What A Culture..

After I took my seat in the tent some women appeared and offered all of us tea. I wasn't surprised by this since it appeared we were with some very important people. But then they brought us rice, another round of tea with a biscuit, some 7up, and finally more tea. All evenly spaced throughout the event and it was quite a surprise.

It did feel a little self-indulgent to be sitting in a covered tent, snacking on treats with hundreds of people in front of us on the dirt and recieving nothing. There was no need to worry. Men walked through the crowd and began creating aisles between the audience members. Soon huge baskets of rice and buckets of vegetable damaste appeared. I (along with my new English buddy) was amazed that they were going to feed all these people.. and at no cost. My next thought was more practical.. what will they serve it on? Our selections had come on paper plates, but there were only 20 of us. The audience was prepared and from the pockets in the ghos and kheras bowls materialized in front of every family. We just watched as volunteers walked down each row spooning rice and vegetables into every bowl.

Not a single person went hungry.