Ordinary People Like Us!!

Last published on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2014, ORIGINALLY pubished in 2013--actually from 2012...here it is...This one of my favorite posts. 

Handmade mats, and the salesman.  Mr. Kind Smile.  Bangkok, Thailand, 2011

Originally, published on January 13, 2013----!!

What you see on the table are handmade mats.  They are made from scraps of fabric.  Nothing is wasted in developing countries. At least not yet. And in their dearth of material goods, they have also become quite creative in using the left overs.  There are numerous recipes for the left over food. One of my favorite from India is to use the left over vegetable curry and knead it into the morning dough.  So the chappatis are flavorful.  Or another one, take the dry vegetables cooked the night before, and stuff them into breakfast paranthas (shallow fried bread).  Ofcourse, we can make sandwiches from the left over potato (dried) curry.  

But I seriously do not think that it is ‘(just) the lack of having the material that makes us in Asia creative with everyday life.  I think it is civilization.  Because people have lived long (in these places) before modern technology and throw away culture arrived.  

The basic organizing principle of the lives (in developing countries) remained the same for centuries.  Let us create something.  So, the girls were knitting sweaters or sewing dresses.  Even making their own shoes.  Ofcourse there was cooking, and preserving, and maintenance of the house.  For boys, it was carpentry, knowing electricity and electrical gadgets, or automobiles.  And there were always new ways of doing things.

The trend was the same in many of what we call the ‘developed countries’ today.  Even in the US.  But the US, must have been one of the first countries to be heavily industrialized...before it could develop a deep culture around ‘home and hand made’ goods.  That disrupted its culture of creating things at home early on.  Today, in developed countries creativity often involves making films, digital media, and other activities related to computer.  

What of creativity/construction that can be applied to our daily lived experience, food, clothes, etc. In the developed countries, we have outsourced our daily living .  The smell of bread being baked only comes from bakeries.  Or rarely comes from homes.  We do not go to the local dairy to get the milk in glass bottles, where we must pass through fields smelling of animal excreta---instead pick up our choice of milk from the local grocery store--that is clean, odorless and very sterile.

In a sense we move from individual to ‘generic’.  That is why I always had issues with this idea of ‘individual’ culture of the west.  I think it is more generic.  Everyone wears clothes bought from stores, not home made or sewn by family tailor.  The food they eat often comes from boxes.  There is little concept of preserving, picking, juicing, unless done for special diets.

I will have to write a separate entry on my memories of food being preserved, throughout winter, so we could taste it in summer.

It was still fresher than the ones we get in cans....and it had a personal-family touch....

Back to the above picture.  I had seen this young man in 2009, on my visit to Bangkok.  But when I saw in 2011, I recognized him right away.  Ofcourse, he did not.

I clicked a picture with his permission.  And spent the next ten minutes chatting with him.  All the time, wondering if he can fill his stomach on what he makes by selling those handmade mats?

May be he has other ways of living, may be he deals with drugs, may be he is a recovering alcoholic...you know all these things we are told about the people who make a living by setting up street stalls?  They live on the margins.  In reality, may be he is married, with children, and his wife makes these while he set up stalls in different places through the week to maximize on his sales.

We will never know!

But whenever I see them, and whenever I have enough time to stop and talk to them....I do..and bow to them silently, for among all the ills they may be associated with, they are merely trying to make the best of their circumstances from the information and opportunities they were given and the wisdom they gathered--just like the  most of us!!