The Sadhu

There are several sadhus around - generally they just wait to be offered rice or a little money but this man is a blatant beggar! He has a rather posh walking pole instead of a stick and is very well turned out. It may be that he is an elderly member of a family who dress him up and send him out to add to their coffers as he is unable to contribute in any other way. There used to be an old barefoot woman in tattered clothes and with dirty face and hands who came around begging. I haven't seen her this time around but she was a typical example of a family sending granny out to help bring in money, for at festival times she danced up and down the street in new clothes and shoes, with silver bangles on her ankles and wrists, and gold rings in her nose and ears.

On my walkabout today I found a small wholesale garden center growing a variety of plants in plastic bags. The most amazing were the bougainvillea trees – trunks so thick the pots would have weighed a ton and the pollarded tops absolutely awash with blossom. Then I poked my nose into a garden where a woman was hoeing weeds in her potato patch. At the end of the garden a leathery buffalo was tethered in a shed and her hairy calf was lying in the sun outside. Mother got quite agitated that I was near her baby – one day I'll tell you how the adult buffalo lost her coat - then a rhythmic grinding sound caught my attention and looking into the kitchen I saw a man making ghee. He was delighted to demonstrate how by pulling a cord wound round a spindle he rotated it in the buffalo milk until ghee formed; the remaining fluid, mohi (buttermilk), is delicious to drink.

I had booked a session with a hairdresser for this afternoon but when I got there painters had started on the staircase wall, the bottom bannisters and the concertina entrance gates to it - so I had to climb on a chair, then a high stool and climb the bannisters on the outside and get over at the top where they weren't wet. Three girls came in for eyebrow threading and another for about 12” to be taken off her very long hair and this was done alternately with me and some very long chats on her mobile by the single lady so it was a lengthy afternoon and by the time my hair needed drying there was another power cut so now I am drying off at home. Thankfully the gate was open again for my careful exit.

The ghee maker is somewhere here 4.12.13 picasaweb.google.com/pricebelinda