The Town - Rajakkadu

Ambily, Leigh, Anna and Komalam (our neighbors)

The village of Rajakkadu, from our roof

The church of unknown origin (we think Syrian Catholic)

The store that outfitted our kitchen

I would describe the town of Rajakkadu as scrappy. You can buy nearly anything you would want to (within the Indian realm), but you have to find it first. It is most likely ferreted away somewhere in the back of a shop or patched together from something else. Things are rough around the edges, but essentially functional. It is a quintessential example of rural poverty in a semi-developed region. There is commerce and business, but nothing has been repaired in ages, or cleaned for that matter. Everything is old and used and not quite up to date.
Indeed, as expected, Leigh and I are quite the spectacle-according to the locals. I have become used to being stared at, pointed at, laughed at, and greeted over and over. I don’t mind it too much, although Leigh is having a harder time with it. The children are my favorite, they all start learning English in school beginning at age 4 and so they actually speak a respectable amount of English. They love to greet us and then when we reply, “good morning,” they burst into uncontrollable fits of giggles. It’s hilarious. My favorite has been a 12 year old girl at the general store who witnessed the gyrations we went through to purchase rice and cooking oil and a few other basics. I thought she was going to pee her pants before we were done.
Our neighbors, across the hall, rang our doorbell the very first evening, about ½ hour after we arrived. There is a woman and her to nieces that live there. Komala (the aunt) seems to be in her 50s and the two girls are about my age. Extremely friendly people, almost too friendly since Leigh and I have needed some time to ourselves to get settled. Komala has taken it into her head that we need taking care of and so she busies herself with a variety of things. She knocks on our door to tell us when the electricity has come back on, she knocks on our door to tell us that the weather is nice and we should do laundry since it will dry, she knocks on our door to tell us that the weather is no longer nice and we need to retrieve our laundry, she knocks on our door to give us food items (green ladies fingers, passion fruit) etc. She is really very sweet, even if she can be very forward and bossy. We’re enjoying their company, in fact last night we spent the evening at their place playing a 13 card, two deck version of Gin Rummy.