Kutch; Bhuj and Devpur….

and purple food from the first half of my sabbatical

Kutch is a fascinating place where you see women everywhere contributing to beautiful textiles. The women squat down for a few hours at a time to sew or tie knots for bandini – they can do up to 8,000 a day if they are experienced. The men are usually involved more in the weaving and dying process.

I so much enjoyed my chilled time staying in Bhuj House (http://www.thebhujhouse.com/) and Devpur home and farm stay (http://www.devpurhomestay.in/). I was able to do my morning yoga outside in the early morning sun, eat well and not really do much in the way of sightseeing. Both places lent themselves to being mindful and going slow. Believe you me – this is very difficult for me! However I was able to not rush around as per usual. In Devpur I ran a number of prime runs. Toby and I walked the first loop in the mango orchard. I then ran increasing prime number loops (2, 3, 5) but by the time I hit 7 I was exhausted. I tried to keep my interest on the runs up by making up sentences of words beginning with or containing the letter P. This was because I was primarily interested in Primes, Spirals and Purple. My favourite one was “Pause; please purchase pancake with paws for the petulant postman who is probably nippy.” I then went on to words beginning with a P which had three Ps in them. This feels like a scrabble brain contest. I came up with

Panpipes Paperclip Poppadum Peppercorn Peppermint Peppy Philippines Pineapple Plopping Polypeptide Poppers Poppy Poppycock Puppy.

I then decided it would be nice to come back down to one on my runs! Yes I know this is cheating really but I am not prepping for a marathon so really it is acceptable – not good but ok!

Dolly Purple

I was on the back of a scooter to get to an ATM to settle my bill in cash. I saw these wonderful helium filled balloons and bought one for 50 rupees (55p).

I have called her Dolly Purple and taken photos and videos of her.

I like her face with her big eyes. She reminds me of the personalised emojis I have made – although I have green eyes.

She is pretty and calming and I gave her to a child later that day.

Dolly was always the term of endearment I had for Adrian and vice versa. It was slightly making the mickey out of Jean (my mother-in-law) who calls everyone doll or dolly. And today I received my decree absolute so it seems fitting to have a Dolly Purple in my room overnight with me.

It is funny because I could think of piercing her but this never entered my mind.

In the UK I feel angry quite a bit of the time (more high energy anger rather than real rage) often connected with the futility of some of the stupidity of the staff and nonsense rules I see at work (both NHS and university) with people ticking boxes for no reason other than they have been told to do this. The computer always seems to say no.

I expected I would worry I would really miss my job and the people I work with. The people yes but the job for sure no.

I realise I cannot just go travelling and making things for the rest of my life but it has brought clear to me what makes me tick and be happy and it was medicine but not anymore.

Looking at Dolly Purple she has already started to deflate. This is a more natural way to go!

In fact I needed to be corrected. This is not really Dolly Purple but Krishna Bhagwan (Lord Krishna) so I had got it completely wrong but all those photographed forgave me my ingorance!

Brass Work

I took one of the six sheets (A6 size) to make into my 13 spirals for my prime number mobile (see previous blog on primes). This left five. I bought these small brass sheets to do some embossing but it was too thick. I also bought metal foil trays (see subsequent blogs) to do the same but this was too thin. Feels a bit like the beds and porridge in the story about the Three Bears!

I loved the purple and blue patina on the front. I had bought the sheets in a metal wholesaler and tried to replicate this purple colour design with the various chemicals I had with me. Sadly shampoo, conditioner and bug repellent don’t tarnish or stain brass!

In Devpur I cut them up in slightly different ways. I remembered that if you cut round and round you can end up with one long piece. One was round like a spiral and the rest were straight – either up and down or around the rectangular edge.

Two of them I spiralled up and felt for the first time I had actually created what I think I meant in three dimensions by “How Time goes Faster as you Get Older”. It was a spiral made from a flat piece that was long, convoluted and repeatedly changed direction. It wasn’t smooth and quite dangerous to stroke as it had sharp edges and often some nicks. I would quite like to turn this into a logo. But I will need to incorporate the light and study the pictures I have taken of them in the harsh midday sun with deep shadows.

At night in Devpur we had a firepit with firewood. I used some of this wood to display my brass pieces and lit some spare tealights I had bought.

The Bhuj House Spinning Wheel

I used one part of an antique spinning wheel to photograph my yarns. It was a way of displaying them and partly an attempt for me to be ready to use them. That is. If photographed they now needed to be knitted! The spinning wheel is a very important symbol in India made particularly famous by Mahatma Gandhi who carried around a spinning wheel to promote Khadi cotton that he spun before it was woven. It is in the middle of the Indian national flag to denote its importance.

I photographed my 19 spools on the floor of Bhuj House.

Unfortunately, I now notice my slipper is in quite a few of them. At least it is a sort of purple (burgundy!).

I then used it again with the items for my prime mobile (see my last blog) with 11 beaded tassels, 7 feathery tassels, 5 dolphins, 3 teddies, 2 fish and 1 angel.

This time I placed it on one of the roofs of Bhuj House. I rather like the way the wood which is clearly old and weathered sets off the newness and artificial-ness of the pieces for my prime mobile.

Purple Food

This section on food covers up to my half way point!

I had two meals at Heavenly Blessing in Pushkar with purple food.

Actually, only one was in fact purple. That was called Blue Fantasy. It was a pasta dish with blue cheese and purple cabbage. The other was fenugreek bread with goats’ cheese, grilled aubergine and caramelised apple. I just used my purple pens as decorative cutlery.

In Ranakpur (Rajpura near Sadri – the Camel Charisma charity) I had salad with beetroot, pomegranate juice, beetroot halva and made them borscht.

In Ahmadabad I bought some purple pan. And went to a cafe aptly named 7 Violettes!

There isn’t really that much in the way of purple food and drinks. I think I have had most of them so far in India.

I am now off to Goa to start the second half of my sabbatical and meet up with my other children – first Betsy and then Harry. I have started a knitting project using three stitch moving spirals to make ankle warmers – they used to very fashionable – well only as fashionable as knitted ankle warmers can be!