Languages

India is a land of many languages. The SIL Ethnologue lists 438 languages currently in use in India. They come from four distinct language families. Out of a population of over 1.1 Billion;

• 777M people, ie 76% of the population, speak an Indo-Aryan type language
• 217M people, 21.6% of the population, speak a Dravidian language
• 12M, 1.2% of the population, speak a Austro-Asiatic language
• 10M, 1% of the population, speak Tibeto-Burman language
• 2M <1% of the population, speak some other type of language

As I understand it, Hindi and English are the official languages and then each state has their own official ones. That means another 21 official languages exist, namely, Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Meitei, Nepali, Oriya, Eastern Panjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu. I admit some of these I had never heard of before.

In Orissa, where I shall be based, the state language is Oriya and it is spoken by over 35 million people.

Feet

After 8 months of only occassionaly wearing shoes in 2008 on the boat I came home to face the fact that very few of my shoes now fitted me. So they went either to the skip or to the charity shop depending on their state of being. Someone somewhere got some really nice dress and evening shoes for a good price hopefully:) The soles of my feet had harded up quite well, with all that salt water. I still prefer to be in sandals than shoes, and only wear shoes now for special occassions, trainers for the gym etc but suspect I shall be back in socks and boots come the wet and cold UK winter.

Taking about the cold,

Jags

No not the cars! The in the arm type. Warning to the sqeamish - yes, it is time to start those inoculations.

Luckily, I'm fairly uptodate, although I will be due for a rabies booster when I am in India. Having never been to SE Asia except Singapore I've never had an injection against Japanese Encephalytis, another one of the multitude of mosquito borne diseases - have you ever notice just how many diseases are mosquito borne!  So I had the first injection yesterday and need to return for the second in one month's time.

Also, I needed a booster for my Typhoid as had that at the same time. And renewed my favorite, Dukoral, which is the oral vaccine against Cholera. Interestingly in these days we don't think too much about cholera and the vaccine is not usually given except to aid and health workers but there have been Cholera cases in Orissa this year. Originally I was advised to take it several years ago as it gives you two years general protection against infestations of the gastro intestinal tract and having had both food poisoning and dysentry that sounded a good option. I am pleased so far to report that either it has worked or I have been incredibly robust or lucky - I was one of the few or only folk who did not get sickness &/or diahorrea in Mali, Central Asia and Central America and during a norovirus outbreak on the boat. So I am keeping my fingers crossed to survive Delhi belly with only minor inconvenience :)

Jags have never bothered me but drinking that vile concoction that is Dukoral is a real challenge. They make it so that folks will like it - sweet and effervescent, a sort of raspberry Andrew's Liver Salts,  - except I hate fizzy waters with a passion. Drinking the  150ml of this is a real feat - I have never managed to do it in one go, although I try, I only get about 80% of it down and then have to psyche myself up again for the last few drops. I'm the person who was pleased when they stopped giving polio on sugar cubes! Give me an injection any day, even though this morning, after having one injection in each arm yesterday, I can only just raise my right one above my head! My gym session this afternoon will be interesting :) Anyway, nothing that won't pass and quite bearable compared to falling ill with any of these diseases. I hate taking medicines but prevention is the best route.