There was a fair degree of excitement amongst the girls when we got up on saturday morning because the programme (which is always subject to be change and other than lesson times we strayed quite a long way from the original plan) had been changed again - for our benefit the planned market visit day had been brought forward so we were going sari shopping. We were armed with instructions from the girls in the school that we needed to buy saris with extra fabric for the blouse and petticoats, a number of us had also been told what colours to get - they clearly have realised purple is my favourite colour with the give away streaks in my hair - even the cook has told me he wants purple hair and sparkles now. We were told a limousine was coming so after the rolling temple that arrived to collect us from the airport we really weren’t quite sure what to expect. What actually arrived was a fairly ordinary 13 seater minibus as both Dipak (the headteacher) and John (the school administrator and only 19 years old) were coming with us to help with the purchasing process. It was a bit of a tight squeeze but we bounced off down the bumpy local roads, beeping and everything we passed and navigating through cows and cyclists and people randomly wandering across the road.
Our first stop of the day was a Shwarmi Temple - a form of Hinduism. The founder of temple had established 110 other temples around the world. This one had only been completed about 3 years before, Dipak and John had been watching it being built as they travelled back and forth past the school over the previous 3-4 years. Once again the temple looked rather like a theme park, very beautiful, ornate carvings on hand carved pillars. A mandala style central dome over a marble floor engendered a feeling of simplicity and peace which drew a number of our students to try some meditation. After a while of looking around the men of the group were invited away by some of the volunteers at the temple but were told the women couldn’t join them. Joe decided to stay with the ladies as a number of them were really unhappy about the sexism and segregation. As the time ticked past we began to wonder where the men had gone, more bus loads of visitors arrived to look around the temple and it didn’t seem as if them men where being taken from their groups. After a while Joe wandered off to see if he could find the rest of the men. Time passed and he didn’t reappear. More time passed and there were some increasingly disgruntled ladies because their sari shopping time was being eaten into. Eventually a man in a white Punjabi led us down the temple steps and through an entrance into a crypt like area beneath the main temple. In comparison to the temple above it was very contemporary in style, white marble and blue lighting. In the middle of the area was a large glass room in which we saw Joe pouring water onto a statue - under the guidance of one of the temple volunteers. We were encouraged to take photos of him but were not allowed to join him. He was then led out of the glass room and around the outside of it enough times that I was getting dizzy watching him. The next thing that ensued was a huge amount of point at us and gesticulating which seemed to mean that Joe was being asked to part with money on our behalf, this is clearly a guess on my behalf as I dont speak Hindi, Bengali or Gujarati I am also not sure whether there are any sects in Hinduism that allow for multiple wife’s so they might have been trying to set up some kind of polygamous marriage service. In the end Lexi took matters into her own hands and marched everyone including Joe towards the sign that said exit - there was much protestation from the temple volunteers however we collected our shoes and headed towards the shade and the exit whilst waited for the rest of the men to appear. I forgot to say that Joe had acquired a red dot on his forehead in the style of a bindi but he had no idea what it meant, with the heat of the sun and his usual running of hands through floppy hair it was soon smudged and whilst he wanted to remove it there was some reluctance in case he caused offence. We ladies had decided at this point that all the shopping time was to be decided by us the men had been gone for what seemed like an eternity and was probably nearly an hour. Finally we saw the men in the distance being traipsed along a walkway by other temple volunteers. We called Jon but he was scurrying after the others towards the underneath room where Joe had been put through the strange ceremony. It took a little while longer before they managed to escape the clutches of the over enthusiastic volunteers but enventually they came towards us gathered their shoes and we made our way towards the exit. It turned out that the guru of the religion had come to visit the temple and they had been taken to meet him in what seemed like an attempt to convert all our men to Shwarmi Hinduism. The trouble was that the language they were speaking was Gujarati and neither Jon or Dipak could speak it so they didn’t really have any better idea what was going on that Dan who is fairly convinced it was a hard sell conversion tactic that included being manhandled around the monastery behind the temple. They came out weighed down with boxes and boxes of sweets to give away but none of this mollified our very frustrated ladies. The only thing that did cause a fair degree of hilarity was when we discovered that Joe had inadvertently performed a ritual declaring his vow of celebacy.
Finally we all piled into the taxi to head off to the market for sari shopping. In the back of the bus there some lengthy conversations about hard sell evangelism, prostelysing and the difference between faith and religion - guess I was earning my keep. Anyway we went to a market called new market - I don’t know what made it new as it looked pretty much like the other places we had driven past and I forgot to ask but we were ushered rapidly into a shop behind the stalls that were on the street. We had been warned that we would need to barter when we went to the market and I was quite looking forward to the opportunity having learned the art in the souks of jerusalem, however this was a fixed price shop which made things simpler in some ways. The fixed prices didn’t stop the shopkeeper starting off my showing us some really expensive saris, the crestfallen look on his face when he realised that all this lovely English girls weren’t as rich as he had hoped was quite a picture. Despite this he worked very hard to help us all - my battle for find purple sari’s that weren’t pink or green or yellow proved a challenge since he kept bringing out any other colour than purple however I found 2 beautiful lengths of fabric, one of which I will be modelling at the end of the week so photos will follow. One of our students, Jess, is studying textiles and her project work is on the dyeing of Indian fabrics. I looked over at one point and she was in seventh heaven with so many sari lengths on the counter in front of her it almost looked like she couldn’t see over it - I think given half a chance she would have come home with most of the shop.
After the sari choosing we were organised into a crocodile for moving through the market with Jon and Dipak at the front and Dan and I at the back and all our students in the middle. We moved about 20 yards along the street to a corner stall that looked like is should have been a fruit and vegetable stall but all it sold were cotton petticoats - not with elastic in the top but just as many different colours as you could imagine to match the many and varied different colours of petticoats. Once all the girls had chosen their matching petticoats I was ushered along the street by Dipak to purchase a great long length of the cord used for tying pajamas - this is used to tie up the petticoats. I should say at this point that Jon is 19, he is the school accountant and really doesn’t appear to have time to breathe let alone have a girlfriend, and Dipak is the headteacher of the school and is studying for a Masters Degree - between the two of them they had done a sterling job of ensuring that we all purchased exactly wanted we needed in order to wear our saris properly AND they arranged for a tailor to come to the school so that we could have the matching tops made in time to wear before we go home.
Happy ladies with sari fabric relented on the men and our next stall/shop was a pajama shop - well actually a punjabi shop which look like long tunics worn over pajama bottoms - worn by the men I should say. When Brian tried modelling his in front of the children at the school over shorts they burst out laughing however with the appropriate trousers both Brian and Jack looked great, and although the photo I took of Jack shows him still looking a little uncomfortable he has been wearing his almost ever since.
A few bits of jewellery and trinkets from one last stall and then it was back to the minibus to head back to the school. Somehow I think we may need to venture out shopping again before the end of our time here as we really didn’t get time to notice the sights, sounds and smells of the market as we rushed around madly trying to buy things.