In the screen printing shed

This morning I took a rickshaw to Sanganer again – last time I found the pottery and block printing but with the help of the driver managed to infiltrate the cloth bleaching, dying and printing areas which I had missed – great billows of cottons and silks hanging from enormous frames or just laid out on the earth and small shrubs to dry. The latter were trodden on by camels drawing carts of wet cloth, the feet of children, the women who were spreading them out. They were on their first fixing of the dyes. When dry they will be washed and thrown out again but then shaken like mad to remove the dust! I also found a paper factory with cotton, maize and other waste being used to make the paper – petals, leaves and what not were also used. Then I spent an hour rootling through materials and decorations that had been gathered from around the country – beautiful embroideries done by women to decorate their homes and camels. This evening I was taken by my hostess' sister to meet 28 boys whom she cares for in one home (20 or so girls and small boys are in another). They have either been abandoned by their family or are orphans but all are HIV positive and it was such a pleasure to meet such gorgeous children – full of life and happy and very proud of their achievements academically - they practised their English on me - and physically too for they all play cricket, badminton, table tennis and football 'and chess' shouted one! One showed me his wonderful paintings and they practised a Bollywood style dance they would be performing on Sunday for an old people's home. One boy told me about the holiday they had all been taken on last year during the hot monsoon season. They had been told to take warm woollen clothes and all thought it was a joke for it was so hot in Jaipur but they went to Daramshalla – a hill station near where the Dalai Lama lives – and couldn't believe there could be such 'natural air conditioning'.

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