Sunday with Nana – Alandi

It’s Wednesday evening here and I’m counting down the days before I go home. Three days. This might sound crazy (because it is), but I’ve devised a highly scientific method of counting down the days using eggs and watermelon. That’s right, eggs and watermelon. You see, I have six eggs left. That’s two eggs for each morning – Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And I now have one whole watermelon which means I have half a (very small) watermelon for tomorrow night and the other half for Friday night.

I’m finishing up some business here with Sudhir, the owner of Dimpex, who handles all my batiking. It looks like he’ll be done with most of the t-shirts I brought, but he’ll have to parcel the long-sleeve hoodies. The rain we had the first half of the month put a damper on this project because they don’t use dryers here and the batiking process requires the different colors to be done in stages, and each stage requires the shirts to dry before the next stage.

Sudhir with a few of the t-shirts he brought for me to check out yesterday.

Alandi

Here is the remainder of my Alandi photos, including a video that gives a good picture of what it’s like by the river. As I mentioned in an earlier post and posts from prior visits, Alandi is a pilgrimage town and resting place (aka Samadhi) of Saint Jnaneshwar. There is a very old and popular temple here. We opted to not go into the temple this visit, but I’ve been there on all my prior visits. If you want to know more about it I’m sure you can find more information online.

This (above) is a video. Click on it.
Several people sell flowers and other offerings to be placed in the temple.

People literally beg us to take their picture and take selfies with them. It’s like we’re celebrities there. Queen for the Day (remember that show?).

It started raining.

All these people were taking shelter from the rain under this foot bridge. I was able to get their attention and all of them looked at the camera for a photo.

Selfie under the foot bridge.
The Warkari man.
Another Warkari man.
In this photo you can see that the water level came up very high here during the monsoon rains earlier this month and there’s a nice trash heap along with the river debris.
Selfie on the bridge.
This is one of my favorite photos of Jill. She looks like she’s got a big pillar growing out of her head. Awesome! This was totally random, btw.
And here’s our fearless rickshaw driver relaxing with his cell phone.

This is a week of lasts. Tomorrow will be my last early morning (7am) class with Prashant. I’ll also be attending my last class with Abhay tomorrow who’s been a wealth of information and a great help.

Now, off to bed for me.

Blogged on Amma’s MacBook from Pune with LOVE!