Unidentified Flying Vegetables!!!

Okay, so they're not flying. Whatever. But can you identify them? I'd love to learn the names in English for these Indian vegetables, if such names actually exist. I found them while wandering through the local wholesale outdoor market where the vegetable-wallahs and fruit-wallahs come to fill their carts.

Hair Henna

Since I'm in India, I decided to go for a traditional Indian hair treatment - henna. Many Indian women put henna in their hair because they believe it conditions the hair by making it shinier and fuller. It also temporarily dyes any grey hairs red, but it should only be used if you have just a few grey hairs. Some men with full white beards use it and end up with this ridiculous bright orange beard - I'm not sure if this is the look they're going for, or they just didn't predict the results.

Indians tend to use henna only in the summer. Why in the summer, you ask? Because the henna cools down your head making you feel very cold. I, being a foolish foreigner, decided I didn't want to wait until the summer and I ignored my colleagues' warnings that I would catch a cold. For the low low price of 120Rs (about $3), a lady came to my house to slop the henna concoction (mixed with an egg to keep it from drying your your hair) all over my head. I had been afraid that it would drip making a mess, so I had taken the precaution to wear old clothes and sit out on the balcony while she was doing this. But there was definitely no need for this as the henna sealed my hair like a hybrid of cement and glue.

I had to leave it on until the henna completely dried so I sat out in the sun with my book to enjoy the Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, the sun was not strong enough to warm up my very cold head, so I had to wrap myself in a blanket and inch my chair further and further across the balcony to catch the sun's rays. (Eventually I even moved my chair to the front lawn being so desperate to stay warm.)


Here's what I would look like with very short hair. What do you think? Should I chop it all off one day? Keep in mind that my hair may not stick nicely to my head - it could just stick straight out making me look like a boy.

A whopping 4 hours later, my hair was pretty much dry (and solid), so I hopped into the shower to wash it all out and see if I had any reddish sheen. Here are the results:


Do you see it? A definite red shine?? Okay fine. So nobody can tell the difference except me. My hair is just too darned black. Well, it was fun anyway.

Monkeys in the neighbourhood

Look who I found while walking down my street.

In India, monkeys are considered a dangerous pest. Once, Saroj left the door to her kitchen open and monkeys came in knocking everything over. A big fat monkey once jumped from my balcony onto the roof of my car making a big fat dent. There was a pipe exposed on the side of my house while they were fixing something and a monkey came and was yanking on it, trying to break it.

So cute yet so mischievous.