This has been in my drafts for a really long time. I was just waiting for my aunt to send me the pictures to post along with this.
I never liked stereotyping but as I am experiencing some things off late, I now understand the reasoning behind it. Though some border around ridiculous. There was this one time when I was talking to some one in the US ( back in those days 🙂 ). I distinctly remember this conversation because it made me wonder. Is this how people still think of India? This lady I was talking to had this weird impression that elephants roamed around on the streets of India. The typical elephants, snake charmers image. It also made me wonder how ignorant she was. Of course, I was polite enough to just tell her that things were not so …blah blah… Yet in the back of my mind I kept thinking that this was weird!
Anyways, on that note, I wanted to say that after close to 2 years and immense effort, I finally showed an elephant to A! 🙂 On my trip to Tirunelveli late last year, we went to the Nellaiappar temple. There I was told not to take any pictures. Then how do I now have pics to post? Well, money talks. One could sit on the elephant and go on a ride in the corridor for a price. The mahout said, give me a little more money and you can take pictures too. So, there you go! 😀 A glimpse of the elephant in the temple.
By the way, the one other time A might have seen an elephant would have been at the Bronx zoo. Though I have a feeling he took a nap just around the time we were near the elephants.
So much for being in India the land of elephants supposedly roaming on the streets!!! On a parting note, I am yet to see a snake charmer in all these years I have lived here!!! Hmm….next post? May be I should make a field trip to go in search for one now that A’s school is on summer break till mid June! 😉
PS: I am sorry that I have not been very active on the blogosphere due to various circumstances. I know that that is just an excuse…pardon me. Hope to get back to commenting and replying to comments – get a semblance of normalcy in my life too that way! 🙂
Random Ruminations 