Funny Things I Have Seen in India

I think the "Five Things..." theme has about run its course for now. Look for "Five Things I Will Miss About India" in a couple of months.

Traveling Salesman

Four weeks ago I visited the remote village of Kurimundi with a few Vidya Vanam donors. By remote, I mean miles and miles from everything - roads, stores, utilities. Kurimundi is about 100 yards long and is made up of six houses, two barns and about 100 or so people. We were given a tour of the village by the head elder, a cute little man about my size, all smiles to be displaying his lifelong domain. This village has an eternally broken water pump and electricity poles without wires, but to my amazement they have solar panels to power their street lamps. Now wait just a hot second, I said, do you mean to tell me that for a grand total of eight buildings they need street lights? Of course...to light their way home from dinner and a late movie. All joking aside, how much sense does it make that the local government cannot get potable water flowing to this village yet there is money for solar panels? We also had full cell phone service - good, so we can check the movie times. It totally blew my mind.

So there we are on the tour, all 20 steps of it, when out of the blue comes a man with a little suitcase in tow. Everyone seemed to know him and he went in and out of all the houses. Curious, we asked who he was - as expected, he was a traveling salesman. HE must be who the street lights are for. Selling clocks, watches and toothpicks - I am sure his village customers were only in the market for one of these items. I took a picture of this funny fellow, who absolutely took this golden opportunity to make his sales pitch to us.

Our shock to find a self-proclaimed traveling salesman in a zone of no transportation, selling clocks in a place where the concepts of time and consumerism have never existed, is still cracking me up weeks later.