Small window plus!

Was taking a picture of this house when this man poked his nose out to talk with someone below in the extra. Then he saw me...


Hoping for a quiet day I spent the morning reading, only to be waylaid by the family’s driver in the hope I could help him with his application for a visa to Canada where he has been applying for a job with an ex pat Indian vet.  Then lunch in a typical veg restaurant where I was ushered into the back room, mostly for ladies but since there was only one other some men came in too. I ordered a Thali – a metal dish with moulded compartments to separate the different items =  2 roti, split pea dish, lentil dish with turmeric, rice and fresh vegetable dish, all fairly spicy but they had ‘tried’!  I finished off with a lassi from a disposable clay pot. Then a wander to find the marble statue roads where dust covered men laboured over white marble with hammer and chisel, grinding machines and sandpaper.  One man was delicately painting a finished item – and all were happy to be photographed at their labours. Most of the main street had been dug up exposing the water mains and labourers were making attachments to the pipe to provide water to each house - what a mess and how many onlookers there were and how pleased they were too to be finally on the mains.
 
On the way I was waylaid by several ladies who wanted to chat – such fun to be able to ask their names and enjoy their mirth at my pronunciation.  Today I met two ladies in their 90’s and their sons came out to laud them to me!  Extraordinary how unlined some are who look half their age, yet others of 25 look 6 0. I suppose I’m not as curious or interested at home as here.
 
Invited to take chai in one house I spent an hour there reading palms – do one and there immediately forms a queue!  The mother was an incredibly strong character, with three grown sons and two daughters. The next door neighbour who was a dhobi wallah managed to be a fantastic interpreter. His mother was doing the ironing outside in her porch – mounds of neatly folded shirts beside the one she flipped over and over as she wielded her charcoal filled iron.  I promised to send photos of the family to an email one of the sons gave me and before I could leave I was presented with a silver ring with green stone inside.  I was so touched and I shall have to go back tomorrow with a bag of English sweets or something.
 
I watched bangles being studded with coloured glass gemstones over a little furnace that made them hot enough to melt into the lacquer into which they were inserted – very fiddly and time consuming craft.  Then at least half an hour was spent in a brass making shop where a man was pressing wet sand into a ring into which the piece of metal he wished to copy was then pressed and covered by more sand. By opening up the mould he was able to extract that metal, leaving the impression and then make a hole into which to pour the molten brass. Deep within a small furnace in the floor was a red hot pot half full with the molten liquid.  The pot was extracted using a very long pair of tongs and the man with the moulds carefully poured some into the holes of three he had prepared.  Having put the pot back into the furnace in the floor he then extracted the still red hot pieces from each of the sand filled moulds and threw them across the floor into a container where more sand was knocked off, the metal extracted and by holding the main part with one set of tongs another pair was used to pull and knock off the metal bit that had formed in the pouring hold.
 
I watched a tailor deftly mark out material with chalk and then cut it.  He asked me to zoom to take his photo and was pleased with the result!  What a fun afternoon.
 
So sorry about the link yesterday – still being rather a ninny about uploading things. I can't get it to work today either but will persevere

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