We are in a foreign land filled with mystery and wonder. There is much to learn here.
Take for example the fact that, according to our landlady, people who are working in the fields in the hot weather will put onions in their ears and wrap them into place, along with an extra piece on the top of the head, to help guard against heatstroke. Well who knew?? She went on to explain that, should this fail in preventing someone from fainting in the fields, the close-at-hand onions were ready to be used as a resuscitation device simply by squeezing a few drops into the passed out person’s nostrils. Double duty.
(Interestingly, when I asked my students about this, they had never heard of such a thing, but they did confirm that what Susan heard as “shock” for the name of the summer season was basically correct. It turns out that in Konkani, a language spoken in Goa, the phrase for hot weather is actually shaa ckho. Bypassing the obvious “shock and awe,” I call it “shock and achoo” myself).
But, on the bus ride in to school, I asked a teacher who is married to an Indian about this, and she said “Oh that’s nothing - the Parsis who moved to India from Iran used to wear hollowed-out watermelons on their heads to keep cool when working in the fields. Their community was quite famous for doing this; but of course their are no Parsis working as field hands any more, they own all the land now!”
When you think about people who have to wear onions wrapped in their turbans or watermelon rinds on their heads as the only way for them to survive in the heat as they go about their daily work, it makes our lives seem oh-so-easy!!
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