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clay lamp

The year was 1990 - I had been married for a few months. I had taken a break from college. When I got married my aunt said that I should take a few months off and spend it doing nothing. She said it would be the best time of my life. I didn't really believe her. But I did it anyways. My college used to have quarters - and I took off two quarters and spent it traveling around India. 

My husband had just finished his Masters in Civil Engineering - Offshore Engineering to be exact. So he was looking for a job. And I was about a year away from completing my Bachelors in Electronics Engineering. There were about a 1000 people at my wedding. I knew maybe about a 100 of them. We got a lot of cash. Enough to fund our travels and food and shelter for next several months. So that's what we did.

I distinctly remember this evening in New Delhi. We had gone to Sector 8 market to pick up some groceries. As we were walking back, it was dark, maybe around 8pm. I saw this old women sitting by the road side. She had a few clay pots and things around her that she was selling. She was very old. She was talking to herself. I wondered why she has to work at this age. Doesn't she have kids and grandkids who could take care of her. 

I went near her, just to see her from close up. I started looking at various things she was selling. She didn't engage in any conversation or tried selling me anything like other shop keepers did. She seemed to be very busy with some kind of internal dialog she had going in her head. 

I picked up a small clay lamp and had to ask her a few times. She named some small price that converted to something like 10 cents. My heart went out to her. I wanted to tell her that she should charge 10 or 20 times as much. My husband was getting impatient.  I really wanted to stay and get to know her better. I wanted to buy everything off her hands so she could go home and relax. My husband told me to not interfere. He was right. I don't know what her life was. Maybe this shop of clay things was her happy place. I just paid for my clay lamp and walked home.







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