Discovering the Extraordinary in an Ordinary Day

 
 

 

Housekeeping has become the focus of my life, for a while now. Its taken precedence over almost everything else. I did manage to make it to Couture Week and also do research and write a couple of articles. And I'm currently engrossed in discovering the story of Muslin, whenever I get time after the housekeeping chores. But work isn't happening in quite the same way as I've been used to. The mundane act of drinking tea, which inspired an enormous body of textile art, has now been overtaken by much more mundane tasks necessary for everyday living. The ordinary is demanding my attention.  I am finding creative ways to tackle this facet of being, but not without my fair share of griping and bitching, yelling and crying too. But it's got to be done, there's no-one else, so I've got to do it and relegate needle and thread to another life-time, it seems.

 

What I find the hardest to handle, is the staff. The thing I've discovered is that no-one listens. If you give instructions, the attention is clearly someplace else and things never get done as specified, which is soooo annoying!  It’s not really a workable solution, but I now insist they look at me while I speak and then make them repeat my instructions back to me. In doing so, whenever I remember to do it this way, I have found some reprieve. I'm reassured that I've been understood and black will be black and white, white.  I've been used to writing down what needed doing but at this point none of my staff are literate and it is getting very difficult. But, having said that, there are also some fun moments in the midst of all the frustration. 

 

This evening, I needed to get some packing tape. I was expecting someone to come see my work, which had recently returned from my exhibition in Kolkata. I would need the tape to repack the art-works, once I had shown them. I'm not a frequent visitor to the local market, so I wasn't sure where to go to get this. There is a Vyapar Kendra close by but it  is very strangely built and on the odd occasion that I have gone and discovered a shop that's useful, I've not been able to locate it on my next trip. And, I almost always get lost on my way out. Not wanting to go on a wild goose chase when my energy is not quite up to speed, I looked up Google for a shop I'd been to with a neighbour and knew that they stocked stationery items. There was a number to call, which I did. Thankfully, they had what I needed and kindly said they'd send someone to the outer gate once I got to Palam Vyapar Kendra. My neck and shoulder had been playing up and daily physio was helping but I was advised to cut down the swimming. I hadn't felt like swimming this evening, in any case, so I decided to cycle to PVK, as the market is commonly called. It's about a 12 - 15 minute walk, so it didn't take me any time at all cycling there.

 

When I called the shop, as planned, the call wasn't answered. I tried four times and eventually got a female voice who said it was the wrong number. Strange, I thought abhi toh meri baat issi number se toh hui thi. I walked into the only shop I know in this market and asked for directions for Memory Point, the stationery store. They very kindly sent someone to escort me there, which was gratifying.

 

I got my tape, clarified the phone conundrum, got their card for future reference and was heading out, when I spied a fruit and veg store. I didn't have my wallet with me, but there was some change left over from paying for the tape. It was enough to get 6 peaches, 1 kg Mussambi's for juice, a large beetroot to make a cold soup, some inspiringly aromatic pudina, ½  Kg pumpkin to make a delicious roast pumpkin salad with, some kundru for lunch tomorrow and drumsticks for sambhar. I just love drumsticks and the rest of the sambhar is incidental. I picked up an ample bunch, paid my bill and headed out with my bhajji shopping to my cycle which was parked outside Suraj Store where I generally buy the electronic stuff I need. I stuffed up the painted pink basket that my cycle has upfront, it was packed tight. The long drumsticks sticking out quite awkwardly.

As I hopped on the seat and began to pedal, I giggled to myself, imaging what I probably looked like to passersby. I mean it isn't exactly your everyday sight is it, to see a curly grey-haired  woman in culottes, cycling down the streets of Gurgaon, her pink cycle-basket stuffed to the brim with veggies, is it?

 

It was dark but even though the white culottes must have been clearly visible, sleepy Palam Vihar didn't seem to blink an eye. Or if they did, I didn't notice.

 

I've been feeling quite frustrated at having to give so much attention to things I hadn't done for over a decade. In order to function with some measure of equanimity, I've been telling myself : " I love housekeeping!" Repeating it over and over, allowing myself to feel a sense of pleasure doing the chores as I meditate each morning. Sometimes, like this evening, I surprise myself by doing things I haven't done for decades - and bhajji shopping is one such, where I've either ordered over the phone since the 1990's or someone's been around to do it. Today, I picked each peach myself, making sure they were just right to eat. I savoured the aroma of the mint leaves as I lifted a bunch off the shelf and realised that in telling oneself that you enjoy doing things you don't relish in the normal course of living, and you do end up doing just that! I had enjoyed the veggie shopping and loved cycling back home with my basket, full to the brim.

 

An ordinary became extraordinary, not just because I've not done bhajji shopping for a while and thus savoured it. But for being reminded just how one can work successfully towards mastering the mind in small but significant ways. It was this which made an otherwise uneventful, ordinary day, into a memorable one.

Whose Land is it Anyway...

Truckers @Bijwasan

At the outset, tea was the focus; my window to the world.  I was looking at people on the streets who made and sold tea; at truck drivers sipping tea at the chaiwallah[i] stalls or dhabas[ii] as I passed by the Hindustan Petroleum depot at Bijwasan en route to Delhi, and more. This street life interested me but gradually I saw that drinking and making tea was integral to everyone’s daily life. Whether it was going to an exhibition opening or interviewing an artist, dropping by to see a friend, reading a book or reflecting over the previous day’s events over a morning cuppa, everything seemed to be linked to tea, including the dramas with my domestic help. However, the flavour that one found in the street settings was in many ways a contrast to this. And these people with their different life-styles and culture added that extra dash of colour to the canvas of my ‘garam masala chai’.   

Govind

When I started consciously looking around me, my first encounter was with Govind from Bihar who had a moveable cart as a tea-stall, just outside Celebrity Suites in Palam Vihar. I had barely left home when Bhupinder, who was driving my car, pointed him out to me. I was surprised not to have noticed this stall in all the years I have taken this route to Delhi, so ventured enthusiastically to take photographs but Govind was hostile. I was not about to be derailed on my first stop so explained what I was doing. He was neither impressed nor interested and barely seemed to listen. It was not a great start for me but I persisted and it took a good half hour or so before he eased up. He made some tea; I’d just had some before leaving home, so Bhupinder had a cup. Govind kept his utensils clean and neatly arranged. He served biscuits and gutka[iii], supari[iv] and crisps along with tea. People came and went, but not many. He was rather self-conscious and did not respond affably to questions about his life. Physically, he made quite a picture: well built with a growing pot-belly, bulging out from beneath his pale blue T-shirt, under a khakhi-coloured jacket whose buttons were left open and, his odd, sort of pointy, knitted cap.

Bhupinder drinking tea at Govind's tea-stall

 He was not to be seen in that space for a long time, after that. The cart lay abandoned for months and then, one day, he was serving tea again. I went up to say hello and asked where he had been and was told that he’d gone home to tend the fasal[v]. Sometime later, I found someone else at the stall. His younger brother had come to take care of this business while Govind handled farming duties back home.

On my exploration, I was to discover that numerous tea stalls, in and around Delhi, were run by people who had migrated from other parts of the country. I was also intrigued by the idea that tea, which was not really a native drink, but ‘imported’ into the country by the British, had somehow become the mainstay of the man on the street, both as a beverage and a business.

Naina Devi's customer

Historically, this expansion of tea consumption, brought about through the development of ‘chai’, occurred only after 1947. The evolution of this kind of tea, made by boiling tea leaves in a mixture of milk, water and sugar, with optional spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger and black pepper, came about with changes in the technology of tea processing. The full-leaf black teas were replaced by CTC ("crushed, torn, and curled") leaf which not only enabled tea estates to double their production but consumers could brew stronger infusions from smaller quantities of the more potent, tightly-rolled leaf granules. This lowered the cost of producing tea, making it accessible to the common man on the street, such that sixty-five years later, it has acquired a strong ‘Indian’ identity. 

Coming from Gurgaon on the outer Ring Road, just near Vasant Vihar, an old woman sits near tyres and tubes catering to a steady custom from the neighbouring petrol pump. White haired and petite, she squats comfortably on the pavement, making tea and omelettes. I love these omelettes rustled up on the street, with plenty of green chillies and stuffed between two slices of white bread. She also serves mathris[vi] favoured by workers from the petrol pump. 

Ramvati at work

There was a tremendous amount of curiosity from helpers at the gas station and passersby as I took photos of this diminutive, forlorn looking woman busy at work. But she was too busy serving her customers to even notice or care who came and did what, as long as you drank and ate something from her stall. It was winter and she was clad in a pink saree with a russet, almost dirty brown coloured shawl, carelessly wrapped around her shoulders with cheap nylon socks covering feet that were awkwardly shod in black plastic chappals[vii]. Sitting against a discoloured, greyish wall, surrounded by bright white eggs, dull aluminium pots, black tyres and tubes, she made an interesting study.

Every time since whenever I passed by, I saw her dressed in the same printed, pink polyester saree I’d photographed her in, when I first stopped by for tea and an omelette. Then, I noticed she was missing from her spot by the petrol pump. I thought that the MCD[viii] must be doing some sort of clean-up and she had been asked to move. Some months went by, I kept looking out for her and then one day her pink saree caught my eye. 

Ramvati on my second visit

 I was curious as to why she had been missing for so many months so stopped by to talk to her. It turned out that her son had cirrhosis of the liver.  He’d been admitted into hospital, so she’d shut shop to take care of him. She complained that he drank too much and as a ‘baccho ka baap[ix]’ his behaviour was irresponsible. Ramvati and her husband Hangal had come to Delhi from Burari in Uttar Pradesh, as she recounted: “When India fought the 1965 war with Pakistan and Lal Bahadur Shastri was the Prime Minister of India.”  Ramvati was, by her estimate, over sixty years old, had been married at the age of fourteen. She and her husband lived in a jhuggi[x] near a private school in Vasant Vihar.

I came across another migrant tea-stall lady in Palam Vihar, right at the Delhi-Gurgaon border post. The ample bodied Naina Devi was dressed in a printed salwar kameez[xi], wearing a pale olive-ish green sweater embroidered with red and white flowers over this, and a peacock-ish blue dupatta covering her head. She sat crossed-legged on her cart, inside it, making tea. Her young daughter Poonam played nearby while Naina served a steady stream of customers. Residents of posh Palam Vihar, labour working on construction sites, local policemen, drivers from neighbouring houses to passersby who came on foot or riding motor-cycles, all patronized her stall.  Naina Devi hails from Ajmer, Rajasthan. Naina was the only one left here with her stall because at the time of the CWG[xii] clean-up, the authorities had moved everyone else away. She now had her cart positioned at the periphery of some private farm land and paid to park it there. 



Naina Devi with her daughter Poonam[top left],

 the security guard[top right and bottom left] 

serving some customers[bottom row centre] 

Her husband worked in Delhi for a ‘company’ while she sold tea. Naina was friendly and asked why I wanted to take photos of her and her cart. She posed obligingly and so did her customers. Her clientele was mostly labourers who took the tea in plastic bags because it dispensed with the tedium of buying, carrying and storing an aluminium kettle. To others, she served tea in plastic cups. Unlike most chaiwallahs she did not make tea in the ubiquitous aluminium kettle. She used a cup-like ladle to pour milk into a dekchi[xiii] where she ‘cooked’ the tea. This was also used to pour tea into cups. For those who took tea in the plastic bags, a small, ridged, thickened, greenish glass, often seen in a chai ki dukan[xiv], was used as a measure.

Serving tea in plastic bags

A pile of debris lay beside her cart. I assumed it was either left there or swept into a corner at the end of the day and wondered why a dustbin could not be used instead. Some labourers drank the tea sitting on their haunches on the pavement, crouching on a large stone or on the ground itself, comfortable almost anywhere it seemed. But when it came to disposing of the cup, they just chucked the plastic cup in the air, letting it land wherever it did, uncaring of cleanliness. 

Dhabas outside Bijwasan Oil depots

Most of these people seemed to come from rural areas and small towns. They come as labour to build other people’s homes or as businessmen, selling tea in between harvesting the crop in their village lands.  Did this create lack of a sense of belonging? Was it their reason for not keeping the place clean? I also noticed that the dhabas patronized by truckers in Bijwasan just threw their garbage onto the street.  The trucker drivers didn’t seem to notice or care. They kept their vehicles in tip-top condition but did not care the same way for the streets they roamed. Mongrel dogs sat at their feet and fed off the garbage whilst they sipped tea and chatted. This apathy reminded me of countless occasions when I’ve seen even relatively affluent households sweep garbage away from their doorstep onto the street, as if the responsibility for cleanliness and hygiene ended there. It has always irked me to see people deface the walls, throw refuse onto the streets from moving cars, spit and urinate on the road. They do not think the streets belong to them, which really baffles me because, if they do not belong to citizens of the country, then to whom do they belong? 

Post independence, advertisements promoting tea encouraged the idea of an energy-enhancing drink which was good for individual and national health. Some even suggested that tea had the ability to create “alert, energized citizens”, free of the "lassitude" that the British commonly attributed to their native subjects”, towards building the ‘New India’.  Sixty- five years on, a lot has changed: we have been advertised as ‘India Shining’, ‘Incredible India’ and more. Tea, once the elite Colonizers’ drink has become a national beverage but has it made us the “alert, energized citizens” of the envisioned New India? [xv] 

Glasses and mugs being brought around for sale to dhaba
owners at Bijwasan

Realistically speaking, neither tea nor any beverage for that matter, can possibly take on such an onerous task; however we can, but do we? The larger question that troubles me is why is it always someone else’s problem, fault or garbage?  When will we start taking responsibility for little things in our daily lives and feel a sense of belonging? Delhi is made up of a large migrant population. My own father’s family came here after partition and there are many of us who have thus become Delhi-ites or residents of Gurgaon. These migrant tea-wallahs made me question the idea of belonging: what does it take to claim ownership in little the things that make up a nation?

 

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[i] Tea sellers

[ii] Roadside eatery

[iii] Tobacco mix

[iv] Beetel nut

[v] Harvest/crop

[vi] Savoury biscuit

[vii] chappals

[viii] Municipal Corporation of Delhi

[ix] Father of children/parent

[x] Slum dwelling

[xi] Loose,pleated pants and tunic

[xii]Commonwealth Games

[xiii] Saucepan/cooking pot

[xiv] Tea shop

[xv] Quotes from Tasveer Ghar

Jehangir

April was quite pleasant this year so I decided to walk to my singing class; camera in hand, looking out for chai wala’s. I found one on the kerb opposite Ansal Plaza in Palam Vihar, and promptly focussed the lens, capturing details of the cart, kettle, glass and utensils. The biscuit canisters and sachets of gutka that hung like a curtain around the cart, didn’t give a clear view of the person’s face. When he emerged from behind this to serve a customer, I zoomed in, and it dawned upon me that ‘the person’ was a child, no more than ten or twelve years old.

Dark brown skin, coal-black hair locks brushing sweat droplets on forehead, a gently furrowed brow and narrowed eyes looked at me. There was none of that expectant, wide-open child-like curiosity nor was he willing to have his photograph taken, as children usually do. With small hands, barely able to clutch the black handle, he lifted a large aluminium kettle filled with tea, pouring the hot liquid into a ridged, short glass  held with the other hand. A pouting lower lip and the beads of sweat were the only signs that this was not such a simple task. Long eye-lashes and this face of innocence almost lost, stopped my tourist-like voyeuristic photographing. I felt disturbed.

Just then a big man came into the frame. I asked, “Is he your son” to which he replied “you could say that”. I could not restrain myself, and said “do you realize that he is under age and making him work for you is against the law?” This was greeted with silence, but I saw a glint in the boy’s eyes which emboldened me to continue, saying that if he is like a son, he should educate the boy. “He could go to evening school”, I suggested tentatively. The boy beamed, but the burly man was silent. I had probably opened Pandora’s Box; this made me feel guilty.

I was not very happy with myself and didn’t quite know what to do now, so walked on. About ten yards from this tea stall a Police Gypsy was parked under the shade of a tree; I stopped and addressed the officers Jaichand and Bhagwan Dass, asking why they permitted this man to employ a child. Very politely they said “Ma’am, it is not quite so simple; their parents send them to earn. It’s a question of survival. This boy is probably the oldest and there are more mouths to feed at home.” I was not unaware of such practices. A maid I had once employed told me, she had started working aged nine years, caring for a six year old child, while its parents went to work. So I knew there was truth in what they said; but persisted nonetheless, asking them to prevail upon the owner of the tea-stall, to at least do something to educate him.

For days I thought about the boy and the law which decreed that employing a child under fourteen was a crime. How was one to implement this in the face of the situation I had encountered? I spoke to some people who engage in social work and they all said it really was a very complex situation to which there were no easy answers. Gradually, I started looking at it from a different perspective. I thought about the fact that this child and all the people who work on the street do so because they have custom. They provide cheap tea for those who can’t pay more. They do it for a living, working in gruelling conditions that I could never withstand. I started appreciating his courage. I saw a spiritedness that I now admired, rather than feeling sorry for him. I felt that instead of wanting to change the world, what one possibly needed was to accept it for what it was; see people in difficult situations as an inspiration; appreciate facets of their existence rather than seek to change this to fit some ideal that I may deem appropriate.

For a couple of hours I was at peace and managed to get some work done, but grew restless again. I felt inadequate, powerless. What was the point of having a law if it couldn’t be implemented? What was the point of my privilege and education if all I could do was observe? Wasn’t this really just another way of saying look the other way, because I was reluctant to get involved? If I admired the courage and spirit in a child who laboured in hostile conditions, where was my courage and spirit, if the best I could do was to only change my perspective? So I went back to the tea stall outside Ansal Plaza and talked to the boy, asked if he would like to study.

The first time that I’d seen him he was dressed in a clean, gold, grey and white, horizontal striped T-shirt and looked different. Today, he wore a dirty white one, looked really scruffy and despite pouring over his photo for days, I found it hard to recognize him. He greeted my question with silence. Then went to the burly man and said something but didn’t come back to me, so I went up and reminded the man that I’d been here a couple of weeks ago, taking pictures. He assured me good-naturedly, that he remembered me well. I said that if the boy wanted to study, I would like to help.

The principal of a government school lived in the same condominium as I did and one of the women in my tower ran a small school for servant’s children, so I was hopeful of being able to help. The boy murmured something to the big man, who informed me that he has a father and has to ask him. So I said, “You do that and I shall come again”. I came home and made some phone calls and was told that by law no school could refuse to enrol him if he was less than fourteen years of age. I felt reassured that I hadn’t raised his hopes for nothing.

The next day, en route to Delhi, I stopped by to ask what they had decided. His father, a cycle-rickshaw-wala, had apparently refused my offer to help educate him. On asking the boy what he wanted to do, I got no response. I persisted, so he said they were returning to their village in Bengal. I asked when he’d be back; to be informed that they may not return. I promised to look out for him and take up the matter again, adding that he should think about it.

Till then I had not asked his name. He was Jehangir. When Bhupinder, the driver heard him tell me, he promptly said “Ma’am yeh mussalman hai, yeh nahin padenge![i]” I was stunned to hear this generalized and prejudiced view but realized that our social structure is very complex and people like Jehangir and Bhupinder have grown up with different values. Their ideas, however inappropriate I think them to be, are not going to be easy to change. In their view of the world, my ideals could well be misplaced.

Frankly, I had not been too surprised at Jehangir’s father’s response. It was not the first time I had offered to educate someone and been turned away. Even those who were willing didn’t persist beyond a couple of days. Something clearly intimidated them and none had been willing to share. But Mahipal, one of my servants, put it into some perspective when he said that he’d studied up to class VIII, but was still a servant, so what had education done to change this? It’s not an argument I accept, but do see that a great deal needs to change for education to be valued beyond being the means to an enhanced livelihood or life-style.

Although I felt better for trying, I am not certain that Jehangir will take up the challenge. It’s possible that the tea-stall owner, however amiable he may have seemed in the face of my probing, may have compelled Jehangir’s father to refuse the offer. A number of factors could be at play that I would never know of. I asked myself how far I was prepared to go with this. Could I really invest the energy it would require to push this through? Would it be appropriate if he and his family were not willing?

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[i] Ma’am  he’s Muslim, they won’t study [not interested in education]

And Looking, I Found Myself Change

It all started when I bought a new phone in March 2009. It had a user friendly 3.2 mega-pixel camera that wasn’t half bad. The images I took were not terribly good but I was inspired to click anything and everything that caught my attention. In doing this, I started focussing on little things in my everyday life from left over food in the dishes to dregs of coffee or tea in a cup. Although I must have photographed everything from cut flowers to shadow lines and more, it was the dregs in the tea cup that fascinated me.

I enjoy my cup of tea and have a cupboard full of various teas from Jasmine to Darjeeling, Nilgiri, Assam, Herbal teas, Japanese Sencha and Genmaicha and I also enjoy a cup of good old desi masala chai. All of them have a different texture or leaf. The jasmine leaves uncurl their sly tendrils under the influence of hot water, looking suspiciously serpent like. Remnants of various condiments of a rich masala chai, stain the cup with lines so evocative that I have spent the better part of two years, recording them. Photographing marks left in the cup, half drunk or emptied of all the liquid content. In the process I have also studied dimensions of the cups and mugs that I have drunk from.

I pondered on these images for a long time, wondering how to translate them into something I could share and decided to have them digitally printed onto fabric. I then worked with layered images, using the ‘stains’ to reflect a state of mind. These marks became evocative of guilt, shame and blame, the kind of thoughts we carry around us that come up under self-reflection or introspection; of thoughts mulling over a cup of tea. 

There have been many instances in my life, where I think of what it would have been like had I done things differently. What would life have been like, for instance, if I had not returned to India, from London in the nineteen-eighties? Or if I had started out as an artist rather than pursuing a career in design to evolve as an artist, or if I had not entered into various relationships? The list was endless and the marks in the tea-cups thereon, allowed me to go back in memory, delve deep into my psyche revealing familial histories and national influences; making me realise I could not have done any different. Life played herself out such that this is what it was meant to be. I have never really accepted the concept of destiny but started realizing that the only choice one ever has is the attitude with which we accept what occurs in life.

This exploration was not necessarily comforting and dealing with various feelings and thoughts, I would tear the fabric, pull it into different directions, distorting the weave, creating bunches and bulges which the Kantha or running stitch that I have chosen to work with, often exaggerated or quelled, depending upon the mood I wanted to portray. I discovered the Kantha through an article I read three decades ago, on the Sujni’s of Bihar, where women would use old worn-out sarees, stitching them together to make quilts. I liked the idea of taking the old and making something useful from what has been, fashioning it into something new. It allowed me the grace to pick up old memories, wounds and issues, deal with them through the process of tearing, layering and stitching to lend another perspective to things, renewing the spirit, taking control of the past towards deeper realizations which empowered through the process of looking. These meditations on tea, tea leaves, tea cups and the process of drinking became a fascination; you could even call it a kind of obsession for despite taking at least a thousand photographs I keep clicking the ubiquitous tea cup. I just cannot resist. Each day there seems to be yet another nuance that I absolutely must have in my collection.

I have since acquired a more respectable camera which prompted me to go farther a field and look at how people around me engage with drinking tea. I didn’t want to make this into an elaborate project extraneous to my life and surroundings so I just stopped at various points on my route from Gurgaon to Delhi and looked at things around me more keenly. A lot of what I did record is what we know well and stopping, observing and recording these images, opened up a whole new dimension that I would otherwise miss as I blinked in the car or walked past, too preoccupied to notice.

I found that these photographs, which later also included my friends and business meetings or tea at social outings as well as the truckers at the Hindustan petroleum depot in Bijwasan, the chai wala outside my building complex and the servants in my home, started creating a social panorama of sorts where the common denominator was how we made and drank tea: its cups or lack of them, its vessels and utensils and the spaces we made or drank tea in, that started defining the larger cultural and economic environment which I existed in. The contrast between chintz curtains and silver ware at the British High commissioner’s residence and the widow who sat on a ram shackled cart serving tea in plastic bags to labour working on construction sites in Palam Vihar, was telling. A story was emerging with evident socio-economic disparities, the implications of which I could not ignore. 

I did engage with everyone that I photographed. Some were shy, some got angry, some did not even notice. So pressed were they in catering to their custom they couldn’t care who came and did what, as long as they sold their tea. I became engrossed in the people and now notice them even as I sit in the car unable to ignore them like before. I began noticing little things: the way they sat, the way they dressed, the way they treated me, talked to me. How they opened up, so giving under a friendly gaze. Some were curious and also amused at my interest. For the most part they all wanted to tell their stories, where they came from, where they were taking the tea and more. Gradually, I became less and less inhibited in talking to them and a dialogue ensued that compelled me explore the national psyche which I believe mirrors my own.  I went back to Partition for it is an important turning point in making us the way we are today, in many unspoken ways. Needless to say, history is deeper than that, but somehow the events around Partition; its many unuttered stories and memories have created an internal neglect which many of us, if not all, have inherited. This to my mind has tremendous bearing on the external neglect that I was seeing and have recorded around me, in my daily excursions and rituals of living. And thus looking, I found myself change.