Park Nazi

Saturday was our first day out with the kids, we went to a sweet little park near the school that was so fancy it charged a whole rupee to go in. Being out in public with the kids really enforces you perception of the caste system that dominates India. Although the older kids at the school look like any other teenager around the world (jeans half way down their bum and back pack permanently attatched) the younger ones do look a little bit scruffier than reqular kids, but not by much, you'd have to really look to notice. But people at the park did really look, I guess we were quite an odd little group: white people and street kids in a park full of shiny little Indian families, but I wasn't expecting to get quite so much attention as we did. From the moment we arrived the park security guard latched on to us and seemed to spend a very happy couple of hours following us around and blowing his whistle at us for all sorts of terrible crimes like laughing loudly, running, and most hideous of all... walking the wrong way around the path. I never realised park paths had such strict highway codes. It became quite funny by the end and we started having relay races (in the correct direction) around the path just to wind him up a bit. But still, I can't believe people can't just let it go so a bunch of kids can be happy for 2 hours. Anyway, we're going back in a couple of weeks and we're going to pay for them all to ride the train around the park, maybe we'll teach them all a loud song to sing to really give the park nazi something to blow his whistle at!