Life in The Hood

Indian Version of Williams-Sonoma

Today was a resort kind of day. We hung around our Hotel: Samode Haveli. We had a massage, we read our books, we took a walk in our Muslim neighborhood. I guess that was our more important event. The people are amazingly friendly. They looked strangely at us because Cathy and I walked hand-in-hand. That isn’t the custom in India Muslim neighborhoods. In fact, men would walk arm in arm all the time. In the states you would think they were gay, but here it is normal.

The most interesting thing to me was the number of times a young woman dressed in a black dress with only her face showing would walk by us and smile and wave hello. It wasn’t what we expect. It is very nice to happen.

The have always loved the call-to-prayer coming from all of the mosques around us. It is like an orchestral work slightly out of sync. It seems that no two mosques start the call at the same time. It isn’t precise, so for a period of about 4 minutes 5 times a day, speakers blast out the call, not in unison, but individually. Interestingly from my observation no one stops to pray, life goes on. In the middle of the Muslim neighborhood are many Hindu Temples. They are all respected. In fact, and it is hard to believe, but everyone says the same thing, a Hindu will stop and pray at a Mosque and a Muslim will pray at a Hindu Temple.

We took a tuk-tuk to Diggi Palace and picked up our official badges for the conference which starts tomorrow. It is like an Indian Wedding, it is total chaos as the prepare the grounds for the event yet somehow, tomorrow the conference will begin on time.

As to our wines the score is Indian Wine 1, South African Wine 0. We like the Indian wine better.