eat until the evening, IF she was feeling better. So she sat watching us tuck into pancakes which must have been pretty painful. They were very very good.

Kim thought it'd be a good idea to make some for Kumari and family (I keep forgetting the dad's name). So she made them as I rolled a selection of different things into them. Elsa thought we should let them make their own, but when Rahul (the eldest) came in he looked totally baffled by the whole affair, thought they were dosa's, so I thought it'd be simpler and just as good to prepare some with different fillings. They seemed pretty happy with them anyway!

Then we went to Ravi Vari Market. Ravi Vari means sunday. It's a big flea market on the river bank under the bridge. It's quite mad. It took us ages to get there as Elsa only knew the way from her house (which isn't anywhere near ours) so we ended up doing a huge zig zag, her shouting at the rickshaw driver the whole time thinking he was going the wrong way, when I think he was actually going the faster way from our house she just didn't know it! She wanted him to go from her house which is across the river from us and, incidentally, the market, so the poor guy must have been wondering what the hell route we wanted to go! We actually ended up getting a rickshaw to her house, then another one to the market. But, we finally got there anyway. Four in a rickshaw as well which they don't often allow. We had our first taste of "police justice" too when the rickshaw driver parked up in what must have been the wrong place. Suddenly a police man appears, shouting, and starts violently grabbing and pulling and pushing the driver. As the driver starts to move away he whacks the back of the rickshaw. We were all inside absolutely terrified, with no idea what was going on. Didn't know if it was because there were four of us in there or what...but I think it was because he was in the wrong place. Pretty scary though.

Before you go under the bridge there's another street which has people selling jewellery just on blankets on the ground. Not accessories, but religous beads, so you have loads of religious men in their lunghis, shirts and turbans, with different white and red markings on their foreheads and with big windy canes. They looked pretty amazing. Once they see you interested in something you start getting shouted at, prodded and poked and have various items shoved in your direction. One guy was trying to get me to come over to, I think, read my palm or be blessed or something, but as I don't speak Gujarati I thought the whole thing would be pretty futile. I simply smiled and shook my head. He seemed pretty disappointed. To get to THE market you go under the bridge. Down the path there are stalls on your left just selling various tat and sitting under the shade bridge on your right are women selling clothes from jeans to saris. It's very narrow and very packed. Lots of people and occasionally a goat, a moped or a rickshaw trying to squeeze through. Watch your bags! The path down is on a slight slope so before you start to walk down it properly you see just a mass of heads in the market, some under blankets for shade and the river behind them. It smells of sewage when you get there and the ground is just dust and rubble. There's no shade as you move out into everyone's rudimentary stalls and the sun is sweltering.

You can get all sorts of things there, I even saw an old fashioned box camera! I bought an old sari for 50 rupees (about 60p) which I'm going to turn into a dress, I hope, if the tailor has time before I leave. There'll be some fabric left over, so I'll see how much and find something to do with it in the future. I need to learn to make my own clothes! Something I've always wanted to do, but I've never got round to it. Fabric's far too expensive at home, but I guess that's just another excuse to come here again! And I have two saris from my last trip which I never wear as well...

It was a great market anyway. A real rummage and lots of bartering. Elsa was really good for that, of course; she's been here longer and slipped into the whole haggling system. Very unBritish, but I suppose she's French so is already pretty unBritish. I was great at it last time, but it's been a while. Indira got seriously duped when buying Tiffin tins (Indian stacked lunch boxes), but they were really nice and at the end of the day it's still cheaper then you'd ever pay for here. The other day I paid too much for ankle bracelets, but I think only by 40 or 50 rupees so that's not too bad. I want to get more too, so at least now I know how much I think I should pay for them.

We finished off the day with a freshly squeezed juice (I had watermelon) at a juice bar on CG Road that doesn't use water in the mix. Yum yum.

A perfect Sunday...

A Night Off

I'm sleeping in the spare bed in Kim's room tonight! Indira and I had both been slightly ill (her more so) and then seemingly recovered. Unfortunately she hadn't actually recovered at all and the next thing I know I'm woken up at 2am by Indira throwing up violently. I couldn't get back to sleep and of course I was worried about her! She went on to throw up again at 5am and then at 7am. When I got up at 7.30am, thinking she would had finished or at least would be paused again for another hour or two, I heard a knock as I was washing myself with the bucket of water and it was Indira asking if she could come in because she was going to throw up. I was covered in soap, butt naked, so I shouted to her to wait a minute and covered myself up with a towel. I got her a bucket to be sick in, but these few seconds were precious and by the time I opened the door I was too late. She was being sick in a cup of her own hands. I stood there completely helpless, unsure of what to do. Indria then washed her hands, got into bed and I rinsed myself off, put the bucket beside her, got her some water and woke up Kim to tell her what had happened before heading off to do 3 hours of aerial this morning! I hadn't slept at all and apparently neither had anyone else. Kim had woken up at 2.30 with a headache and was kept up after that by Indira retching and Kumari, the gardener's wife, and her family could also hear her throughout the night....poor Indira! None of us have any idea of what it is. We all ate and drank exactly the same thing. The only thing I can think of, maybe, is that the bug she had last week still hadn't fully left and something triggered it...I don't know! But, she went to the doctor today and was put on an I.V. and has been given a ton of medication to take. She's also not been allowed to eat for the past 24 hours so I hope she feels better enough tomorrow so she's allowed to eat. She has to call the doctor to tell him her symptoms and he'll tell her where she can go from there, but his English is not so hot so that'll be an interesting conversation!

Oh dear...

So today I started working on some choreography with Papin and Puja. But, before that, with those two and Manoj, I managed to organise some proper warm ups and conditioning on the equipment, then we worked on some of the things I'd already taught them, making progress! When Manoj left we did some choreography. But, they were exhausted, asking me if they could stop as if I was torturing them. I suppose I was giving them a pretty hardcore workout. So after pushing them as much as I could I had to give in! They worked hard! I managed to show Kim some possibilities as she popped in near the end of the class, so that gave me some ideas of where to go with the choreography from there.

When Papin and Puja left I helped Kim repair the old Andhra Pradesh shadow puppets with coconut oil. They're all made from leather and the hole punching detail on them is AMAZING, but unfortunately they've not been looked after at all. They're dry and they've been stored all crumpled and creased. We're greasing them up with coconut oil which helps restore the colour and allows us to be able to reshape them. The smell of the coconut oil is lovely, but it's almost impossible to use if it's cold as it doesn't come out of the bottle! We had to sit it in the sun to heat it up, which only made the smell stronger. Tasty! The men and women use it here in the their hair, slicking it back so it glistens in the sun.

Indira has been wanting a big Gujarati nose pin and where we'd briefly looked before they had been not overly exciting and fairly expensive (1000 rupees which I suppose is £15). So I asked Kumari in the best way I could (through much gesturing and random words) where she bought her nose pin as she has proper big golden jewellery. She always jangles with her bangles and ankle bracelets and is decorated with toe rings and nose pins. She managed to communicate this place 'gintinagar' was where she went and said she would show us on her afternoon off this Saturday. As Elsa is leaving next week and Kumari only has weekends free this was our only opportunity to go so we thought we could go as it's only a 10 minute walk and take Indira back after when she's feeling better. Kumari seemed pretty excited; she even changed her sari for the occasion! I was really excited to see where she went shopping, thinking we'd get some real bargains. So mum, Elsa, Kumari, her daughter Keiran and I all trekked off down the road to what I was not really expecting at all. It was an average street with some tatty shops on it. But, I took my camera and tried to get photos of things that were moving a little too quickly than I had time to adjust my settings (cursed film camera!); a camel, women carrying bales of sticks on their heads, huge cows in the middle of the road, kids leaving school weaving in and out of rickshaws. And I bought Indira some plain postcards with tacky Hindu stickers to decorate them with as she'd been really wanting some and we'd been having problems finding any. I also spent some hilarious time trying to communicate "white flour" (I was originally pointed towards cauliflower) because we've decided to make pancakes tomorrow! It is a Sunday after all...so I don't know what I did get in the end, but hopefully it'll be fine.

Then Elsa, Kim and I made spaghetti, had a couple of rum punch drinks and chatted. Gujarat is a dry state, not that I would ever think of India as somewhere were drinking is a cultural thing anyway, but as a tourist here you can get an alcohol visa which gives you a monthly supply. Neither Indira nor I actually got one, but there was some rum and gin here from the last visitors so we decided to splash out and have a drink!! It does feel pretty odd when you haven't had one in a few weeks, but quite a nice treat. Elsa and I were going to go to a documentary film night, but I was so tired from my lack of sleep that we just ended up staying and talking. I really like her, she's such a great character! She's going to take us to a Flea Market (she has AMAZING style) called Ravi Vari which means Sunday tomorrow after pancakes - I'm very excited! There's another documentary film night on tomorrow so I may go depending on how I feel...it's nice to be somewhere other than home and Darpana which seems to be my only hang outs!

Hopefully Indira will feel better and be able to eat pancakes and join us on our shopping expedition on Sunday...