diary 2/4/2019,Dream Come True!

COW DUNG
गायों के बारे में मेरे जहन  में बहुत सी बातें हैं , सुबह सवेरे हैब हम डंगरों के ठान को साफ़ करके गोबर बटोड़े में फेकने जातेथे तो गांव के पाली  हाथों में छिक्की लिए गायों को खेतों की तरफ़ हाँक रहे होते थे। 

आज मुझे अपनी हवेली का वह फर्श याद आता  है जिसे गाय के ताजा गोबर (cow -dung, the dung is just the digested leftovers of grass and clovers from the nearby fields,really the gift from our holy cow )और गाँव के कांकड़ से खोद कर लाई गई मिटटी  से लीपा गया होता था।गोबर का हमारे नंगे पैरों पर अत्यंत ठंडा प्रभाव पड़ता  था.(the dung has an immensely therapeutic effect on our bare feet)    मेरी दादी चूल्हे को तो तकरीबन हररोज ही लीपती थी.   

 COW DUNG CAKES:  Dried cow dung is commonly used as a source of fuel for cooking and heating.  Over 70% of India’s population is rural, and most of them use dehydrated cow dung as fuel for fire.  Cow dung is combined with straw and then dried in the sun in the shape of little disks the size of salad plates… voila, instant fuel cakes!

INSECT REPELLANT:  Traditional rural homes use cow dung (and camel dung) on the floor and walls of their homes and huts.  They say dried dung applied to their walls and floor can drive off household insects & mosquitoes, and it is believe to (ironically) have anti-bacterial qualities!  (I should note here that in the Indian climate, cow dung used in this manner actually dries hard like cement.  It’s not wet and messy, per say!)

INSULATION:  Dried up dung is also used in colder places to line the walls of rural homes, as it’s also believed to be an excellent (and inexpensive) insulator.

Dream Come True!
My Adorable Macramé bag!

My father was posted to Jorhat,Assam in the 1966, he used to go to his place of duty by IAF airplane, while this facility was not provided to families of IAF officers, so we had to stay at Agra (kheria air force station residence area) as journey by train was risky due to Naga riots at that time. After some time we had to move to our village and I was admitted to Tosam Girl’s Middles school. It was then I saw the girls of my class were making macramé purses. I was a small child as compared to my other class mates, and I wasn’t able to learn that (difficult, I even not dared to try for that) macramé stitch to make my purse like those girls. But I love that stuff and later after a long period when macramé fashion returned,

 With strands....lying in front!
the same bag with dark background!

I took some classes in Macramé while I was still living in Hisar and this was the first bag I made. It took me little to get the knots right but it was worth the efforts. It’s not complicated as it may seem. All you need to start
 
binding the threads (this is macramé wire) around a cardboard to hold threads to that bunch of threads and that’s all the equipment you’ll use. In this one I made lots of “plain” and “cord” knots. 80 lengths of cords for this bag each measuring 4 meters. I will explain the difficult knot briefly with drawings in my forthcoming macramé project



Collage of my macramé work

xoxo