a week in bhopal and its been quite an adventure already! the location of my guesthouse and office provide me with a lot of opportunities to use myself creatively and prepare myself for any inconveniences in the furutre.
to begin with my office is about a km and a half away from the main road and what leads us to our destination is a winding circuitous dirt road complete with small stones and puddles and a small ghetto that spills on its sides so we can always expect a dozen cheerful faces of small children playing with "kanchas" outside their housess waving out to us, sometimes running towards us to shake our hands. small shop vendors crane their necks to get a glimpse of us as my two foreign friends are obviously a rare sight they can't afford to miss. my friends offer greetings and warm smiles in return which are reciprocated in a similar manner but are accompanied with some amusement.
there is also a temple on our way out which and marissa and i once visited. luckily for her there was some pre-mariage prayer ceremony going on and she got the perfect opprptunity to have that "cultural" experience she was looking foward to since she arrived here. i realized that my job as the transalator and intrepretor wasnt as easy as i thought it would be. so i had to tell her all about the indian Gods and Godesses and the small stories associated with each. and then the singing and dancing began with a village dholki player providing the beat for the interesting footwork by the village women we were fortunate to witness. marissa joined in after some requests, i preferred to shy away which is the only option my dancing skills leave me with.
our vists to the local supermarket often leave us exhausted and we almost always lose our way back to the office.it gets a little unnerving in the evenings and the wild hogs running about only add to our trepidation. but we somehow manage. our old guard we fondly call "dada" frowns at his watch when we arrive. its 9, an hour post our deadline. he tells me its not good our little visits to the local market and that we should send someone from the office to do the errands. we just giggle and ask him not to worry. he sighs and lets me know that he is already getting attached to us. "maya hai beti" he tells me. his toothless grin follows us as we make our way up to the guest room, from where after dumping our bags we will head for the kitchen in order to prepare some dinner...
