Consultations

The work goes on. Shriji is taking a serious interest in the script. He is an astute businessman but he is also a very quick-thinking knowledgable man. I really enjoy our sessions. We meet for two hours every morning and go over each paragraph. It's hard work, but I'm served freshly squeezed orange juice and there's always a joke or two. When he sends up Australianisms, I call him 'mate'. We laugh. The other two men who sit in on the meetings, are mostly silent, with an air of something that can be described as awe, touched with a feint lashing of fear. He is very fair. He accepts my wishes if he sees reason behind them. He tells me "This is not correct" and then tells me why, and together we make changes.

But let me describe the set up. He sits at this enormous desk with his laptop in front of him on a slightly raised plinth. And it's plugged into a docking station with a lot of cords. I sit beside him with my laptop. In front of us - against the wall - is a roll-down white screen. Whatever he happens to be looking at on his on his computer is projected on the screen.

On a more down-home note, it's just so good to have Shannon and Paul here. It's particularly delicious because Shannon loved India from when her plane touched down in Mumbai, and in a naive moment commented to Paul that there are so many Indians here. She seems naturally attuned to taking in the visual feast without being too concerned about the chaos or the dirt. She wishes we were staying in a less salubrious hotel because then she'd get a real feel for the place. Yesterday afternoon she walked around by herself and when she felt tired she took herself back to the Garden Hotel by tuk-tuk (or auto-rickshaw). But when Paul and I got back from work, she wasn't feeling too good. I thought she was maybe a bit jetlagged. But this was not the case. Her glands were swollen and she had a sore throat.

I thought we might just go to a chemist. They're all over the show. People pay their rupees for one aspirin or whatever. No prescription needed. The closest chemist turned out to be in the Udaipur Hospital, so we marched in saw a doctor. The sheet on the examination bed could have been cleaner, but there were no waiting room queues around heand we were ushered straight in. He diagnosed tonsilitis and wrote out a script for some tablets. Told her not to eat solids for 3 days and for the grand sum of $10 we left with our script. But then $10 is an awful lot for a local. And today she's having her first art lesson with Lala. She's prepared her silk, chosen her image, and when she returns we'll have some big fat mangoes I bought from the fruit seller beside the temple. When Shannon gets back from her art lesson, we'll go eat mangoes and ice-cream.