Pink Elephant Sale

As we move into our final days of preparation to leave Bangalore, Helen has had to stay laser-focused on another local affair. As the chairperson of the Overseas Women’s Club (OWC) community-sized yard sale fund raiser called the Pink Elephant Sale, her attention has been locked on securing donations, volunteers and coordination with various vendors.

All her hard work and that of the many OWC volunteers paid off when the event was held on Wednesday, 2-May. Nearly 95,000 rupees was raised for the OWC charities. Of the 86 boxes of donated clothing, toys, housewares and shoes, there were seventy empty boxes at the end of day. The remaining goods will be distributed to the OWC charities. Wednesday was truly a win-win day.

The Pink Elephant Sale was held in the large, tree shaded overflow parking lot provided by St. Mark’s Anglican Cathedral. Built by British expats in 1808 and enlarged a century later, the imposing church structure was the back drop for the sale. In a wink to the continuity of history, British expats again mingled on St. Mark’s grounds for the sale. Only this time they were joined by modern 21^st expats from Australia, New Zealand, the US and Europe that now also call Bangalore home.

The sale lasted 2 ½ hours. A 30 minute early bird sale was opened to volunteers to select from the 3,000+ donated items. Then the sale was opened to the wider community. People streamed onto the grounds. Volunteers manned tables with goods and more volunteers sat at cashier tables ready to accept the 10, 20 and 30 rupee notes for most goods.

Everything moved seamlessly that day, giving credit to the long hours of behind-the- scenes preparation work. Donated goods were assembled at our apartment and at the home of another OWC member in Whitefield. Goods at our apartment were first stored in our back bedroom then moved to our front balcony. More storage space was provided by the Salarpuria building manager. Our neighbor, Champa Barbut, a Sri Lankan OWC member, had boxes in her apartment as well. Volunteers gathered on two occasions to sort goods and affix price tags. Lots of work!

Without question, the greatest debt of vendor thanks goes to Solutions 4 Delivery. S4D not only donated the boxes and trucks to haul goods from our apartment and out of town Whitefield to St. Mark’s, the crews helped to load, unload and reload the leftover donated goods with the zeal of spirited volunteers. Attempts to provide a tip for their services was kindly rebuffed with, “We are volunteers, too.” Many thanks are offered to Mukal and Deepak and their crew from S4D.

Now it is time for us to finish our own packing.