Today we were walked down the street to the Canadian Embassy mela, a fair for craftspeople to display their wares. I thought it was generous of Craig to come along on what was obviously a shopping trip, but he was curious about the embassy, wanted to check out their tennis courts and such. The weather is starting to cool, and is even breezy sometimes, so a brisk walk can leave you feeling refreshed instead of melted. We happened to run into one of the embassy employees, a Newfoundlander who, as it turns out, has been restoring old English built Enfields. Needles to say, Craig's interest was piqued. He has been eyeing the bike since our arrival, scouring the internet, and asking anyone he can about them. They are uniquely well suited to India: not that they are so reliable, but every village has a mechanic who can fix whatever goes wrong for under two dollars, not-a-word-of-exaggeration. They hardly go above 100km/hr, which given the road conditions is about par. Bernie recognized the signs of a guy missing his tools and old machines, and promised to put him in contact with the right people, eh? There may be a bike on the horizon. 
My Saturday morning history class is becoming a nice routine of visiting nearly empty monuments with ''the ladies". We are a diverse lot, but enjoy each other immensely. One thing we have in common: the increasingly sophisticated architecture erected by 'great men' in their own honor we regard with appropriate appreciation, but where we discover the unnamed tombs of the wives, we pause in thoughtful reveries about what it must've been like, married to these guys. We picnic now, more than taking notes.
Sagar, our landlord, continues to be our 'uncle', overseeing the affairs of our household, perhaps a little too carefully, but always with kindest intentions. He recently invited us to visit the Indira Gandhi Memorial Museum, which was actually her home where she was shot in the back by her two Sikh bodyguards in 1984. We are pictured in front of the garden pathway where the assassination occured. This incident set off a riotous revenge in the city, leaving more than 2500 Sikhs dead in the streets. (These intermittent outbursts of intolerance punctuate long periods of peaceful coexistence among the several religious groups throughout the centuries. But few days go by without some mention in the newspaper of how one group is being done wrong by the other in some corner of the country.) It's holiday time here, so the Sunday we chose to visit happened to be the day that south India emptied into tour buses to visit the capital, and the patriotic crowds swelled around us, carrying us through the museum like we were all segments of the same millipede, warm and squishy, taking tiny but rapid steps in and around and through. It was actually our first experience of 'crowded India' , as we've been quite judicious about entering such a fray. It wasn't so unpleasant - people have such a ready sense of humor here. I stepped on the toe of one withered gentleman who gestured I should step on the other to achieve balance.
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