Sally Mair - Loving life

By Sallymair

Health food store

An entry for the Blip challenge, people at work.
This lady has her stand outside the school I'm helping out at in Tirunelveli, a small town in South India. I've had a look at her wares and from what I can gather all of the fruits have health giving benefits and several claim to have cancer resistant properties.
There are guava, in front of them are Mullu Seetha (aka Soursop) the pink are Rose or Java Apples and the green, Koddikkapuli (aka Madras Thorn or Monkey Paw). Most of them also have sugar reducing properties important in this area where the incidence of types 2 diabetes is high, most likely linked to a high carbohydrate diet.
She has all she needs in a workplace on her stand: shade; a crate to carry her fruits in when she arrives in the morning, which also doubles as a seat during the day; plenty of passing traffic and pedestrians and her trustee weights and weighing scales.
You need to bring your own bag or have things wrapped in newspaper as there are no plastic bags allowed in Tamil Nadu or Kerala BTW which is an impressive piece of action on behalf of the governments, that may be true of all of India.
She always looks very happy and this is the first time I have seen her without a crowd around her. The extra shows a closer view of the fruit from the other direction of anybody is intetested.
I was in school today and enjoyed the company of a family who had made a donation to cover the cost of providing the children and staff with a good lunch of chicken biryani, onion pickle, curd rice and paysan as a dessert. It was extremely tasty and as a temporary member of staff I too had a meal.
It was good to chat to the donors who had paid for the meal in memory of a family member. Amazingly, the son had spent 3 months in Edinburgh a few years ago on a university course. Most people here have never heard of Scotland, apart from Scotland Yard, which I have to explain has nothing to do with Scotland... Confused?... most people are by that one!

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