Delhi (well, sort of) Day 3

We left Delhi early in the morning (7:00) and drove out into the countryside to visit friends and family in the planes villages. The first village we went to was that of Nidhi’s aunt. After passing through the impossibly narrow roads of the tiny village to get to her house, she invited us in, but only Nidhi and me. In these villages, the women cover their faces with the transparent cloth of their saree, or the scarf of their suit-salvaar in the presence of the male elders of their in-laws, and since Nidhi’s father belonged to that category, it would have been awkward having a conversation with someone with a cloth over their face. So he waited out in one room while Nidhi and I went into the courtyard of their house.
All houses have these courtyards or flat roofs where most of daily life happens, because electricity is almost nonexistent. Sometimes they have it, sometimes they don’t and it’s fairly random and never announced. In this village, they said they had electricity until the 28th of June, but they haven’t had it since. So they boiled milk over slow-burning cow dung and we all fanned each other with square, woven fans. It seemed like they could have lived 100 years ago, that nothing had changed since then, except an occasional plastic lawn chair or the sound of a motorcycle outside.
The next village we went to was Nidhi’s native village – where all her dad’s ancestors had lived. It was a lot bigger than the first one, almost not a village anymore, but it still had the narrow stone streets and closely built houses, because everyone in the village was like one large and slightly spread-out family. We were invited into three or four houses, and Nidhi talked (and I listened uncomprehending) with the women on the roof/second storey of the houses, while her father talked to the men of the house on the first storey, with the buffalo. The women were really nice, including me in the conversation through Nidhi’s translation, and smiling at my attempts at Hindi.
When we finally escaped the numerous invitations for juice and tea and milk and any other drink possible, we went to Nidhi’s mother’s village, and spent the night there. That was really nice. I lay on a woven bed with a battery-powered fan next to me and read until the sun set, while Nidhi and her father talked to their relatives they hadn’t seen in years.
That night we slept outside under mosquito nets (that did a fine job of keeping one mosquito inside, which bothered me all night.) and in the morning we woke up early and rode on a bullock-cart to the mango orchards, where we ate mangos and climbed trees and splashed water at each other from the well and generally had a great time. Then we skipped back, got our stuff together, and took three long, hot, uncomfortable busses back to Solan.
What joy, to be back in the mountains! It’s so cool and rainy and cool and not hot…aaahhh.