The Road to the Interior, and Other Missionary Wives

P. won two nights at the furthest-away-possible lodge in a raffle.  And so we drove all the way from the edgy city of gold to the Kgalakgadi (the more authentic name for Kalahari) which is tucked into a curious border indentation that you didn’t even know South Africa had.  When I say far, I mean far.  A 2500km round trip.  By some stroke of serendipity this lodge is on the land of the Khomani San, the same people who  lost, mapped, and reclaimed that land in a process documented by anthropologist and filmmaker Hugh Brody, whose New College lecture was the first inspiration for my graduate research.

En route, Kuruman is an unlikely place for the most prolific oasis in the southern hemisphere.  20 million litres of water dribble out of the rocks every day in an unassuming fashion, giving life to thousands of fish, including the largest koi I’ve ever seen.  Here in 1820, a few kilometres from the spring, the Scottish missionary Robert Moffat settled and built an outpost for God.

 The mission houses the oldest European-style buildings north of the Gariep/Orange River. In the late afternoon it holds an unexpected beauty and peace.  This was an ambitious missionary: the church was built to seat 800 and, in the scrublands of the Kalahari desert, the stone walls stood uncovered for 7 years before Moffat found timber long enough to complete the roof.  The beams eventually came from hundreds of kilometers away in the Marico River valley, with the blessing of Moselekatse/Mzilikazi, the Matabele Chief.  Today the church has a postbox-red door, a clay-dung floor in the original style, and a sign that politely asks visitors not to ring the bell.

                                  

In the nearby graveyard, lost in the service of King, Empire and God, a jumble of Boer War soldiers, missionaries, long-suffering wives and dead infants, some of whom lived only briefly.  Birth, death, the succumbing of spirit and heart – all this happened here, including the birth of Howard Unwin Moffat, Southern Rhodesia’s second premier (whose government passed the 1930 Land Apportionment Act, which in a nutshell was one of the ultimate causes of Zimbabwe’s turmoil of the last decade) and the falling-in-love of that other famous missionary and explorer, Livingstone.  In the aftermath of a lion attack, and no doubt some realisations about the fragility of the human condition, Livingstone succumbed to the care and affections of the eldest Moffat daughter, who actually survived the Kalahari to adulthood.  She was called Mary, like her mother.  Not that she had much competition, nor he many options. He proposed to her in the garden now dedicated to Mary senior, ‘and other missionary wives’.

To the Kuruman mission came the printing press that marked the start of a momentous sea change - the spread of Christianity across the sub-continent in a short century or so, which both facilitated and resisted the expansion of Empire.  In the 1850s, Moffat translated and printed a thousand copies of the Old Testament, the very first time this had been done in an African language, seTswana. Half a ton in weight, and transported painstakingly by oxwagon hundreds of kilometres from Algoa Bay on the Namibian Atlantic coast, it sits dull yet resolute in one of the schoolroom buildings, the disruptive Internet of its time.

Reads one of the placards: “It continued to produce Spelling Books and Hymn Books but its chief glory was the Bible, home-made from the start, created out of a language which had no [written] grammar or dictionary, and printed and published on the veld” 

From Kuruman we drove through some of the most extensive manganese and iron ore mining sites in the world to Upington.  From there, along the Gariep (Orange) River valley, where we wound through canal-fed vineyards (yes, vineyards!) and Afrikaner farm stores filled with dried fruit, nuts, tea, rusks. Kakamas was originally a colony for poor white farmers in the aftermath of drought and rinderpest in the 1890s, founded and regulated by the Dutch Reformed Church.  They were only granted property rights in the 1960s.  Here and there are dirt side roads simply signposted with an arrow saying ‘Namibia’.

The Augrabies National Park is a stunning landscape of melting coffee-icecream rock with an almighty surge of water cutting through it, carving a canyon of substantial proportions.  The powerful Augrabies waterfall plunges into a pool that is 120 metres deep.  All around, the lilacs and khakis are reminiscent of Namibia, which is but a hop skip and jump away.  One needs several days to explore, so I hope to return.   More soon on the rest of the trip.

These Zulus, These Buddhists: Temple, Veld & Empire

According to an upmarket resident-guide, some eighty percent of the 25,000 visitors to Isandlwana – the site of the famous Anglo-Zulu battle - are British.  And of the remainder, less than ten percent are black South Africans.  This in itself raises all sorts of interesting questions about the history and politics of memory. Why, for example, are the British quite so fascinated by this greatest defeat in the history of Empire, analyzing and re-analysing its reasons; whereas for today’s Zulus, this battle is apparently insignificant in the context of other dramatic upheavals that took place in the 19^th century under kings like Shaka, Dingane and Cetshwayo?

Isandlwana is a prominent sandstone outcrop that can be seen from the surrounding hills and valleys, many kilometres away.  The tall white stone cairns that mark the fallen dead are scattered liberally across the hillside - nearly five thousand were slaughtered that day, but the fallen Zulu were taken away, so the  cairns (originally over 290 of them) only mark the piles of British dead.  The 22nd August 1879 was a new moon day; like many other cultures (including those who practice Ashtanga yoga), the Zulus observed certain lunar customs.  It was a day on which Zulu impi were not supposed to fight.  Uncannily, the same day saw a partial eclipse of the sun to underwrite all that was already auspicious or foreboding about the timing and location of the battle.

On a clear day the cairns can be seen from afar.  The British badly underestimated the capacity and strategy of the Zulu army, thinking amongst other things that, like the Xhosa, the Zulu would likely use guerilla tactics.  A highly disciplined force of 25,000 men who could march-run barefoot at 60 miles a day in sweltering heat and led by a commander aged over 70, nogal, was not exactly what they were expecting.

We learned on these ‘battlefield tours’ so much about individual British soldiers yet relatively little about their Zulu counterparts. This tourism in many ways hinges on postcolonial romanticism about Empire’s values of heroism, resilience and courage – disregarding lesser details such as an unprovoked and aggressive British incursion into Zulu territory.  The focus on British individuals continues the bias that imbued so many colonial history books – that white men were dynamic individuals who were the agents of history-making, whereas women and natives were the anonymous recipients of change.

Not only memory is interesting here, but memorialization.  The memorials are starkly different: there are a variety of monuments to the British erected over the years at Islandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, but only two or three monuments created to commemorate the Zulu dead.  The Zulu monument at Islandlwana is perhaps more a work of art than anything else – a striking ‘traditional’ bravery necklace of quills and lion claws, writ large in earth-hue metal, in the shape of the ‘bull horn’ formation, the military enclosure tactic developed by Shaka.

We stayed in the old farmhouse (c.1940) at Fugitives’ Drift in the shade of grapefruit trees, under a three-quarter moon, vying with encroaching weeds to use the outside shower.  With Islandlwana too in the far distance, it was suitably atmospheric.  Fugitives Drift is so named for the two British fugitive-soldiers who met their deaths by the flooded Buffalo river as they attempted to save the Queen’s colours (the symbolic flag of regimental pride and allegiance to Victoria) after fleeing the corpse-strewn hillside of Isandlwana.  They stood for all the old-fashioned valour and fortitude of Empire, the type that reminds me of Scott of Antarctica and more latterly the college rowing clubs in Cambridge. 

So where do the Buddhists come into all this?  Well they didn’t make it to the veld of Isandlwana, but they did make it to veld of Bronkhorstpruit which is 50km east of Pretoria, and where J. and I visited last weekend.  Believe it or not, Bronkhorstspruit is home to the largest Buddhist temple, Nan Hua Temple, in the southern hemisphere.  The site was established in 1992 by the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order to promote Buddhism on the African continent.  There is a resident community of monks and nuns, one of whom told me off for brushing my hands along the scented lavender rows.  I guess she thought I was (rather violently) trying to pick it.

 People of all colours and from all walks of life visit the temple complex.  To that extent, it is a more South African experience than most other excursions one could choose.  At lunch we enjoyed a vegetarian buffet at the meagre sum of 30 rand per person, served on saucer-sized plates to foster reflection on greed.  Diners sit at slim bench-tables, all facing in the same direction, and are encouraged to eat in silence, whilst reflecting on the prayerful eating guidelines boldly displayed above on the wall.  We sat in the back row with some of the kitchen workers who have mastered the art of piling voluminous loads of noodles into the saucers.  It’s a fuss-free and functional affair, and about a hundred diners were in and out of the hall in under 40 minutes.

From there we went on to the sleepy village of Cullinan, famed for its diamond mine and the discovery of the largest diamond in the world - yup, over half a kilogram. The stone was bought by the (recently defeated Boer) Transvaal government and presented to King Edward as a birthday prezzie c. 1905, before parts of it were later incorporated into the Crown Jewels.  And this only 25 years or so after the Zulu army decimated the British at Isandlwana.   Could things have been different? The Boers aside, more twists and ironies of Empire as visions of Zuma’s five wives rise before me… each wearing a 120 gram diamond.

If God is For Us: The Randburg Boxing Club

Ashley Fourie has been boxing as long as anyone can remember. Or least since 1958, which is the oldest photo I can find on the wall of Ashley Fourie's Boxercise Gym, also known as the Randburg Boxing Club. Yet Fourie turned professional in 1969, which means he must have been boxing even longer than the first photo indicates. It turns out he started boxing at age 5, on account of being teased for his big ears and Afrikaans name at an English-speaking school in Yeoville, now downtown Johannesburg. Not long after his professional debut, though, he had a near-death motorbike accident which allegedly left him in a coma for seven weeks and scuttled all hopes of staying pro, despite a shortlived comeback.

The club is situated on a grungy corner of Randburg, sandwiched between the Hot Pot Takeaway and Lombard Tyres. When I first pulled up, I wasn't even sure I wanted to park my car outside, let alone venture inside. But venture inside I did, to find a sweaty group in the midst of a gruelling abs routine, and of course, Ashley Fourie himself with his long curly hair, heavy silver chain and bracelets, and an impressive array of tattoos, one of which features himself flexing his right bicep, on his right bicep.

Every square centimetre of Ashley Fourie's gym, from floor to ceiling, is covered in newspaper and magazine clippings about boxing, dating back to the 1930s. It is an interior design work of art in its own right, that reflects a lifetime of record-collecting, interspersed with messages about God ("If God is For Us, Who Can Be Against Us?"). All this combined and I knew the Randburg Boxing Club was for me. 

Despite his intimidating appearance, Ashley Fourie has attracted a plus-fifty-percent female following. His training sessions run six days a week, ranging from boxercise to amateur to professional. On Sundays? "You go to church and pray that you'll be able to recover in time to train again on Monday", he jokes.

Yes, it's still the New Year but I haven't missed a training session so far.

Bombay Works

Sand coloured smog. Fans. Air con. Swooping kites. The thin film of humidity that coats the skin. The smell that clothes acquire when they get damp, then dry, get damp, then dry. This is Bombay, the steamy city that never sleeps and where anything is possible. For example, being offered Fifty Shades of Gray by a street vendor through the window of my taxi opposite Dhobi Ghat, where the washermen process 100,000 pieces of clothing a day, each article discreetly coded so that it reaches its correct owner. 

Last Friday I boarded the Ladies Carriage on the commuter train from Bandra Station to what used to be Victoria Terminus, now CST (return ticket = 12 rupees). The Bombay (latterly Mumbai) trains carry over 7.24 million commuters a day - the highest passenger density of any urban railway system in the world. Teenagers in salwar kameez, hijab and burkas giggle on their way to school, and sellers of tacky jewellery proffer their sparkling cargo. A transgender hijra circulates the carriage in her sari, blessing each one of us – though only about five passengers part with any coins in exchange for good luck. We pass stations with the names of empire: Sandhurst Road, Dockyard Road, Cotton Green. Other commuter trains shoot by with open doors, men hanging out.

The charming and humorous Armando awaited me on Platform 1. Having completed a Masters degree in Fine Art at Stanford, he is now negotiating the extremist bureaucracy at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay’s oldest and most prestigious art institution, where Rudyard Kipling, son of the dean, grew up in a large and picturesque wooden double-storey house. Outside are unkempt gardens where the trees and plants grow prolifically with no attention. Birds chatter and a cockerel wanders around proudly. The shade encloses this other-world, separating it from the working chaos of one of the largest cities on earth. Many important artists and architects were trained here, going away to produce some of India’s best-known buildings and public spaces. As one of the school’s only international students ever, Armando goes from office to office acquiring forms, signatures, photocopies, stamps, more signatures, more authorisations, additional forms. Paperwork will in fact be the subject of his art. 

Built by the British, the school buildings are over a century old. Their interiors are a bizarre and liminal world like Harry Potter on oriental steroids: huge stone buildings with grand staircases and ornate metalwork, acres of high ceilings with old-fashioned fans, cathedral-size windows, and a chaotic litter of sculptures, murals, paintings, easels, work stations, and antique hardwood furniture. 

In the printmaking studio are Harrild & Sons printing presses that have been in situ since their arrival from London a thousand moons ago. Harrild was an English printing pioneer in the first half of the 19th century. The life drawing studio is kept firmly out of bounds thanks to the ‘sensitive’ subject matter. We sneak in anyway and marvel at the (real) skeleton with decaying teeth in its glass case. Armando tells me that the life drawing models are apparently 3rd generation – like other professions in India, it has become an inherited occupation. 

On the other side of the school, the Crawford Market begins: street after street of fabric shops, tiffin sellers, purveyors of fine sweets, jewellers, all loosely divided into their respective sections. We do some swift business, Armando’s Hindi proving to be excellent value. At the sweet shop, our two small boxes of delicacies are selected by some of the 9 men behind the counter and then vacuum-packed by a tenth man with a hairdryer. We do our best not to laugh. 

In the tiffin shop I buy stainless steel food containers that are the kitchen hallmark of India, and Armando persuades me into buying a pressure cooker. The salesman looks on, wondering why on earth it is Armando the man, not me the woman, who knows all about the intricate workings of such a device. He gets increasingly impatient as we discuss what to engrave on the bottom of the cooker (another Indian tradition), and when we finalise on “Cooked with Love” in Hindi, he tells the inscriber to get a move on: ‘Ok, ok, your love, my love, everybody’s love!”.

On the way back to the closest station we walk through a Muslim burial ground which is one of the most beautiful inner city gardens I’ve ever seen. It’s a commuter short cut as well, so also the busiest inner city garden ever! Interesting how religion in this case promotes and protects the environment. Back in Bandra I’m supposed to meet a mystery man who speaks very fast on the phone and who’s delivering my salvaged iPod, which I handed over into the unknown tech realm before travelling to Mysore. Bandra Station is, like most Indian stations, a flurry of activity with hundreds of people on the go. Within literally 30 seconds, whilst I’m digging for my phone and stressing about landmarks and how on earth to find my ‘contact’, a man I’ve never seen before appears in front me of me and says my name. Of course. This is Bombay. It works. iPod and cash change hands, he evaporates into the crowd, and I’m gleeful to have had 8GB of data rescued by some tech whiz. 

Down the road at the printing shop, I’m having business cards made to publicise my new book. They can do the job in 9 hours, of course, despite being inundated with greeting card orders for the upcoming Diwali festival. The tiny front room is crowded with a thousand paper samples, wedding invites, personalized stationery of Bollywood actors, Muslim family photos, theatre posters. I sip a petite cup of hot chai and look at fancy invitations for Parsi socialites at the Race Course Turf Club and hotels in exclusive Juhu. Later in the day, the card designer personally delivers my cards on his motorbike to Armando’s flat by St Andrews Church, where hundreds of striking orange marigold garlands are being laid on graves for All Saints Day. 

By mid-evening Bandra is more awake than ever. I ask for the opening house of a nearby pharmacy and the attendant looks at me with some surprise. “Twenty four seven, madam”. Of course. How could I think otherwise?

[With thanks to Armando for his photo of the hallowed halls of J.J]

Coffee, Cardamom & the Forests of Coorg

The bus driver to Madikeri had a beaming smile, an immaculately maintained mustache, a steering wheel with a two-foot radius, and a take-no-prisoners attitude.  Sitting at the front of the bus, sweatily snuggled amongst mostly men, is better for the view but worse for the nerves.  Like, quite a lot worse.  The driving in this place is unreal. The bus also has a Suggestion Box though it was hard to tell if anyone ever had ever used it.

Three hours later on arrival, after arguing with a smarmy rickshaw driver who then got a commission from the hotelier, I spent the night not far from the bus stop at a characterless but clean hotel where the receptionist sleeps behind the desk so that he can be available twenty-four-seven.  There’s no getting away from the mosques and temples, so it was the usual 5am wake up call, which was also when a group of other guests decided to start making lots of noise in the corridor.  Sunday morning, god strewth.

Despite a somewhat uninspiring start, Madikeri turned out to be a true highlight of the India trip.  My randomly-found hiking guide Channappa was a local coffee farmer who’s been guiding for nine years.  He speaks six of India’s twenty-two official languages (122 languages are spoken by more than 10,000 people) and wears slip-on sandals, in contrast to my full-on hiking boots.  We spent two days trekking up and down through muggy emerald forests and expanses of rice paddies, chatting with other small farmers who we met along the way in their burbling Kannada tongue.  Without wanting to romanticize these people, I was struck by how content they seemed – a light in their eyes or something in their faces that suggested the benefits of leading an outdoor rural life inscribed with agricultural labour.

I was blown away by the forests.  Several centuries of exploitation by colonisers and latter-day loggers, yet this earth is bountiful.  The monsoon brings 150 inches of rain here each year.  Many of the common crops grow happily amidst the jungle: coffee, cardamom, pepper, vanilla, ginger, lemongrass, cashew, pineapple, wild tobacco and the occasional avocado, orange and lemon trees.  There are less savoury things in the forests too: leeches which dance frantically on the forest floor and then back-bend their way up your shoes to bite through your socks; poisonous vipers lying quietly near the paths, one of which put Channappa out of commission for weeks as a teenager; nettles which will make you itch for a month; and yellow poisonous frogs.

Channappa’s grandfather purchased 14 acres of forest here in the 1920s during the British Raj, at a time when poisoning tigers was rewarded by the government.  He grew cardamom, an unassuming plant whose seeds grow in small fleshy bulbs just above the ground. India is the second largest producer in the world of this third-most-expensive spice. Nowadays farmers focus on coffee because the price has doubled in the last year or two, especially for organic coffee.  Many of the trees are already 40-80 years old. 

 Channappa’s spotless home is at the top of a steep climb, marked by roses, geraniums and hibiscus but otherwise fully ensconsed by forest.  He and his neighbours have put in their own road, their own water system and their own electricity.   These are impressive and expensive feats given the dramatic terrain.  He has two impeccably behaved children (there are government benefits for families who only have two offspring) who are fluent in English, a dutiful wife who spent hours preparing a sumptuous dinner, breakfast and packed lunch, and, importantly, a bathroom with hot water heated on a fire. 

The night brought soft rain and deep sleep.  I liked this place so much that I offered to come and help pick his coffee for free during the harvest season – though I imagine I’d be one of the most unproductive labourers.  Perhaps even the laughing stock.  In fact, almost most certainly the laughing stock.

The Common Soul Shines: Mysore

Each morning I rise at 5.30am and get ready within a few minutes. It is still dark as I leave Door No. 1472, 7th Cross in the neighbourhood of Krishnamurtypuram, Mysore. It is one of the few quiet times of the day, for people in India are busy most hours, and God is everywhere, drawing prayers from all sides, all corners, all minutes. Some mornings the Muslim call to prayer wakes me first at 5am, other time the devotional chants are already underway at the nearest Hindu temple. 

I walk 5 minutes to reach my yoga shala, situated at No. 1317, 3rd Cross, passing the Shree Ladies Beauty Parlour and Surya Medicals on the way. This is usually a very quiet time of day, like I said, but there is a small tearoom already open, where the working men on scooters and motorbikes stop for a quick idli and hot chai. 

Upstairs the shala practice room is already getting warm and busy as the students from around the world stretch, meditate or say prayers.  From the rooftop one can see Chamundi Hill, the place where the goddess Chamundeswari slew the demon Mahishasura (after whom Mysore is named) in a battle that lasted for nine days and nights. These nine days came to be called Dussehra, which celebrates the victory of good over evil, as well the power of women more broadly.

The temple on Chamundi Hill - the original shrine dates to the 12th Century

Our teacher has already been up since 3am when he does his own meditation and practice before turning his attention to us. Each morning begins with an opening prayer chanted in Sanskrit as the clock strikes 6am:

Jeevamani Bharajath Phana
The common soul shines like an emerald on the head of the snake
Sahasra Vidruth Vishwambara
Which has one thousand heads and is all pervading
[and the prayer continues...]  

Mysore-style ashtanga yoga is not led but only supervised by the teacher -- each student must remember and implement the sequence of some 60 poses and their variations, in the correct order, preferably with no memory aides.  The students are at different levels, and several do apparently impossible contortions that I can only dream of.  Our teacher circulates the room to improve the students' positions, stand on them with his full body weight, or even pick them up and swing them around, sometimes shouting instructions across the room: 

"Hello!  HELLO!!"
"Head up. Head up! UP!! Eyes! Knee to floor! No, floor!! RELAX!!!"
"Tssst!"
 
Around 8am, as our vigorous practice is coming to an end, the fruit and vegetable sellers start to steer and ply their wares up the street. We know their voices and their individual hallmark cries by now, even though we don't know their faces.  Somewhere next door is the sound of running water and a woman beating her laundry with gusto.  Charcoal fumes drift in from nearby kitchen stoves.  The train horns blare in the distance, on their way to Bangalore. By the time we emerge, sweaty and stretched to the enth degree, life in the residential world of Krishnamurtypuram is all a-bustle.

If you take the first right at the construction site and turn left at New Globe Tailors, there is a one-room one-man laundry operation where you can drop off your laundry virtually around the clock. Just down the road is the Vijay Motor Driving School, as well as a printing press whose machines spin till late. Next door to the yoga shala is a classical dance teacher whose teenage students are busy preparing for their exams, still practising at 9.30pm at night.  Amidst all this, residents go about their daily lives, cows wander by and keep the road adorned with cowpats, and boys play cricket in the street in the afternoon. Collectors of alms come and go.   

People here, like elsewhere in India, are enterprising: homes often double up as business premises.   I pay 30 rand/USD $4 a night for my room at the home of a woman who must make a small fortune cooking delicious lunches and giving cookery lessons to word-of-mouth foreigners who appear in droves to sample her cuisine.  In the morning the small kitchen is by far the most crowded part of the house, comprising the three ladies preparing lunch (for up to 30 people), the domestic worker, two small children, the cat, and the two Czech yogis (my neighbours upstairs) who are cooking their customary sizeable pot of oats.

My simple room with the hardest bed in India is upstairs at the back, with shutter windows overlooking the Dr Ambedkar Park on one side, and into the courtyard on the other.  The courtyard has a small altar and the greenest-leaf-tree I've ever seen, and below the ladies of the house wash, clean, sort and dry, in the way that women do everywhere. It is cool and clean, if not messy. To reach the courtyard, and thus the toilet and bathroom (each of which has a blogpost-worth of damp individualities) requires descending a steep metal ladder which would avert even the most avid of night pee-ers.

Many of my meals have been had at the no-frills Hotel Mahesh Prasad Veg Restaurant, a fast-service diner situated next door to a chemicals shop. Mahesh Prasad has a cashier who prides himself on the speed at which he can return your change, and turns over 1000 customers a day. Now that's business for you. The menu is highly classified according to times and types, the full rationale for which I haven't yet figured out, but one's ordering has to be carefully done with these many timings in mind:

Tiffin Select 3.30pm - 7.30pm

Dosa            7.30am - 12 noon; 4.15pm - 6.30pm

Chat            5.30pm - 10pm

Chinese       5.30pm - 10pm

North Indian 7pm - 10pm

South Thali  12.30pm - 3.30pm

North Thali  7.30pm

The Mahesh kitchen, which you pass through on the way to the loo, is another world -  New York speed, Bombay heat and a lotta workers.  You can get take-aways at the 'Parcel Counter' where your food will be expertly wrapped in plastic and newspaper, secured neatly with string.

It's not all romance, of course.  At least one of the famous yoga schools that I enquired with in person was unwelcoming and exclusive, leaving me with the impression of being a bizarre mix of a business and a cult. The yogis (practisers of yoga) are often territorial and competitive about their teachers, affiliations and the correct way to teach/study; they remind me of rowers to the extent that they can talk about nothing besides...yoga.  There is not nearly as much humility as I was expecting.  And many of them prefer to stay in what I call the 'yoga cocoon', ie. only in the safe comforts of places frequented by foreigners, offering Western health food, smoothies and bountiful quantities of spirulina.  The local economy has adapted around these demands of course, particularly in the neighbourhood of Gokulam: the couple who sell silver jewellery, incense and spirulina from home; the man who sells overpriced rooftop lunches; various Ayurvedic masseuses; and best of all, the family of dentists who sell chocolate on the side (!) 

Today is the 9th day of Dussehra, with preparations and celebrations already well underway for tomorrow, the festival's apex. Today is celebrated with the worship of the implements and machines that are used in day to day life and which help people earn their livelihoods. This means that everything from bicycles to buses (including the computer I'm typing on right now) is decorated with banana leaves and yellow flower garlands. Till next time...