A surprise invite!

I'm slumbering away in bed this morning trying to wake up - well you know me and mornings :)  - when the door bell goes. It is still before 8AM! It can't be my sabzi walla this early, surely! I scramble for the door keys , unlock the door to be met by my landlady and a man - he looks familar but I can't place him. It turns out he is our neighbour from the blue house across the road from us. He has come to invite me over on Sunday evening to attend the celebration for their elder daughter's wedding, saying they would really like me to come to experience an Indian wedding. I'm amazed. The formal invitation is presented. It would be lovely to attend I reply, trying to be polite in my pyjamas!

So now I just have to find out about Indian wedding ettiquete - dooes one arrive early, on time, late? Does one take a gift? If so what would be appropriate from me? What is the appropriate attire?
The invite says dinner at 7:30PM, the groom arrives 8PM, and the marriage ceremony is 10:55PM. All incredibly precise for Indian stretch time.

I ask at work and am told the wedding timings are very fixed, 10:55 PM will have been indicated by the bride and grooms horoscopes as an auspicious time. I'm advised I should arrive later than 7:30 but before 8PM and that the whole thing will last till about 11:30PM Sanghamitra assures me one of the outfits I bought last weekend will be perfect acceptable and yes there ought to be a gift or a gift envelope of money and tells me that appropriate amount for me is an amazingly small 100 rupees!

I'm sure I'll end up being the subject of much interest, but roll on Sunday!

Investigating new vegetables 2

I went marketing at the weekend with Mrs P and ended up in her parents home. Her mother is just a few years younger than me and remarkably looks still too young to have had Sanghamitra, never mind her younger sister. They have a compartatively larger garden for houses here, and when I said that I had a big garden at home I was promptly shown round. Their garden has great shade, very important here as the temperatures start to rise. They grow tomatoes, beans, various leaves, there's a jackfruit tree, and others I didn't recognise.

I was presented with freshly picked coriander leaves, scrumptious! and a bunch of drumstick beans. Now I'd seen these bean trees before but had no idea what they would be like to eat. Although they are called a bean they are not a true bean. Botanically they are Moringa oleifera so check out  what they look like.

I was told that the way to cook them was to first peel the skin back, chop them into lengths of about 1-2 in, fry with onions, tomatoes, cumin seeds and chili to your taste. 

It is one of the delights of living in another country that you come across strange new foods and of course you just have to try them. Well I did last night! What a disaster! perhaps I didn't follow S's instructions but I won't be buying these. Imagine stringy celery wiithout the juice, and with a bitter taste. Definitely not for me.    After they went out for the cows, it was a quick noodles with a simple tomato and onion sauce with lots of coriander leaves for dinner - much enjoyed.

The Volunteer's New Clothes

Now my caste is off and my arm at least mobile again I can try for some more substantial shopping expeditions and and having managed the few days in Vizag I'm up for more travelling too. But first things first, I have major shopping to do in Rayagada over the next few weeks. The main item on the shopping list is a fridge. But that wasn't to be bought this Sunday but I did manage to find some new clothes. As my friend K says, I have of course "gone native" - eating with my fingers (right hand),  using my left for other business!, and I have taken to wearing the local  attire, the  Shalwaar Kemeez - cotton, loose and ideal for the dust and the heat. I purchased some kurta tops in Delhi to start my Indian wardrobe, but they were rather flimsy and probably won't last that long as I sweat my way through the expected 50 degree C temperatures come the summer months. So expecting that I will need several in the wardrobe to enable changes and getting them dry in the monsoon Sunday ended up being mainly a clothes shopping trip. I ended up with 3 new tops and 2 new trousers.

I also managed to acquire some new dishes. Up to now I have only had one set of small and large plate and bowl. Not so handy when you have guests! Also they are melamine, that plastic picnic ware stuff and I think perhars they get too scratched and become less then hygenie. So I have again adopted local custom and gone for the metal plates and bowls. Amazingly after searching high and low for a colander before there was one staring me right in the face as soon as I walked in this shop!

It never fails to amaze me how long it takes to shop and to find things. This lot took me 3 hours! It is not at all clear to me which shops sell what, I end up having to wander up and stare round the shelves. And not all of them are the ones where you can walk in, some are just counters at street side with people running to shelves at the rear as patrons shout their orders. So you have to know what you want, and be assertive. So just so you get the feel this is the main thoroughfare through the centre of Rayagada Market.

A dog's life!

In my post Outdoors, in a bit of a lather I recorded how some of the local humans used a building site temporarily vacated for a holiday. Well here is its alternative set of inhabitants!