Tank you, Auntie! Namashkar!

I've been doing a lot of laundry lately.
Saturday afternoon I started having my first (and, cross your fingers, only?) little bout of digestive problems. I decided it was best not to try to do the afternoon shift at Shishu Bhavan and to rest instead, so I took a nap. When I got bored of napping, I thought the best thing to do was do my first round of laundry in my newly purchased laundry bucket. I went up to the roof of the Modern Lodge, filled my bucket with water, and started scrubbing and wringing and hanging. It was wonderful. There's nothing more satisfying than really working to get your baby food covered, dirty, smelly clothes clean. It's also the best time to clear your head. I thought about my babies and what I want to get out of my time with them. I thought about my last trip and what has changed, in Kolkata and in me, since then. I thought about Seattle quite a bit. I thought about chai at New Market. And when my laundry was done and my head was clear, I sat on the roof and watched the lizards (nicknamed "googlies" for the way they move) slither up and down the wall and thought about nothing more than how ridiculous they look when they move. It was wonderful.
Sunday morning I was feeling much better, so I went to Shishu planning to spend the morning walking around with Deepa, trying to get her to find her way around by listening to my voice and clapping (she loves to clap). Nothing here ever goes as planned, though, and I ended up on the roof of Shishu, surrounded by loud Bengali women shouting at each other (in the most friendly way possible) while we scrubbed, wrung, and tossed clothes in buckets. Living on Sudder St and hanging out at New Market has allowed to experience many times over what Indian men are like when they're in large groups, shouting at each other in Hindi or Bengali. This was my first experience with a big group of Indian women who aren't yelling at each other about children. And, wow, they are hilarious. They were shouting and dancing and singing and throwing things at each other and just generally rowdy. It was a pretty wonderful thing to be a part of.

On a different note, I went with one of the Juice World boys, Baloo (the younger one), to his home last night. He told me that yesterday was a "husband puja," which I've never heard of but as there are pujas for just about everything, I wasn't surprised there was one for husbands. My friend invited me over to see his mother perform the puja. When I arrived, Baloo's sister was just putting the finishing touches on her mother's henna. She then went and took a shower and put on her best sari and jewelry and did her hair. She was absolutley stunning. I think I've said before that I think that Indian women are some of the most beautiful women in the world, and when they dress up it's hard not to stare. After preparing herself, she prepared food for her husbad to eat when he came home, though he was not there for the puja. She then lit incense and gave the proper thanks to the proper gods and had her two children do so as well. Afterwards, she fed me and her two children and her daughter made chai. I'm incredibly honored that I got to be there for that. It was wonderful to watch.
I should also mention that while all this was going on, they had the television on in the background playing a movie about Ganesha as apparently yesterday was also Ganesha puja. Bollywood is always over the top, I know, but based on what I saw, I'd really like to go to Lucknow sometime for the Ganesha puja as it looks like a lot of fun.

It's unusually cool today because a storm is making it's way through, so I think I'm going to cut this off and hang outat Tirupati's for a bit. Hope all is well with you all out there in the rest of the world!