November 12th

Gum. What do you think when you hear this word? If you’re like me, you think of chewing gum. What else is there? CD called me today and asked if we had any gum in our office. I was a little confused at first as to why he would want some because most people here in India do not chew gum. But I repeated it, “Gum?” and when he replied in the affirmative, I said we did have some and that I would be right down. I grabbed a pack of “Extra” and ran down the stairs. When I got there, I quickly realized that “gum” here in India is not chewing gum. Gum is what you put on an envelope in order to make it stay closed. We would call it paste. Or glue. When he saw what I was holding in my hand, he started laughing. When I saw the envelope in his hand, it dawned on me, and I started laughing. It was a great time.

Today is another bandh. It is a strike day. The streets are quiet. There are no buses. No taxis. No rickshaws even. Basically everyone is staying home today. I am not sure which political party called this strike. I am guessing the Communist party, but I am not sure. This is crazy to me. To call a city wide strike which causes many laborers to lose precious earnings is just insane. How many people didn’t eat today in Kolkata because of this strike? How many people will not be able to pay rent because of this? And for what? What is the purpose? I guess I just don’t understand because I am not part of the party, or because I am not a native. I dunno. CD agrees with me though. He said that there can be as many as 50 bandh days in a year. That is a lot of lost money. He is an accountant and was bemoaning the massive wages lost because of the strikes. He thought it was not smart also. Very strange. I wonder if anything good comes from the bandhs. Since we have been here, there have been 4 such days. In less than a month.

We had a chance to sit down with SKP again this morning and discuss scheduling. Apparently the plan has changed and we will not be going to Dehradun with him. That is okay. We will be spending more time in and around Delhi instead. I guess the NF director from Dehradun is here in Kolkata, so we wouldn’t be able to spend time with him there anyway. We will apparently be spending time with the director in Delhi though. That should be great. Hopefully we will be able to meet many NF workers in that region. We are very excited about our upcoming trip. Please pray that God would bless this time. We need to accomplish a lot in the 3-4 weeks we are away from Kolkata. We have teaching to do and workers to meet. It will be a very busy and hopefully very fruitful time for us.