US Diary - 27th and 28th September 2023

 

I am glad that it (27-Sep-2023) turned out to be an almost sunny day compared to yesterday. At about 11.30 am, two cleaning ladies came to clean the house. After finishing all the work, the house looked spic & span when they left by 2.30 pm. Without any supervision they did their duty properly and efficiently. Beside cleaning, they made the beddings, arranged shoes in the shoe racks and folded all the washed cloths and bedsheets neat and tidy. They were talking Spanish even though they were well versed in English too. Preetha was saying that one of them is well off and owned a big house in Colombia with farm and cattle where her parents live. The parents won't leave Columbia in spite of her requests. Her son who is an Engineer is already working. Dignity of labour is their motto which I felt has to be popularized in our land.

In the evening we drove to the nearby ground (Mountain Park, Bernard's Township) pictured above. Sree and Preetha went for their evening walk and as usual they took two rounds while I sat in the car and enjoyed the soccer and football teams (consisting of young children) practicing under the guidance of their coaches. It was fun watching men and women of different origin/race/culture/age walking and doing exercises. One man took hold of his child's hand while walking briskly, protecting the child from falling who was skating along with him. Sree opined that it would be nice to see the children of our motherland getting trained like this. He said that the communities here have such facilities to grow and groom their children to promote their skills.  I said "In India at this time, there are coaching classes for identified talented and selected children in sports and athletics. There are sports schools also, it may not be in adequate numbers though." Sree added that it would be nice to have one in each community. I went on to explain that it is not that easy in our country as such communities as you have here are rare. A community in this country (USA) generally consists of a group of residents who have similar status and standards of living. They have almost similar houses, lawns, surroundings, gardens, vehicles etc. One cannot see a hut next to a mansion. "Mone, it is hard to expect forming teams consisting of children with similar means and goals area wise in our land to be groomed and coached like this. So, the government and private companies sponsor the identified cream of really interested and talented ones and give them coaching. We have no such large areas of land to spare for grounds in all townships or villages and our population number is high. People cannot be stratified either. But in spite of all these, we are growing steadily."

 Today (28-Sep-2023) is cloudy, drizzling at intervals. We didn't go out. I watched the lawn getting mowed today. The other day the lawn was fertilized and treated for weeds.   Having not much to do, I took a picture of the same (see below).