After Delhi

We did succumb to the temptation of a silk Kashmiri carpet. The government brings families from Kashmir to Delhi for two years to sell their family's work. Then it's back home and another family arrives.

We drove to Jaipur on a new and wide expressway. Although we read newspaper articles on corruption and have certainly heard stories, there seems to be a lot of money going into infrastructure. The main roads are in great shape and there is construction going on everywhere. We were interested to see water pumps (often more than one) in every town and village. One does not see the small shambas (house surrounded by cultivation) as in Kenya. Although the fields look large, they are apparently divided between families who all grow the same crop. The two main ones we saw were the yellow flowers of mustard (used for oil) and green grams. The highly decorated trucks and buses and the camel carts added another new element to the trip.
Children were still in school until Dec. 24. There is no concession made in the school system, in business or government for religious holidays of any kind. Muslims work on Friday with no time off for prayers. The standard day off is Sunday, which we found interesting. In government schools, the teaching language in this part of India is Hindi. English is started around grade 6. Education for girls is free although we were not sure what fees applied to boys. We saw many girls in their uniforms of narrow white trousers, sky blue tunics and white scarf.
The private schools (called ‘public’ from the British system) advertise themselves as "English media" which means their teaching language is English. Large families are strongly discouraged. In fact we saw one school article where the institution refused to accept pupils from families of more than three children.