Independence Day

Today is India's Independence Day. British rule officially ended on this day in 1947. It's a national holiday, and almost every school and large-ish business has a "flag hoisting" (pronounced "flag hosting", which confused me for a while). Rather than run the flag up the flagpole, the flag is already at the top, but is folded up with confetti inside. When "hoisted", a rope is pulled to unfurl the flag and the confetti flies into the air.

This photo taken at the MWV Ruby Macons Morai mill on Independence Day 2013 shows how it's supposed to look.

Of course, this is monsoon, when I unfurled the flag at Modern School, it was in a drenching rain. The audience was under shelter at the school, so only the "Chief Guest" (me), the "Guest of Honour" (last year's 10th standard "topper"), and the color guard got soaked.

MWV gave backpacks to the top students in each standard at the elementary school next to the Morai mill.

In the afternoon, we walked into Vapi to go to the optometrist so I could get new eyeglasses. I need a new prescription, and my not-so-old glasses have become quite scratched. Plastic lenses make for a much lighter lens, but they don't hold up to a dusty, gritty environment as well as I would like. Fortunately, the same glasses here are a fraction (about 1/3) of the U.S. price.

Even though it hasn't been a great monsoon, the underpass under NH8 has too much water to use right now. The detour to the flyover adds 5 to 10 minutes to the walk into town.

A close-up of the motorcycle in the photo above shows the typical monsoon modification -- a piece of metal (or in a pinch cardboard or carpet) added as an extra-large splash board behind the front wheel.

The power of manual labor: This large lawn (approximately 50 ft by 300 ft) was a huge mud puddle three weeks ago. Each one of those tufts of grass was hand-planted by women ankle-deep in mud. Two weeks after planting, it really looks like a lawn.