Wild Life

Today is wonderful! There is something magical in the air, or maybe it is the sunshine or maybe it is just me, but I feel like everyone I'm interacting with has a smile on. The kids today were amazing and affectionate as usual. I taught my beloved Robi (a deliciously sweet blind boy with the most squeezeable belly I have ever seen) how to blow kisses, and spent some quality time potty training a group of toddlers. You have to picture how precious these kids look sitting all in a neat little row, naked from the waste down, sucking their thumbs and playing with one another. I have found that the best way to keep them well-behaved while on the toilet is to sing in front of them and periodically tickle them, I even taught them to do the "I'm a little teapot" dance while going to the bathroom. The joy these kids give me, and the angst I feel when saying goodbye to them, strengthens my urge to be a stay-at-home mom (at least for the first few years) when I have my own kids.

Preserved WildLife
Yesterday we spent at the Botanical Gardens, which were not quite what we expected. Instead of manicured flower beds and green houses, we found the place to be more of a lush green park, perfect for a morning stroll. I couldn't tell you how big the park was, but there were enough paths to spend a lifetime getting lost in them without ever seeing it in its entirety. My favorite part of the day (aside from trying tirelessly to take at least one picture that perfectly captured the mood of the place) were the small ponds and streams scattered about the park. The smell of the water, and the reflections of the trees in the ripples, and the sun on my face, and everything else, made me wish I could have been with Bill on some sort of boating adventure in the wilderness. To quench my thirst the Indian way, I bought a coconut for 10 rupees and drank its sweet water and ate its soft white flesh- the fun of watching the coconut-walla chop the fruit with his machete rivalled the taste itself :-) I almost forgot to mention the well-known attraction of the park, an ancient and enormous Banyan tree. Though it looks like a forest full of seperate trees, all of the growth actually originates from one central trunk that is continuously extending vines that grow into huge vertical branches. This tree plays a big part in Hindu the symbolism for the unity of all life.

Local WildLife
When dreaming of India, one might picture wild animals like monkeys roaming the streets, or at least a few sacred cows wandering here and there...this is not so. While we see the occasional (and extrememly unhappy) monkey wearing a jacket leashed to a man with a stick, or a lethargic snake sleeping inside of a charmer's basket, the animals we see most frequently are dogs. Stray dogs. Hunderded of them. They live in their own world on every street corner, and don't care much about humans unless they get fed. Just like the local humans, they sprawl anywhere they please- on the sidewalks, on top of produce stands, preferably anywhere with shade. We have found ourselves a family of dogs who now love us dearly (and not just because we feed them leftover paneer from dinner!). The two adults we have named Mom and Dad, in actuality they are sister and brother, but the two are an inseperable, lovestruck pair. They take care of a dwindling hoard of puppies, whose actual mother (we call her Mama) is rarely around, except to breast feed them. Two other canine characters are Uncle Larry (he bears a resemblance to Mom, though he seems to fill the role of the irritable, alcoholic, war veteran of the family), and Stubs. Stubs has no tail, and is actually "owned" by the chubby boy across the street, who calls him Duggy.

Unexpected WildLife
As per our usual, we spent Sunday afternoon playing frisbee at the Victoria Memorial. Jeremiah, the volunteer from Seatle who has live in Kolkata fora lmost a year and who served as our orientation guide for the MT house, and who also is responsible for organizing frisbee and various other traditions, has since left us to travel in the south- and I was happy to find that we could run our own sucessful afternoon of frisbee without him! For some reason, a uniformed gaurd decided that he would inforce the written warning of the memorial which reads "No physical exercise of any kind permitted on grounds," and kicked us out- disapointing not only us frisbee-playing foreigners, but also our huge crowd of Indian fans. Instead of quitting, we headed across the street to the Maidan park, and continued our play there. The location was drastically different than the quiet, lush green lawns of the Victoria Memorial. The ground was dry and sandy with rough, straw-like grass poking out of the ground and irritating my bare feet. The Maidan is a bustling hotspot on a Sunday afternoon, and our time was spent avoiding the random PONIES that periodically galloped through our field (and the resulting horse poop they left behind), and avoiding the nearly invisibly kite strings of the 30 or so men whose only passtime seems to be touching the sky. The afternoon was completed by the vendors who began selling consession to the crowd of onlookers we had acquired, as well as by the setting sun and the sitar music permeating the background from out of nowhere.