We were driving My friend to work today and on the way back I saw they guys loaded in this truck mostly sleeping. All i could think of was man they must be working their asses off. But notice how clean they look…
I say that because yesterday we drove around the city a lot and I noticed lots of make shift camps set up on the sidewalks. Welll. Milind told me the men who build the streets live in another part of the country and they are here temporarily with their families. Well…these tents are about the worst living conditions I’ve seen. No heat or real shelter and covered in construction soot inside and out. I choose not to take pictures of them. These men bring their families into these horrible conditions and work for like months or years…what sacrifice and what undeniable wills of these people to survive. I feel as though I have never worked a day after witnessing this. Someone sais to me that the poorest people here will be the happiess you will ever meet. We drove by this small child in one of the slums and he was squtting on the street. The look on his face was truely priceless…I mean hes was truely in a state of bliss, but I got the impression thats the norm.
On to other things… Getting things done here can be a bit frustrating. However…I’m getting to understand the culture here and I gave it a big test. I was trying to do 2 things. buy a data card for my laptop and two see how i could plug in my laptop without burning it up. SO I went to the phone store and they told me I needed proof of address and like 3 other impossioble things. Well… I left and went back like an hour later and asked like 4 guys there if they could just please help me out. well they finally did and its was all good. Of course after a little leaning and with kindness and compassion they finally gave in. I guess they asked for other stuff because of the terrorism problem using tech stuff… Then I went back to the house and needed to contact dell about getting a convertor. So I logged on to this internet phone my friend has which called a US number that routed me back to Kerala and then forwarded to another person in another part of India who asked someone else somewhere else in the world what the answer was to my question and it worked!!!!!! SO that was easy HAA! Its a race but you can win or accomplish with persistence and awareness and a little praying. Almost forgot to mention that in the middle of this my travel agent called and told me i might loose my booking in Haridwar because i was suppored to be there now and that took like an hour of calls to get me back on track, but it all worked out. Now if they could find me in the 5am drop off tomorrow that would also be great. Before all this began I said a little prayer to amma and Swamiji and the stress was basically gone during this silly business of planning the trip to Haridwar.
Hari OMMMM!!
D
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