Happy Halloween! Believe it or not we found a real little witch at our market the other day. She was posing as a sweet little old beggar woman wearing white instead of black. She even had her little trick-or-treat bucket with her. Her besom of destruction had lost all of it's sweeping twigs and the wart on her nose was disguised as a jewel. If you check out the women in the background you will see that she cast an evil spell on them because of their great beauty and turned them into stone. Click twice on all of these next three pictures to see them in all their detail.

This was a Turkish, Iranian, and Russian girl who lives in Uzbekistan. She and her mother were at the Connaught Place market when we met them. We struck up a conversation and I asked her if I could get a picture. Then I showed her my paintings which I keep on my camera. We invited her and her mother over for dinner but haven't heard anything from them since. I got her portrait done just in case. She was an interesting looking girl.

These are some pictures of beggars. I thought I would group them together. The first is of a man with a cleft palate and a poor crippled and deformed leg. Take a close look at the man on the wheel board. His arms are sure developed but his legs look like skeleton legs. He was going along pushing his bucket with his head. I don't know if he really needed to do that. He might have been able to sit up but this posture looked a lot more pitiful. We gave him 10 rupees. We have been giving to almost all the deserving looking beggars lately. It makes us feel so much better. At first we thought we weren't supposed to because they might follow us home and then we would have a big problem. But we decided that we felt too terrible when we didn't give them something so now we give. It's a much better feeling.

Just before Duwali, there was some kind of holy day where the women all dress up in their very finest clothes. They then go out and gather with their friends. Sitting in a wide circle, they have a holy man read from the holy book. Then they pass big plates of food around. This food isn't eaten at the event but taken home to share with their families. The women fast for the whole day and after dark they go out with their husbands to look at the moon, a candle is lit which they do some kind of motion with and wish their husbands good health and happines for the next year. Then the husband feeds the wife some food. I know many of the ladies in these pictures.

We see this woman feeding the dogs almost every morning on our way to basketball practice. It looks like she is just feeding them bread crumbs. The dogs really seem to love her though.

This is a family that lives just around the corner from us. We have passed them quite a few times but never took a picture. They seem like a happy bunch but they live right on the edge of a busy highway. I don't know how these people survive. Take a close look at the terrible little tents they live in. The woman hanging out the clothes is barefooted in those rocks. We saw the older little boy carrying a big basket of potato peelings and other refuse from the camp up a steep and long stretch on the side of the road from his home. We watched and when he got to a certain spot he stopped and dumped the contents of his basket over a railing. I have no idea of where they get their water or go to the bathroom because there is absolutely no privacy. It's just amazing to me how these poor creatures live. They seem happier than the people that live in the horrible excuses for apartments though.

This little woman was carrying a bag of rocks. Usually they have a cushion of some kind to protect their heads but she was carrying that heavy load with no protection at all. At first we didn't know what was in the bag but when I realized it was a bag of rocks I had to have a picture.

I'm probably going to title this painting, "Girl on a Motorcycle." She was such a beautiful girl and she gave me such a big smile. It's really hard to paint beautiful girls, babies, and little children. Men are much easier because of the hard lines in men's faces. It took me a long time to get this one where I wanted it. I stayed up until three thirty in the morning working on it but when I got up this morning, I could see some major problems. After Fred left for his early Saturday meetings I got right back to work on it. Let me know what you think.

Here is another monochromatic sketch I did of a girl riding on the back of a motorcycle. I'm trying to put some color on now but it is looking really messy and I may have ruined my painting. If it turns out in the end I'll send you a shot of it in color. I thought it would be fun to see a painting in stages. Sometimes the first sketch is so good I don't want to go any further but this girl had some beautiful color in her outfit so I'm going to try to capture it. My teacher Jackie Goodyear said no matter how good you get at art it is still really scary sometimes and even the best artists lose confidence.

This is weird but sometimes my paintings look better when you are looking at the actual painting and sometimes they are better on the photograph. This one looks better on the canvas. You can't see this one in real life but what do you think of it? We think it's the best one yet. Give me some comments out there people.

Mella said she wanted to see more pictures of us so here are some funny ones. We went over to Dwarka to visit our Magalian friend Amy who married a Sikh. This was a real Sikh neighborhood and Fred really got into the turban thing. Also take a look at his dagger. Sikhs are required to have five articles. They wear some special underwear shorts, they carry a dagger, a comb, they wear a silver bracelet, and they never cut their hair and beards. Fred did the best he could under the circumstances. He faked it with the hair by wearing a turban, he is carrying a dagger and a comb and wearing a bracelet, but he had his same old underwear on. I told him a while back I thought the Sikhs look so handsome in their turbans so he tried really hard to look handsome for me. The two Sikhs standing by him were the ones who tied the turban on. It's a very complicated process. I planned to just take it off carefully and sew it so that I wouldn't have to try to wrap one up again but it bled dye all over his shirt collar so I had to unwrap the twelve meters worth of cloth and soak it in salt water for a couple of days. It is still bleeding dye. He looks so happy in these pictures don't you think. I think maybe Sikhood agrees with him.

Guess who these characters are. Maybe you can tell by the name tags.

I've been tempted to get my hands painted. The patterns are so beautiful. It seems that the women get their hands painted for every occasion. Right now Duwali is being celebrated. It's the birth day of one of their Gods. I've lost track of which one. I thought it was cute how the little ones were even getting into the act. This big sister was painting her little sisters hand.

All of these colorful scenes and people were at the Sarajani Nagar Market. I really like it over all the markets we have been to. It seems a little more organized and you can really buy cheap clothes here.