I didn't go on a run this morning. I couldn't get out of bed, and when I did, I realised that my legs were aching because I'd overdid it on yesterday's run. So I took a rest day.
On days when I don't run, I'm like a hyperactive child. I have this restless energy that usually gets burnt off when I run and I can't sit still. Eventually, I sat down to start work at around midday and then stared at the google front page. The little voices in my head said, "The sun was shining outside! You're in India! What are you doing indoors?" The little voices had a point, the buggers.
So I decided to go to Sarojini Market to buy towels, seeing as I'd been using the same one since leaving South Africa at the end of January (yeah, I know, it's gross!). Sarojini Market is huge, and almost always full of people. Although most of the stalls are for clothes, you can find almost anything there. Anything, that is, except towels. I walked round and round the market, checking stalls with kitchen appliances and tupperwares and bed linen and other bedroom paraphernalia (no, not that kind! Indian society is very conservative, I'll have you know! Get your mind out the gutter!) but there were no towels in sight. Exhausted and hungry, I whatsapped my flatmate Anna:
Mel: Question: do towels not look like towels in India?
Mel: Or do Indians not use towels? How do they dry themselves?
Mel: WHERE ARE THE TOWELS?
Anna: :D :D :D :D :D
Anna: I think they do look like towels.
Mel: I can't find them anywhere!
Mel: Started to think maybe it was something like the bedsheets thing, where I just wasn't used to how they look.
Anna: Hahahahaha
Anna: Yeah, the bedsheets were alien for me as well
I have to explain a bit here. Most people reading this will be from South Africa, Europe or the Americas, and will be used to bedsheets that are either white, or some other solid colour, probably of some pastel shade. Bedsheets in India are multicoloured, intricately patterned and look something like this:
The day after I arrived and had to buy a sheet for my bed was the first time I went to Sarojini Market. Although Anna (who is German) warned me about the Sarojini experience, I felt less overwhelmed and confused by the market, the constantly invasive hawkers and their cries and the total disregard for personal space than what I was seeing displayed in front of me as bedsheets. It makes perfect sense in India, actually. Why have plain when you can have colour? Along with the rock-hard beds which are essentially two single bed frames pushed together to make a double, the sleeping experience is wholly different in India than it is in many other parts of the world, I think.
Anyway, back to the towels.
I did eventually spy a handtowel peeping at me from behind a myriad of bedsheets. I asked whether they had any full-sized ones, and they sent me upstairs. Up narrow windy stairs, in what was essentially a kiosk. The upstairs turned out to be more spacious (and stable) than I had imagined, and had many many towels of many recognisable shades (and many that were also just WTF? But this is India, after all). So my hunt was thankfully complete.
What's the moral of the story? I'm not sure. Mostly I just wanted to get a Day 2 post out before it's tomorrow in South Africa, as it's already tomorrow here. I guess the moral is that while India, and life in general, will present to you many things you find utterly unfamiliar and bewildering, it will also occasionally reward you with comforting sameness when you need it most, if you look hard enough. Like soft, thick, full-sized, 100% cotton towels, for R26.50 (£1.50). I love India.
On days when I don't run, I'm like a hyperactive child. I have this restless energy that usually gets burnt off when I run and I can't sit still. Eventually, I sat down to start work at around midday and then stared at the google front page. The little voices in my head said, "The sun was shining outside! You're in India! What are you doing indoors?" The little voices had a point, the buggers.
So I decided to go to Sarojini Market to buy towels, seeing as I'd been using the same one since leaving South Africa at the end of January (yeah, I know, it's gross!). Sarojini Market is huge, and almost always full of people. Although most of the stalls are for clothes, you can find almost anything there. Anything, that is, except towels. I walked round and round the market, checking stalls with kitchen appliances and tupperwares and bed linen and other bedroom paraphernalia (no, not that kind! Indian society is very conservative, I'll have you know! Get your mind out the gutter!) but there were no towels in sight. Exhausted and hungry, I whatsapped my flatmate Anna:
Mel: Question: do towels not look like towels in India?
Mel: Or do Indians not use towels? How do they dry themselves?
Mel: WHERE ARE THE TOWELS?
Anna: :D :D :D :D :D
Anna: I think they do look like towels.
Mel: I can't find them anywhere!
Mel: Started to think maybe it was something like the bedsheets thing, where I just wasn't used to how they look.
Anna: Hahahahaha
Anna: Yeah, the bedsheets were alien for me as well
I have to explain a bit here. Most people reading this will be from South Africa, Europe or the Americas, and will be used to bedsheets that are either white, or some other solid colour, probably of some pastel shade. Bedsheets in India are multicoloured, intricately patterned and look something like this:
The day after I arrived and had to buy a sheet for my bed was the first time I went to Sarojini Market. Although Anna (who is German) warned me about the Sarojini experience, I felt less overwhelmed and confused by the market, the constantly invasive hawkers and their cries and the total disregard for personal space than what I was seeing displayed in front of me as bedsheets. It makes perfect sense in India, actually. Why have plain when you can have colour? Along with the rock-hard beds which are essentially two single bed frames pushed together to make a double, the sleeping experience is wholly different in India than it is in many other parts of the world, I think.
Anyway, back to the towels.
I did eventually spy a handtowel peeping at me from behind a myriad of bedsheets. I asked whether they had any full-sized ones, and they sent me upstairs. Up narrow windy stairs, in what was essentially a kiosk. The upstairs turned out to be more spacious (and stable) than I had imagined, and had many many towels of many recognisable shades (and many that were also just WTF? But this is India, after all). So my hunt was thankfully complete.
What's the moral of the story? I'm not sure. Mostly I just wanted to get a Day 2 post out before it's tomorrow in South Africa, as it's already tomorrow here. I guess the moral is that while India, and life in general, will present to you many things you find utterly unfamiliar and bewildering, it will also occasionally reward you with comforting sameness when you need it most, if you look hard enough. Like soft, thick, full-sized, 100% cotton towels, for R26.50 (£1.50). I love India.
No comments:
Post a Comment