Many happy thoughts...

As Monica and I are discussing the day, suddenly the lady of whom we are renting the school enters our classroom. With her head covered with her shawl and hands full of sweets, she starts placing the tiny sweet, colored balls into our hands. Then she touches our feet and her heart with the same hand and leaves the classroom as fast as she came in.

Completely taken by surprise Monica and I start laughing and wondering what this is all about.

The touching of the feet was clear to us, it means that she honors us. This is commonly practiced by Indians; showing your respect to other people by touching their feet. Of course I didn’t want that to happen, because as westerner it makes me feel very uncomfortable when someone is humiliating herself by touching my, in their mind, unclean and unholy feet. But as I said, it was over before we realized what was happening.

When the children came in it became clear to us what the meaning of the sweets was. Sonali came in first and had the same tiny sweets in a little bowl. “Here teacher, eat sweets.” Of course I ate them again. Yea, a healthy start of the day I can say….. while she explained that we eat these particular sweets today “to have many happy thoughts about each other”.

Now, finally I understood what the lady meant when she was giving us the sweets and touching our feet: That we will have a good, sweet relationship while we are renting the school from them.

What a beautiful gesture and what an interesting life we live here!