Playing dough

We stopped being sick and spent an amazing week in our institutions.

Each Saturday we’d creative craft activities with the blind school students, namely the paper hats, massage sessions or Classical music. That Saturday we had to keep 20 children busy in the “morning time”. What we did was the playing dough sculptures.

However, before the actual proceedings, we needed the playing dough itself, which cost around 3 times more in the Indian market compared to Lithuanian enterprises ;))
Anine found a smart way round the problem:

1) 2 cups of flour
2) 1 cup of salt
3) Spoon of baking soda
4) 2 spoons of vegetable oil
5) Water

We haven’t made it before, and obtained the necessary ingredients on the last hour before the actual activity time. So, we didn’t take risks and made the playing dough ourselves, 2 kg at a time! :]

After evenly distributing round sticky balls of dough to the children, we explained them and the teachers, how to make “art” out of it.

Explanations apart, children weren’t as engaged and “talented” as might had expected before. Probably, they have never played with it before and in the first few minutes we found a handful of chapattis rather than pieces of art.

Wait a few minutes though, and keen children will deliver it. Some rolled the “chapatti” between their palms and ended up with a sausage. The others erected it – “Here stands my tower!” - thought Gotham.

It was interesting to observe the children’s adaptation skills developing in front of our eyes. “Impromtu artists” hastened to show off their masterpieces to us: “M’aaaaaaaam! SIIIIIIRRRR!!! Dikhaeeeeeeeeeee!!!!” So that we could reply “Anjee, ye kye ha? (what’s this?)” .

However the totally blind ones still didn’t surpass themselves, or at least that’s what I firmly believe. So, let’s wait for tomorrow’s session and give it another try.


Other highlights

As for the Nepali school, children were happy to see us both together again, following a short Anine’s absence due to the illness. Girls (we mostly work with them, and yes, girls are smarter than boys. Full stop) absolutely adore Anine for her kindness and smile, I don’t know if they like my let’s-get-this-work-done-now approach and general strictness…

But students occasionally do abuse our lenient approaches and lose concentration or even leave the classroom. It is by no means eccentric in Indian “terms”, yet I always take it personally. Apart that, those 4-5 girls are utterly knowledgeable and eager to learn.

After a regular English class, Anine did some song reading and drawing activities, which were a smashing success.

However at once I got terribly startled, when one of the girls asked about the superlative adjectives of “good” once again told me the same old story of “gooder” and “goodest”! We found the correct words in her exercise book, which she has noted down last week. =] I shouted at her, and think to myself now, do I really have any rights to shout at these students.


The drug de-addiction center thanks Peter Wilson for his “balls”. We managed 5 different balls at a time and will try adding more next week. Also, now there are 60 of us, the center received 10 new guys in less than 2 weeks period. Due to Diwali and Dussehra celebrations maybe? ;) So they were asked to choose between playing with my balls or braiding Anine’s yarns ;D Most surprisingly only half of them stayed with Anine.

Back on track

Working Alone

This week I am working alone. Anine is really sick after her “tourist” trip, though tomorrow we are visiting the blind school again.
Being alone proved to be a tough experience: especially when it came to getting to places. Hitchhiking with a girl is a way faster than standing alone by the roadside. It seems that for two weeks we let ourselves loosen up, prepare less and concentrate on our personal businesses instead. This has to change now. It is especially important for her, as her last month countdown is ticking. In the same way, these two weeks gave me time to learn how to live by myself, plan the activities and enjoy the leisure.
There were days when I didn’t speak at all; there was no one to speak to. Except Anil, maybe, he owns a Chay shop just a hundred meters away from me. His Chay shop is typical – little light, dark walls, gas balloon, a few tables and plastic chairs. There is an ashtray and there are smokers. Most importantly, do kute safed he – two white dogs, little puppies which warm my heart in the cold mornings. There is ahbaar- a newspaper, where I look for the familiar letters.
So far I have learned 20 of them, and I estimate there might be up to 50 in the Devenghari alphabet.


Nepali school learns about stars

I travelled to a Nepali school in Manali with Modan. This generous man is waiting for Anine to recover so that we could visit his house. Modan is one of a few Indian men who respect time, his usual words being “9/8/5/4/2 o’clock sharp!” I like it very much, and our trip was interesting – we always find some isues to discuss with. This time we talked on Indian roads, agreed that a good road is a key component for a prosperous economy. Also, he reminded me to love my girlfriend! 

When I came children were reading the story books donated by the Londoners. I was happy to see the books being taken care of, majority of them finding their way back into a brand new metal closet. I quickly formed a gang of five “eagermost” students. We revised comparative adjectives (big-bigger-biggest), and learned some tricky ones (good-better-best and bad-worse-worst). I inadvertently told them that one can describe the whole world with the help of either GOOD or BAD. They are gullible and young, hence believed in me. Finally, we revised tenses as well, namely Present Simple and Present Continuous, followed by the lunch.

What made me sad, was that only a few of them had brought the lunch, so I shared my two bananas with the other 4 girls. And our stomachs filled, we entered the world of Geography and Astronomy.

Although we got them a globe two weeks ago, they haven’t been allowed to touch it ever since. Pretty girls had little understanding why there would be 7 continents, and why some nasty professor would assign India into Asia. However, a cumulative effort from five students - they located India in no less than 5 minutes! Their favorite continent was “Antarctica”, due to its spelling and strange location. Kasun, one of the girls, later said that the southern continent should be “shipped” back to the North, because Antarctica missed its family members: Asia and Europe! However, no-one cared about shipping back Australia, as it stands above India in the world cricket federation standings.

I promised someone really special to teach the girls some Astronomy. Bearing in mind that the Earth isn’t flat anymore, they wondered why it levitates in the space, without falling into the abyss. We drew the Solar system.

However, it turned out to be relatively unproportional. They wondered why the cosmos is dark, and assumed that there has to be a hole throughout our planet in order to put a thread into it. By thread they meant Earth’s orbit. Which I didn’t draw thoroughly enough.

I had to leave at 3pm, and children asked me to promise them we are coming back next Wednesday. Unfortunately, there are only four more classes remaining until the school closes for the winter.

Planes. Trains. Automobiles.

Happy Diwali to begin with!

Five year olds setting off fireworks, rush hour at the candy shops and me all alone. Anine’s gone for her well deserved vocations in Rajastan, then Delhi and Agra. I couldn’t say I’m too lonely but two is a company..
I went to our institutions alone this week and Annine was certainly a missing asset in our activities. However, the blind school worked out nicely for me: we learned to speak about our families, houses and any other imaginable personal information. In other words, we played Facebook, whereas I learned the equivalent words in Hindi. I started taking this language seriously, especially after installing a pirated, but no less valuable Rosetta Stone!

Yet, Ghuruvar (Thursday) left a mark in my mind. I woke up early that day, did yoga and was about to take a shower, when I discovered the water boiler was turned off. It’s an open secret, that our master loves saving electricity and sneaking around our stuff, but this time I’d waken up 1 hour earlier to set get warm water, and after exercise – enjoy a warm shower. What else could a man need in the morning?

I took a cold shower. Some say it strengthens the immune system.

Afterwards I boiled eggs (protein protein!) and ate coco nut.I had to prepare some activities for the drug de-addiction center, remember the Pete’s balls?  Working with these interesting and sometimes unpredicatable guys alone ought to have been a challenge. But after a several lifts I discovered the center was closed, so I ate the Diwali cake and drank Diwali Chay. Now I had to get back to Kalheli, which is around 5 km up North. Who thought I might come there with the Kawasaki Ninja 250, kindly offered by a local Hindu biker. Bikes are abundant here in India, but I’ve never seen a real street fighter before, and riding it felt like home. Except the helmet part which was missing 

Guess what? Kalheli went Diwali too, so after eating a mouthful of candies I headed home. I new automobile stopped, and behind the steering wheel there sat a ..lady. Her license plates were from Himachal, so I proudly proclaimed she was the first woman ever to drive in India! My words cannot be interpreted as sexist, women simply don’t show aptitude for driving, at least according to the male drivers. But what a reversal of furtune it was when I discovered she was the most stereotypical driver ever: she drove steaily at 20km/h, shifting the wrong gear from time to time (she used only 2 of them anyways) and “breaking” when moving from stop-go. What a comedy and tragedy at the same time. I hope no one got into her way.

When I hit the Kullu by pass, I saw a man coming from the Sharab (alcohol) shop with two Kingfishers. He was making himself conmfortable when I approached the vehicle and asked for a lift. So we drove and didn’t speak. The first time I was ashamed to speak with the driver. For a handful of reasons, my clothes were dusty and I smelled of traffic. Then after 10 minutes he tld me in perfect English, “I don’t live in Kullu. I just like driving on the by-pass, there is not traffic.” I replied there surely wasn’t any.

He halted the vehicle and gave me a bottle of “the strongest beer in India” (4%!!!). There we sat and drunk beer. And the valley was generous with its red-orange-gray-green shades. We would lift our rights hands simultaneously for a gulp, as we gulped day became night.
I got off from his car, wished happy Diwali and went straight to the street restaurant to fill my slightly intoxicated stomach. Some people could speak for hours and you would bear no memeory of them. But this gulping and relaxing man truly made my day.
In the evening I felt lonely and boiled some eggs.
By the way, the movie “Planes. Trains. Automobiles.” Wasn’t that bad either, Steve Martin’s and X Candy’s conversations were comic and missing-my-belowed-ones-like. I loved Martin’s monologue, when he gets fed up with Candy’s “big mouth”:
"You're no saint. You got a free cab, you got a free room and someone who will listen to your boring stories. I mean didn't you notice on the plane, when you starting talking, eventually I started reading the vomit bag?"


The roof

Our master's house is a typical of its kind, but in order to understand why we pay so much for the rent, lets take a walk up stairs, on top of the roof. As I have mentioned before, houses are built floor-by-floor, with the supporting poles giving birth to a new floor and so on.


Our roof gets sunshine from 9 am till 3pm, so if I ever felt cold or in a bad mood - I come upstairs. If I look to the West - I see "the blue school", South - akhara bazaar (market), East - residential buildings, and North - a glimpse of the river Beas.