The Delight is in the Details

Most of what we see as we move around Delhi is very mundane and ordinary, but when you look closely, the small details of daily life are delightfully different. The street sweepers use brooms made of twigs, not motorized blowers like the groundskeepers at UA. My office is swept and dusted not by a high-powered Hoover but by a woman wielding a duster that looks like it’s made of a horse’s tail. Her mop is a towel attached to the end of a pole.

Around JNU, the construction workers wear plastic sandals with socks, not steel-toed safety boots. The builders push to mortar into the bricks by hand, not with a trowel. The female construction workers (in saris and sandals) deliver the sand and mortar to the bricklayers via basketloads on their heads, not wheelbarrows.

On every street corner and sidewalk and in every neighborhood, kiosks sell all the items one might find in a convenience store. Here, though, they sell for pennies instead of inflated 7/11 prices. Fruit and vegetable carts are piled high with fresh, brightly colored foods. The carrots here are red, not orange! A bag of carrots and tomatoes cost us just 25 cents.

At the lunch hour--2:00pm, not 12:00 pm--men stop for a quick lunch beside the road, eating a small bowl of vegetable curry instead of a NY hot dog. Each man in the group eating lunch at the roadside vendor's cart drinks directly from a pitcher of water by holding it above their lips and pouring it right in.

Men and women walk to work in the morning wrapped in shawls or draped in light blankets instead of fitted sweaters, coats, or jackets. The look of many layers and colors of draped fabric is so appealing to the eye, and seems to practical where the temperature varies a great deal. How did I ever think of leaving the house during winter without a wrap?

Milk is delivered right to our door in plastic pouches with half a liter in each. We snip the corner of the pouch and pour it into the plastic bottles that fit in a shelf on the refrigerator door. Each day we request skim milk, and the building's attendant says, "Yes, ma'am," with a smile; then each day we're delivered more whole milk. How much plastic and landfill space would we save in the US if we bought our milk, juice, and soda in thin plastic pouches and then used the same bottles again and again?

India and the U.S. have much to learn from one another, all the delightful details of daily life!
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Adelaide and Owen have finished their first full week at Mt. Carmel School and I've met with both of my classes of graduate students at JNU. We're all looking forward to this weekend's events, sightseeing, shopping, and of course, eating!