Alex and Sherrie Arrive

Alex arrived at about 1am local time, pulling up at the guesthouse in a taxi and looking like as much of a zombie as I had felt when I arrived 2 days earlier!

I welcomed him in and showed him the drinking water and his room, we talked a little but then sleep was beckoning each of us and so we agreed to catch up further in the morning. Alex is also a student at UQ, he is studying a dual bachelor of human services and psychology. We had only met once before, at a skype meeting with our host Augustine, but we will be on placement together at the same NGO in Penukonda, Andhra Pradesh.

In the morning we made breakfast and tea together, and went for a short walk around the neighbourhood so I could show him the local café, banks, fruit shops and so on before we went back to the guesthouse to see Augustine.

Ironing service on Davis Road

Back in the guesthouse Augustine and Alex introduced themselves and talked, and we all waited for Sherrie to arrive. Sherrie is a student on the bachelor of social work course at UQ. She was due to arrive the previous evening but unfortunately her flight out of Brisbane was delayed, causing her to miss her connecting flight to Bengaluru. Luckily she was well looked after, and she arrived in good time for the 4 of us to head to the café on the corner and get lunch together. This time we had thali, which is a selection of small pots of curries with rice, so Augustine showed us a good way to eat rice with our hands by using our thumbs to push the rice off our fingers into our mouths – much less messy than my initial attempts had been!! I will try to get photos of this another time, but it is difficult to get photos easily when your hands are covered in food… !

By mid-afternoon Sherrie was pretty tired from her extended journey to India, so she stayed behind to catch up on some rest while I took Alex to introduce him to the Commercial Street area. We wondered all around the little streets, taking in the colours, sounds, and smells (not all bad smells – the carts cooking sweetcorn on charcoal braziers smell amazing!!)

This is from a different area than Commercial Street, but the corn cooking is the same!

As we were coming towards the end of our explorations, I was about to follow Alex into a shop he wanted to look at when I spotted some fridge magnets in the next doorway. I collect fridge magnets so I said I would join him in a minute, and I went to choose a couple of kitsch souvenir magnets. Inside the shop, one man served me while another 2 men were sat at the counter talking and drinking tea. They invited to join them to sit and have tea, at first I said no, but then we got into a conversation and they seemed really nice, so when they invited me again to sit and have tea I accepted. We got talking, initially about where I was from and what I would be doing in India, but when they asked my job and I described my previous disability support work one man was very interested and began asking advice that he could pass onto his brother back in Kashmir to help him look after his son who has an intellectual disability. The conversation flowed, and before I knew it Alex had come into the shop to find me – feeling very confused about what could be so fascinating about fridge magnets! The tea had long been finished when Alex arrived, but he was welcomed wholeheartedly into the conversation, and as a disability support worker himself he was also able to offer some advice to Shakeel, the man asking on behalf of his brother and nephew.

The shopkeeper Baba, his assistant Modasir, and their friend Shakeel talked with us about topics ranging through the way Indian society is changing with new generations, the economy and politics in India and comparing it to Australia and the UK, some discussion of religion – these men are all Muslim – and also talk of what their homeland of Kashmir is like, how beautiful it is, and many suggestions that in the future we make sure to visit the region.

Baba's shop

The time flew by, and somehow Alex and I had been there talking for 3 hours!! We left with invitations to return and have Kashmiri kahwah (saffron tea), offers of help for obtaining some of the things that we needed to buy, and assertions of good friendship. Both Baba and Shakeel extolled the virtues of making time to talk and to share with people, and how talking and connecting gives everyone positive energy to improve their wellbeing, and Alex and I certainly felt full of positivity as we rode back in the tuk tuk.