Happiness is Where You Find It

A small boy plays with his toy, an old bicycle tire, on the salt flats of the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat India. His body language expresses his joy in keeping the tire upright and rolling across the dried mud of the marsh. We can find happiness if we just look for it is the message I get from this. I think he looks as if he is having more fun than a child sitting at a computer, but maybe I’m wrong. My children grew up playing the old-fashioned way.

 

Below is his home, a tent made of burlap bags. The bags can be wetted if there is enough water and the breeze through the damp burlap is a kind of air-conditioning. The English used to have their houses wrapped in damp burlap during the Raj. This was their form of cooling taken from the Indians, no doubt. The English had a man sitting on the veranda pulling a cord connected to large fans called punkas. This created a breeze when there was none.

 

The salt flat workers here in the Little Rann of Kutch only work during the dry season. Much of the year the area is filled with water from the Arabian Sea.