My sister is in india. She sent me this note:

Something has to differentiate Sunday from other days, even if it is just a tiny thing to mark it out. Here it is the same for me as other day, the same routine, except that I don’t teach, but then I don’t teach on Saturday either. Sunday has to be made sacred in some way. So, today, instead of just walking in the park, nodding to the colonel and the odd men scooping yet more gloopy green slime out of the water I climbed up the narrow stone staircase at the end of the tank (the lake) that scales the wall up to the old mosque and madrasa (as in the picture). It is getting wintry so in the shade of the domed rooms of the madrasa it is cold until you emerge back out into the sun. They are restoring part of the complex as it dates back to the 11th century, and is of such loveliness that even when Tamerlane sacked Delhi at the very end of the 14th century he left this complex intact. In fact it was exactly 607 years ago tomorrow that he massacred most of the sultan’s army as they came out to meet his army.
As I was about to pick my way back to the stone staircase through the stone workers, who were lugubriously moving small basins of very small stones from one pile to another pile, a ragamuffin girl came up to me. She held out a safety pin to me. Usually this would be a sign that she wanted something in exchange for this mighty offering, but this did not seem to be the case. I took the pin and bent to pull her filthy collar up over her even filthier jersey, then pinned both sides of the collar together with the safety pin sitting like a tie pin. I stood back and told her how beautiful she looked. She hugged me, her tiny arms only reaching up to my thighs. I found it very hard not to cry. We waved good-bye and she ran after me to the steps, and went on waving as I climbed down, jumping up and down shouting ‘thank-you Didi (sister)’.


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