The New Year begins slowly....This week saw our travel-weary team manifest as a mere shadow of its former self; fatigued, recuperating and incapable of all but the most elementary of tasks. Fortunately, the lacklustre state of our collective psyche happily coincided with Rajasthan's school holidays and we accordingly faced an underwhelming workload for the week. In fact, that's a little bit euphemistic: we really had nothing work-related on our plate at all. This stagnant state of affairs was initially a pleasant reprise, enabling us to get back into our groove, but soon the excess of time and absence of creative outlets began driving us a little stir-crazy.
Fate then intervened and our world was plunged into chaos, as Manju, our beloved caretaker was stricken by a violent bout of the flu - no doubt a consequence of the bitter Indian winter, of which the locals incessantly bemoan. Tongue-in-cheek remarks about the climate aside, Manju remains in a very real state of sickness; we've been making daily house visits to deliver apples and medicine (she refuses to consume anything else). Slight signs of progress have been noted, yet despite being on the mend Manju remains bed-bound, leaving us with the perilous task of obtaining our daily meals ourselves.
Matt and Ingrid have resorted to spending the morning wandering aimlessly around the local area, clinging to the hope of being ushered into some generous individual's house and procuring breakfast via that endearing Indian hospitality we've come to know and love. Unfortunately this strategy has been a little hit-and-miss, mainly because of the disconnect between local breakfast time (~8am) and that of our own (~11am), but points for pragmatism.
Despite this semi-successful endeavour, the topic of Indian hospitality - and indeed way of life in general - has been bouncing about what little philosophical conversation our fragile minds have managed to muster lately. In particular, we've all been quite taken aback at how the local community has so instinctively banded together to support Manju during her sickness. Not once have we visited her house (which incidentally is just around the corner from our guesthouse) and found her alone; there is a constant flow of concerned neighbours and friends encircling her bedside and ensuring that every possible measure is taken to get her better. We found this a very touchingly selfless scenario to behold, and one sadly quite foreign to our own society.
India seems to exist in such a perplexing state of symbiosis; at a glance it seems like a chaotic free for all in which man, animal and nature are concurrently clawing for survival, yet upon deeper observation there is an oddly sustainable coexistence lying beneath the bedlam. While there are countless examples of this we could expound upon, one strikingly apt example came this week when we returned home to find a dead cow outside our guesthouse. At its side was one of the many stray dogs that roam the streets of Pali, muzzling into the poor bovine's exposed abdominal cavity. This grotesque sight immediately reaffirmed that initial view of India as caught in a melee of life and death; yet only moments later and a few meters aside from the carcass we then witnessed another mongrel, this time licking and cleaning the ear of a calf with apparent affection. The contrast of these two images really drove home that perennial contradiction of India; the abundance of life amidst the constant threat of death.
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