Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence by which NPR’s worldwide staff shares moments from their lives and work all over the world.
Within the one-horse city of Marikavalasa in India’s japanese coastal state of Andhra Pradesh, I spent a day interviewing working ladies on the primary road. Patterns emerged: The ladies, clad in neat saris, sat earlier than tidy stalls made from rescued plywood and propped up by a number of bricks.
The ladies would agree to speak, or be interviewed, however they’d excuse themselves briskly. There was a commerce to be performed, an eggplant to promote, colourful bangles, a devotional lamp.
Many of those ladies have been in debt to their neighbors, to pay for medical care, a faculty charge. They patiently defined they needed to repay their dues to remain in good standing of their group.
However as nightfall settled, the odor of pan-fried flat bread wafted over the highway, and a few of these ladies allowed themselves just a little luxurious: a night snack at a brightly lit stall promoting small tiffins — a conventional Indian lunch-box meal, normally composed of flat bread, rice, greens in a spicy gravy and a pickle. It was a second for these industrious ladies to take pleasure in a deal with, some banter, and a second to unwind earlier than returning to work.
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