From India to L.A.

Today we had class as usual. The lecture was about the Indian court system. This class was conducted by an Indian lawyer. It was so refreshing to have him be completely honest with our class about the way India actually is. He had no problem telling us about the corruption in the system, or the fact that it may take anywhere from 20-25 years to go through the four levels of courts. It was very interesting to learn that many of their laws incorporate their religious beliefs. Marriage for instance can be conducted through the court system (for couples from different religions or non religious people), or they can be conducted through the religion. Each of these different marriages have different laws associated with them.

After class we went back to the hotel and ate lunch. Indian food is getting to be a little repetitive by this point. After lunch a few of us headed out to explore. And we had quite the adventure. We ended up finding a beautiful open air market. It was an incredible place. There was vender after vender trying to sell their prized processions. It was so hard to see all of the underprivileged families and children. I once again wanted to hand over everything I had to them. I can’t imagine living like this; it’s such a shock to see the level of poverty in this part of the city. This trip is definitely helping me to realize how fortunate I really am.

We ended up meeting a group of boys who were playing cricket. Gene and Harvey jumped right in a joined them. There, we also met a man who told us he was going to show us to a craft market. Little did we know that he was bringing us back to his family’s home where they were hand making incense sticks and selling oils. Harvey got his arm rubbed up and down by a former body builder, while Gene bought some sandalwood oil to supposedly help him lose weight (we’ll see). Karl, Merry and I got to taste some really great chi tea, we didn’t know until after that it was fresh goat’s milk. Hopefully we won’t get sick.

We were soon to find out that this little hole in the wall incense and oil shop sold their incense to a company in L.A. Talk about small world. They gave us a sample of the boxes that they use to package them and send them to the states. We visited the website and were amazed to see that the price of the same product sold in the states was ridiculously higher. I realized what a flattener this was. Here we thought that we were being brought to this man’s home in the middle of nowhere (I don’t’ think I could find it again if I tried), when in reality he was doing business with people from our side of the world.

Later that afternoon, Maleah, Merry and I broke down and ordered pizza from Pizza Corner. The familiar American food was just what we needed. I felt like I had received a new stomach after that meal.