India made me smile yesterday! Wait, thats not right, a country can't do that! :-)

Yesterday I had gone out to run some errands. I had to get my hair cut, and pick up a few things for DH.

Well, at the salon (the same one I have normally gone to for like the last 3 months...) I had the same 2 girls that took care of me last time. There is a trained professional (who does the actual cutting / eyebrow threading) and her helper (she holds the hair up and does the little jobs...) who take care of each customer. Well, this time they remember me, and they go on jabbering in bangla. No biggie, I just sit and listen and they thread my eyebrows first. Then the fun starts.

The trained girl starts asking me if I wear sindoor, and I say no. Then they ask me if I wear the shakha (which in Bengal, married women wear red and white bangles. The white bangle is beautifully crafted from conch while the red is made either of coral or lac. While the red and white ones are quite important as a symbol of matrimony, what is crucial is the loha or iron kada that is worn along with them. Some Bengalis get the loha gold-plated rather skillfully, giving it a more contemporary look). Then where I was from and then if I had been married long.

Then when I came home yesterday I had a auto-wallah who was irritable and yelling at some man on the street (I have no idea why...) and was just plain ornery. When one of my fellow passengers got down, she gave the driver a 10 rupee note, and the driver was rooting through his change, mumbling something, and so I gave him my 6 rupees, and then he gave the lady change. He looked back, and smiled and said, "thank you".


Then, when I got home, I went to take a rickshaw to my house and when I got to the stand, the rickshaw-wallah looked at me, and turned and hit the seat of his rickshaw, and said "bosun, bosun" (sit, sit in the polite form).

It made me smile and come home and tell DH about it. :-)

Last weekend and our accident

I wanna say it was Saturday, but it could have been Sunday, not the ones that just past, but the ones from before.

I don't remember the exact happenings, because the accident pushed everything else out of my mind.

I don't remember where we were coming from, or who we had been with, or any of that information.

I just remember driving down the road to go to our house and that it was night, and I was sitting with DH in the back-seat of the taxi.

All of a sudden there was this auto that sped in front of us, and the driver slammed on his brakes and we hit the auto. Well, the auto didn't stop, it didn't cause severe damage (well...that we could see...) and it kept going (without stopping). Then the driver and DH got out of the car, agreeing that the auto-wallah must have been drunk to assess the damage. Well, nobody was hurt, but the left headlight of the taxi was broken. Not major damage I was told, but enough that the driver would be having to pay for some damages out of his own pocket. I was shaken to say the least. We were almost home, so we continued home, and the driver admitted to DH that he was also shaken, so he was going to take the taxi back to the garage for the night and then go home.

That's all I remember...*sigh* I hate car accidents. At least nobody was hurt, and DH wasn't shaken and he was there! :-) All's well that ends well, right??