Ho-Sur!

February 22nd, Shanti Bhavan
The last two days were so much fun! Yesterday we went into Hosur early – we left at 9a.m., right after breakfast – and spent all day there. Some of the volunteers went to Chennai for the weekend, so there were only four of us and since it was a smaller group, it was much easier to get around together. First we split up for a bit and Amanda and I went saree shopping. (I always thought it was “sari,” but they spell it the other way here… of course half the population is illiterate… I digress.) That was a blast. We picked out the saree fabric – she got a beautiful salmon colored one with peacocks embroidered on it and I picked a deep teal and burgundy with tan dots and flowers done in beadwork. Once we picked the main fabric, the salesgirl helped us buy the lining for the blouses and the petticoats. Sarees are usually made of sheer fabric so there needs to be a significant amount of underpinnings worn to keep everything modest… and then you show your belly. I’m not saying I totally understand this custom, but I have to say that I think sarees are one of the most beautiful items of clothing women can wear. They always look dignified and elegant, even on the women that are wearing them to do hard labor in the fields.
Anyway, after we bought our saree accoutrements, we went over to the post office across the street. This place looked like it was right out of Casablanca or something. Small, crowded, no computers or modern equipment, low dirty glass partitions, this is not an institution that seems very official or reliable. We bought stamps and Amanda mailed a letter home. The stamps here are not lick-able, nor are they self-stick. You have to glue them on using a pot of very messy communal glue and your finger, and then deposit the letter in the box marked “Other Places” in front of the post office.
When that adventure was complete, we went on a quest for a tailor to make the blouses for our sarees. We found one on the upper level of a row of stores a few blocks down. He took our measurements and charged us Rs. 100 (about two dollars) each, and said the blouses would be ready in a few days. We are both so excited to get them so we can wear our beautiful new Indian outfits! I can’t wait. Mine is so pretty!
We went to use the internet afterwards, but we discovered that every third Saturday of the month, Hosur doesn’t have power until 6 p.m. It blew my mind to think of the fact that an entire city can operate pretty much the same way without power as with it. What if that happened in America? No one could carry on their business normally without electricity. The internet place was running on battery power for a while, so we all got to jump on for about thirty minutes – long enough to upload my blog and check some email – and then we got the boot.
Next stop was the train station, where we were going to buy tickets for the train trip to Hampi some of us are taking next weekend. That was an experience, because there isn’t really such a thing as waiting in a line here. You have to basically shove people out of the way to get to the ticket window, where they hand you a complicated form to fill out in order to buy the tickets. You have to navigate an extremely complicated schedule (luckily we already knew what train we needed, thanks to Mr. Aneesh from Shanti Bhavan, who helped us do some research), and then they need your name, age, address in India, and a number of other pieces of info. I let Arjun and Amanda do most of the work because I was feeling a little nauseous, but they did a great job and the tickets are all set.
Next was lunch at Janani – our usual haunt - where we ordered french fries along with our butter chicken masala with some apprehension. The fries came out first and they were just like at home! It was so comforting to eat something familiar. After our long lunch, we did more walking and browsing, and we came across a store that sold all sorts of pirated DVDs and music. I’m mildly ashamed to admit that we bought quite a lot of them… come on, when you find a DVD with four movies on it for the equivalent of one dollar, you have to buy it! We continued walking for a bit and then, exhausted, sat down for a cool drink at a restaurant while we waited for the Shanti Bhavan van to come pick us up and drive us home.
I was so tired when I got home, but I jumped into the shower and headed out for choir practice. We continued our rehearsal of songs the kids already knew for the program to be presented on Sunday night (tonight).
I was extremely happy to find that the fifth grade, who I had assigned the job of writing responses to the pen-pal letters some of the kids in Billy Elliot had written, had completed the task and done amazingly well. The letters were well-written, sweet, enthusiastic, and inquisitive and I can’t wait for my kids back home to read them and write back. I’m putting them in the mail first thing Monday.
We finished the night with some CNN news and went to bed.