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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Well good morning to all and to all a good morning! It's nearing the ten o'clock hour here, I'm sitting comfortably under some fans and the birdsongs are abating after a very active sun salutation all around the city. I aim to record some of those sounds soon, now that I know it's possible to upload video here.

Speaking of possibilities...one phrase I hear over and over, from natives and non-natives alike, is that anything is possible. I've heard it more in India than at any other time in my life though. It's weird, but cool, and I believe it. The last time I heard this was from the receptionist at the dental clinic. She said that to be bold is good too.

I found the clinic after stopping to chat with Peter and two folks he'd just met at the Aurolec cafe - Heidi (a longtime aurovillian, with none of the facade or pretentiousness...she's a tour guide and actually spends a fair amount of time outside of Auroville!) and Wolfgang, from Crete. We sat at a table under a huge jackfruit tree with HUGE JACKFRUIT:





I was wondering why the bags of water hanging from trees (there are no goldfish in them, why are they hanging bags of water from trees??). Heidi said, umprompted, that flies eyes are confused by the reflection and refraction of the water and light when it's bagged in plastic like that. Amazing! There were still flies, but maybe not so many as if there weren't any goldfishless bags of plastic water.

So back to the dentists' office! Heidi peels off and then Wolfgang, after some nice conversation (I've been in good conversation lately, it's, um...really nice) and I chart some territory around the cafe, which includes some health services and I don't know what else. I go inside and ask about the dental lab and he says that if you want teeth cleaned and such, go outside turn left.

Many Indians will give you directions and the most helpful are when they say 'opposite'. I can grasp this, I understand it means on the other side of, usually the other side of the street. But most of the time they gesture a lot and say 'straight' and 'left' and 'right', but it's all still very vague. Most of the time when I ask for directions, even for an item in a store, they wave vaguely, in a general direction, with a half-bobble of the head.

Well I went outside and turned left, but I didn't see an orange gate for a clinic. So I hopped on my bicycle and went OUTSIDE the compound, turned left, and eventually found an orange gate with a placard for a dental clinic! All the while, I must add that I've been smiled at and not humored or treated like a dumb American (which can also happen with regularity..hee hee).

So back to the dentist's office! yeah! The receptionist was really friendly, and very astute. I expressed how amazingly easy this was, to walk in and make an appointment, I had been fretting over how to keep my teeth clean while globetrotting...here I can go in and for about fifteen dollars, they'll clean my teeth and give me a consultation, see if I have any cavities. Wow. "Anything is possible," she says, earnestly.

My appointment is for tomorrow. When I gave her my name, and where I'm staying, she laughed and said with some astonishment that a Victoire from the same guest house had just been in! Here's Victoire (see my flickr photostream for more uploads today), outside Fertile Windmill:
(Poor Victoire...one of her back teeth has broken and she's grappling with the fact that it really needs to be extracted. I can relate. Same thing happened to me, and I have issues about my teeth - they're supposed to be permanent, so psychologically it's somewhat horrifying when something breaks, especially teeth)

We still don't know what that fruit is called.

Here's the sign that greets us at Fertile Windmill, a community in Auroville that makes jewelry from precious and semi-precious stones. As we approached the sign, Victoire burst out in peels of laughter and so did I....PARK HERE!!!
thank you
(please) in very small letters, almost as an afterthought
Really it's so funny, speaks to an attitude that we've both encountered here in Auroville.





We went on the field trip day before yesterday to Fertile Windmill. Victoire looooves jewels, so she bought a nice necklace. I liked the cheap figure of Shiva with his foot in his mouth, but I didn't buy it :)

Yesterday I went into Pondy with Damien, who left last night for Australia. He needed to do some last-minute gift shopping and he volunteered me to go along (I agreed to the volunteer position). It was a lot of fun, and very exhausting. I posted pics on the flickr stream, and here's a short video from the bazaar. It's a warren of stalls you could get lost in easily and rather happily, if you were mentally fortified to enjoy the cacophony of smells, voices, and wares shouting at you. It was great.


Here's the woman I bought some coconuts from, she was sweet



Beatiful colors, and friendly faces too




Okay my bladder is full and I have to finish uploading pics to flickr, so I can go and eat some breakfast. I'm drinking more water today, I mean it! I really do! I'm still feeling spacey and headachey this morning so maybe I didn't drink enough yesterday. I've also been fixing myself coffee every morning and I woke up feeling soo groggy, I think I should lay off the coffee. Maybe. Argh, it tastes so good though! I love waking up and sipping coffee. Who is this talking? I'm not a regular coffee drinker!!

catch y'all later...wish you were here

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

V.

i'm so happy you've taken action and embarked on this quest, i hope you find everything you're looking for and a bunch of stuff you didn't know you were looking for. =)

i too have begun a quest of another sort, but thats a story for flickr IM's i suppose. if you get to missing anything from home, no matter how trivial, [or if you need any kind of art stuff] don't be afraid to let me know... i'm sitting on a mountain of supplies and i can send anything you like your way.

everytime i think of someone i miss lately they somehow pop up...i was just thinking of looking for your email in my account when i saw that you had posted over at flickr...and then a link here!

if you ever find yourself in the area of michigan, we'll do lunch =D

hoping this note finds you well,
anthead

Victoria Koldewyn said...

the head of ant!!!

wow...so great to hear from you. Thanks for all of that - really means a lot to me, and very timely too. I'm curious about your own journey. I'll message you on flickr :)

muggy hugs from the south of India
V

Victoria Koldewyn said...

the head of ant!!!

wow...so great to hear from you. Thanks for all of that - really means a lot to me, and very timely too. I'm curious about your own journey. I'll message you on flickr :)

muggy hugs from the south of India
V