Went to Tribeni ghat (by the river Ganges). Next to it is a “shmasan ghat” – this is a place where you cremate (burn) dead bodies of the Hindu persuasion. Talked to a family who had brought a dead family member there. Out of respect for them I am not posting any pictures here.
But watching a dead body surrounded by family members always sets a perspective of life for me.
Also it took me back to that day in 1981 when I lost my grandmom to cancer and my dad encouraged me to accompany him to the “shmasan ghat”. My first trip to a cremation ground…

Let me do the translation for you – in my mother tongue, it says “Do not throw any trash here”! Now look what is in front of it 🙂 🙂

In case you thought they were being serious with their exterior wall colors…. 🙂

Hot (86 degrees) and humid (99%) 5K run with my brother. I was dripping in a fashion that befitted the current Indian monsoon season !!

Okay, so we got ourselves a bottle of Chianti after much jostling. We come home to my sister’s place and realize the obvious. Nobody drinks wine here. So, nobody has the need for a wine opener. My sister, of course, proudly fished out the most rusted-out beer bottle opener I have ever seen from a long forgotten corner of her kitchen. Again, to my sister, there is very little difference between beer and wine. They are just bad things.
Risking the ire of every oenophile of this world, I had to resort to a screwdriver, a tea strainer and some basic physics of pressure management. Again, where there is a will, there has to be a way – regardless of how inelegant it is 🙂

The easy part for my brother, brother-in-law and myself was to decide to have a glass of wine (or two) without going to our usual smoke-filled restaurant.
Problem #1 was How to secure a bottle of wine. My BIL who lives here was of no help whatsoever. So, we went around asking people. Some kept beer and scotch (by far the most popular drinks in India) but nobody had wine. Finally we managed to find out a guy who was reputed to have the most varied stock of alcohol.
Once we reached there, his shop looked far less like a shop and far more than one of those prison grills that you get to talk to a prisoner through. There was exactly one small opening in the grill and a whole lot of Indians surrounding it without any sense of queue discipline. “Crowd sourcing” took a very different meaning in this context 🙂
Eventually my brother got sick and tired of my manners, ruthlessly elbowed a few folks around and literally burrowed his way to the front. The three of us heaved a collective sigh of relief when the rather rotund and profusely sweating shopkeeper behind the grill affirmed that he indeed had red wine.
Then he went inside for a few minutes to retrieve something which has not evidently sold for years. By the way, while he was gone, none of the folks in the back of the crowd had any idea that he was gone. Nonetheless, they kept yelling their orders 🙂 I have no idea to what good.
Eventually, he brought out something that looked somewhat like a wine bottle duly covered with a layer of dust that would do any pollen-ridden car on a Atlanta spring day very proud. However, problem #1 was solved. And it was a 2011 Ruffino Chianti. Who was I to complain? 🙂

“Kalbaisakhi”!! Quick sharp thunderstorms in Kalyani in the late afternoon. Just like in Atlanta! Except I don’t have to worry about any flight delays today!!!