Indian Ingenuity

Anyone who has travelled around India cannot but marvel at the creative ways people have found to meet their needs. Around Mysore people throw their wheat on the road for cars and rickshaws to thresh for them. Not the cleanest but efficient. Garbage scraps are recycled and re-used, sheets of plastic and palm fronds become housing materials and tapping into the electrical grid is obviously an amateur sport. Most amazing to me are the ways people transport their goods. It is not unusual to see a man with a 3 foot wide plastic bag of goods on his head, or women with head baskets carrying everything under the sun. Vendors will carry their entire stock attached to their scooters so all you see is a big mass of plastic water carriers going down the highway or an enormous load of sugarcane and you presume there is a human under there somewhere. Large household goods are routinely transported on bicycle, including things like refrigerators. It is impressive to see a 120 lb. man riding a rickety bicycle with a fridge jerry rigged on the back. Watching livestock going for a ride is a special treat, like this guy with two pink sheep on his lap. Driving between the Keralan backwaters and Varkala, we saw three different small pickups transporting critters: a truck full of ducks, one carrying a small elephant and another with three men and a kneeling camel. Incredible India, indeed.

Indian ingenuity is so incredible that, if they were better organized, I suspect they could take over the world in a heartbeat.