Teaching turmoil

Teaching used to be so much fun.  It was easily my favorite part of graduate school. I loved looking through the labs and finding the best way to explain the topics.  Even grading the labs was enjoyable, because sometimes students would solve things in unexpected ways, or make funny comments.   I loved the feeling of office hours, when a student would come in, completely lost, and by the end, truly understand the concept I had taught them.   I genuinely enjoyed it.  You had to understand the material in every possible way, so you could explain it clearly.  It felt good, too, knowing that I was helping people.

I know I sound nostalgic.  There were plenty of times where I was frustrated, usually when my students didn’t understand basic concepts like squaring their units when finding area.  But overall, if they didn’t understand, they were willing to learn.  And so I was happy teaching them.  

Of course, those are college-aged students.  They are from mostly well-to-do backgrounds. They sat and listened to me when I was speaking.  They turned in their homework.  If they did choose not to pay attention, they would do so unobtrusively, and not interrupt the flow of class.  

I have little experience teaching younger students.  On occasions, I have done volunteer work, but that work was always in small groups- 4 or 5 kids per volunteer.  I’ve spoken at my mom’s school a few times, in front of many, many students.  But there were plenty of teachers to control the students, and I wasn’t teaching, just telling about my Antarctic adventures.  

Working with the younger kids is exhausting.  They have you running around, and are constantly asking questions that throw you off (a friend told me she was once asked whether or not penguins could walk backwards).  But still, in the States, I enjoyed it.  It was different.  Less organized. But the kids were excited and still did their best to pay attention.

I thought that it would be at least remotely similar in India.  Boy was I wrong.

I grew up with a mom who was a teacher, but is now a principal.  She has written a book on respect in the classroom.  I know the rules.  No smiling on the first day.   Don’t worry if they like you, they have to respect you first.  Create positive, not negative, classroom rules, etc, etc.

You are their teacher, not their friend.  You know how hard it is to be just their teacher when all of their family members and friends hit and yell at the students on a constant basis?  I don’t hit my students.  I never yell at an individual (thought I have been known to yell at them as a whole class).   I think just by those two actions alone, I have unintentionally befriended the students.  I still did my best not to smile that first day.  Or week. But what if these kids never see a smile from an adult for the rest of the day?  Shouldn’t they know that some adults don’t see them as objects to just be swatted at?  Daughters who are smart, not just the family laundress and chef?

The majority of my students are Muslims who live in an apartment building a short walk away from the school.  They live with their entire family in a room about the size of a college dorm room.  But unlike the college dorm room, the space has to also include a kitchen and toilet.  I have written extensively about one home in the blog entry A typical day, if you want to re-read it.   They have no green grass hills to play upon.  Their playground consists of a rubble road with trash sprinkled more thickly than salt upon French fries at McDonald's.  Apparently (all things I’ve been told second-hand) they are often beaten while at home.  Many parents don’t care whether they even go to school or not.  It is known that some children are being sexually abused by their relatives.

It is so hard to not pity these kids. To want to be a friendly face.  To help them.  To wish they had a yard to play in, friends who didn’t think it was normal to hit them.  

And so I started the school year doing my best to be serious. Not smile.  But it is so hard when these kids, who have nothing compared to American standards, smile at you and look happy.  When they finally figure out the math problem and ask for a high-five. 

They immediately latched onto my vulnerability and have driven my classroom into madness.  It is clearly my own fault.  I need to be stern.  I tried SO hard to be stern. But I sound weak when I raise my voice.  Unbelievable.  If I can hear doubt behind my voice, I am sure they can, too.   My stern glances will send a student back to their seat momentarily, but the second the eye contact is lost, they are back to my desk, even if in the middle of class, during my lecture. 

Some days they are amazingly good.  Last week, Monday-Wednesday, they were amazing. They sat quietly.  They listened. They did their work.  They didn’t interrupt me when I was speaking.  But Thursday?  They were monsters.   They were constantly moving about the classroom while I was instructing.  Interrupting my words.  Whispering.  If I could understand what I was doing differently between the days, then I could fix it. But I just don’t see how I was behaving differently. 

I think part of my problem is that I compare my students to the orderliness of the college-aged students that I taught.   Maybe young kids (they are about 9-12 in age, for the most part) just can’t sit still and quietly for that long.  Maybe I am judging what I think is bad behavior as just normal behavior.     

But I have seen these kid sit deathly still.  They will sit quietly for the other teachers in the program.  Especially for the single male teacher that I have met, a social worker who comes in occasionally on Thursdays.  He speaks to them in Hindi, so I never know what he is saying.  But, like Minerva McGonagall, he has the class spellbound.  

I believe I have mentioned in a previous blog that I once asked the students why they sit quietly and listen to the other teachers, but not me.  Their honest response?  “We are scared of the other teachers.”  

I have no ability to be scary.  When garage sale-ing, I can’t even get people to bargain with me.  They look at my face, and just know I’ll pay the full price.  Only once have I successfully gotten someone to come down on a price.  It was for a plastic worm from the movie Dune (an amazing book series, I highly recommend it).  The owner could see how ecstatic I was over the item, felt bad for me, and let me have it for a lower price.  I was probably the only person in the entire toy show who knew what it was, anyway.  

At airports, the security agents know they can walk all over me. I am nearly always picked as that poor person who has to shove their carry-on bag in the metal ‘does your bag fit here’? display that sits as an ornament to bypass for everyone else.  But me?  They take one look at me, see that I won’t put up a fight, and make me put the bag in there.   Yes, after a lot of shoving and grunting, I can always make my bag fit.  But there is ALWAYS someone else with a much fatter, bigger bag that certainly would not fit.  But I’ve never seen that person asked.  Just me.  

I know that I am not a scary person.  Yes, it has the drawbacks in flea marketing and flying, but for my everyday life, it had not been a problem until now.   I don’t want to be scary the way the other teachers are scary here.  My first day observing the classroom, the teacher took the students, had them stand in front of the class, and would smack them on the arm each time they said something that was grammatically incorrect.   That isn’t who I want to be.  If it means I am not a good teacher in India, so be it. But I know I don’t have to hit the students to be a good teacher.   As far as I know, my co-teacher (in the other classroom at the same center), Teacher R, doesn’t hit her students.  And they seem to listen to her.  Her students are a bit older.  She has been teaching the same kids for six years.  Maybe that makes a difference. Maybe there is still something about me, too. 

I don’t know if I am just making excuses or not at this point.  Perhaps I will never be a good teacher for this age level.  I’m not stern.  At least not with these kids who see nothing but sternness and anger for the rest of their day. .   I was a great TA at the college level, and I can be proud of that, even if I cannot be proud of my current classroom discipline skills. 

The consequence of not having control over my classroom has clearly been a corresponding decrease in my enjoyment of teaching.  But other things have decreased my enjoyment much more so.  First, lesson planning.   When I started, I was given two spiral bound textbooks and told that the students’ curriculum was in it.  I was also given copies of the past exams for their grade levels.  I was told to ignore the curriculum text, and basically teach to the test.  

The curriculum textbooks were terrible, anyway. The English textbook was obviously written by a non-native speaker.  They didn’t even have the correct number of syllables in the example haiku.  The reading level was way beyond what my students could read.   So the entire textbook was thrown out.   That means, each day, for five days a week, I have to create, from scratch, a lesson in English.  Yes, there are a lot of reading comprehension work sheets I can google, but it is also upsetting that there isn’t some book to use.  Plus, they have to learn about their neighboring countries.  So rather than having text for that, I’ve spent a lot of time on google finding stories about Nepal or Pakistan, and then re-writing them to a younger reading level.  And doing my best to catch all the American words and convert them to British spelling.   

The math text is not as bad as the English text. But since I was told to teach to the test, I had to, for the most part, throw out the math text as well.    So in addition to finding or writing English comprehensions, I am writing a math worksheet or two each day.  Now, I absolutely love math.  So I didn’t mind, at first, coming up with worksheet after worksheet of rounding and division, etc.  But it is starting to get boring.  I haven’t found good math worksheets online.   I like math, I am picky about math.   I like writing problems that teach them something, not randomly generated worksheets that might not include the difficult subtopics.    

So there you have it.  I’m doing a volunteer teaching job.   And on many days, I’m spending well over eight hours a day on it.  I don’t care that I’m not getting paid, but I really would prefer to only spend a max of three or four hours per day on it!  

I had goals when I moved to India.  I really wanted to learn Hindi.  We even bought the Hindi Rosetta Stone for me to teach myself. But most of all, I wanted to use this time to try and write a book.  Even before I could actually write, I was telling mythical creature stories that my mom would pen for me.  When I was in third grade, I spent the entire year reading and writing stories (looking back at them, they sure were awful, mostly stories from the 1800s where the mother was correcting the daughter’s grammar).  And these past ten years have been so busy, I had completely stopped writing, with the exception of a Harry Potter fan fiction…  This year was the year to re-discover whether or not I still liked writing.   Whether or not I could actually write anything that was worthwhile. I love writing.   And it is hard to do that as a full-time occupation when I have eight hours of volunteer work to deal with each day.     Yes, I know, only eight hours.  My husband works (including traveling time) 14 hours or more each day.  But I’m not my husband.   I know that I am unhappy in a schedule like that.  

The point of that little side note is that I am thinking about quitting my teaching job.  It has clearly been established in these past six weeks that I am not as good at controlling my students as the other teachers.  I am not enjoying it very much.   So I feel as though I should step back, and actually try to accomplish my goals that I had set forth for myself.  But I am confused, too.  Am I saying that just because I feel like I am not a good teacher?   Should I be working to improve that skill?  Or am I not a good teacher (for this age group) because it isn’t want I wanted to do this year, anyway?

The desire to quit has been growing on me, but Friday was really the last straw.  Before, I’d been feeling frustrated with my workload and students, but not with the other teachers with whom I had been interacting.  In fact, I get along quite well with my co-teacher, Teacher R.   But Friday.  Friday really opened my eyes to another cultural difference between India and America.   Our standards of respect are just completely different.  

After Friday, I feel like I just don’t respect the other teachers in the program.  I feel like they have lackadaisical attitudes.  Friday was the big, year-end math assessment test.  There are two classrooms in our center, fifty-six students. Teacher R and I each teach one of the classrooms.  On Friday, Teacher R went to another center in a different suburb to administer the exam, so I, and a couple of other teachers were left to administer the exam to the kids.  

Things started off innocently and normally enough.  We got them seated, passed out the exams and paper to write on.  I wasn’t allowed to administer the exam to my own class, so I went to the other classroom to proctor.  Now, the other classroom was Teacher R’s class.  Her students actually listen to her, unlike mine, so I was expecting a nice and quiet, well-behaved classroom.  It was anything but. 

In the first two minutes of my monitoring of Teacher R’s classroom, I moved three kids for very extreme and blatant copying.   I then ran out of space to move them, and I also noticed that the other teacher proctoring didn’t seem at all to care that they were copying.  My respect for her started to decrease.   It was SO obvious.  These are just kids. They aren’t quite slick at their copying skills yet.  They would very clearly be staring, or even taking, their desk mate’s paper.  It wasn’t a gray line.  They were clearly crossing over the line.  And she was doing nothing.   The students were also talking.  Continuously.  Some were laughing.  Many were doing their math out loud, even saying their answers out loud.  Yes, this is the big, formal, year-end examination.  So formal I can’t be in the classroom with my own students.  Yet the kids can talk to each other. The other teacher was ignoring it!  She was looking around at the classroom, looking at the shoebox diagrams other students had made.  Never once did she tell the kids to be quiet.  It was just me, over and over, asking the students to be silent. Strike one of anger against the teachers.

Honestly, at that point, I’m ashamed to say, I was a bit smug.  I know that I had my students better behaving than THAT.  I started to think that maybe my standards of good classroom behavior were much higher than the other teachers.  Maybe my kids aren’t so bad, relative to the other students, after all.   It was just that I held them to a higher standard than the other teachers.    

Eventually, I was called to the classroom that contained my students, to answer any questions the students may have with the test.    That was strike two of the Friday anger.  I looked at the question. It was simple- conversions between percentages and decimals.   Material I knew well.  Material my students didn’t know at all, because it was included on the list (that I had been informally e-mailed) of material exempt from the exam.   There was also a section on conversions that appeared nowhere on the previous exam (again, I had been told to teach to the exam).  So I was incredibly upset.  My students aren’t going to be able to pass this exam, not because my teaching skills, but because of inadequate communications skills.  

Strike 2.1 of the Friday anger was learning that my way of teaching division (by writing the remainder at the top, next to the whole number, rather than just leaving the remainder at the bottom of the math problem) would be marked wrong, because people in India aren’t used to seeing the remaindered as part of the circled answer.   That really upset me.   It is, in fact, incredibly stupid.  If you are grading, you try to streamline the process.  Having the students put the entire answer in two places, rather than one place makes absolutely no sense.  It takes twice as long to grade! Sure, it is just a different method. But at that point, I was so frustrated that my kids would get marked down for correct answers, simply because it wasn’t written in the Indian format.

Since I have arrived here, I tell myself, over and over, each day, that we are in a different country.  A different culture.  Adjust.  At that point on Friday, I reminded myself again. 

But then came strike number three.  With all my heart, I believe those teachers are just plain wrong and lack the proper respect for their students.  I no longer have any respect for the teachers. 

Strike three occurred with the teacher proctoring my students answered her ringing cell phone in the middle of the exam.  

Now, I know, in India, everyone answers his or her phone, regardless of the situation.  In America, we’d consider pretty much every person in this country incredibly rude.  When we were apartment hunting with the realtor- she’d take personal calls.  At our dinner party, in the middle of conversations, people would take personal calls.   As far as I can tell, there is never an inappropriate time to take a phone call (I hope that I am wrong!).   I got used to it.  In fact, there is no such thing as leaving a voice message here.  You have to text if you want to leave a message.

 But taking a phone call, and speaking in your incredibly loud, booming voice, for five to ten minutes, in the middle of the student’s exam?  She wasn’t whispering.  She didn’t move to the hall.  She sat, her voice projecting, and calmly took a phone call.   It was ridiculous.  How are my students supposed to concentrate while she is doing that?   Even worse, once it was over, she proceeded to tell me about the conversation! In a voice every student could clearly hear.  I’m sure, had I been a cartoon, that my mouth would have dropped to the floor. 

I’m sorry.  Cultural differences or not, I just don’t respect that or her anymore.   Three strikes.  It is just wrong to let the kids blatantly copy.  It is wrong to misinform their teacher what material to cover on the exam.  It is certainly wrong to talk loudly on the phone while the students are in the class trying to pass an exam.  

I feel like I am in my philosophy class from college, discussing moral relativism.  It has been a good eight years or so, but I remember the point I personally took was that there is no such thing.  Yes, some cultures are just wrong.  Otherwise, you have to start believing that Hitler was right at the time, for his culture, etc.  You have to believe that America’s slavery was right and correct at some point.  And yes, I think that we should be able to say that culture was just plain wrong at those times.  Never should it acceptable to kill someone for his or her religion/dark hair.  Or imprison people as slaves. Some people (from a philosophical standpoint) disagree, and say that it was morally right, at that given time.  “When in Rome” might work well on a general basis, but at some point, you have to just stand up and say, “I may be in the minority, but I still think you are wrong and I won’t stand for it.”  And I just can no longer stand the attitudes of these teachers.    Of course…. I just imagined I said that.  I didn’t actually say it on Friday. 

And I know, I KNOW that people come to America, and can pick and point to things and have the exact same argument. I’m sure, if I had been born in another country, I would do the same.  But it still doesn’t change how I feel.   I just can’t stand the teaching culture here. 

There may be organization that I am unaware of, but, as a volunteer, despite having taught everyday for nearly six weeks, I am still not on any e-mail lists.  My students were the people who have to tell me that we have an upcoming holiday and no school.  There is absolutely no communication flow to me.  

Assuming strike three was a actually a foul ball, and my teaching career at this school is still up to bat, my kids managed to strike out spectacularly after the exam.  The previous week, Teacher R and I decided to take the students who had been good outside to play on the small lawn.  They love a game called kho-kho, which is a complicated version of tag.   With Teacher R, they are well behaved. She divided them up into teams, and they played, rather peacefully.

On Friday, I took the kids out by myself.  The first thing they did, after I asked them NOT to do it, was to run directly to the playground equipment and start climbing up the slides.   It isn’t ‘our’ school, and the security guards had already asked me to not let them play on it, for safety issues.  Now, I was a kid once.  I know how much fun it is to run across the drawbridge and play on the monkey bars.  Even more fun for them because they have to walk by this playground equipment each day, but not use it.  Even so, we were there to play kho-kho, not break the swing set, and so I had to get my students off the set and onto the grass.  I usually employee two of my students who are well respected by the others to do this.  They got them off the equipment, and I told them to divide up into teams.

I picked the two captains, and told them to select the rest of their team themselves.  They couldn’t even divide into teams on their own.   I have never seen such an inability to think for themselves.   They honestly couldn’t do it.  They wasted at least five minutes dividing themselves before starting again.  I see now why the teacher last week divided them herself.  They eventually started to play.  Last week, the game was SO important to the kids.  They were organized.   They were into it.  This week?  They were a disaster.  They were breaking the rules of the game.  Fighting.  Pulling on each other.  Random kids would abandon the game and run back to the playground equipment.   My driver, who was watching them play, told me it was madness.

Finally, incredibly angry at their insistence on running up the slide rather than going down it, I told them we were all leaving and never doing this again.  The kids begged me and begged for a second chance.  I swear, if I could make flames shoot out of my eyes, that would have been the day.  But two of the kids, despite my raised voice and dagger glare, still had the gall to grab my arm, pull, and beg.  I couldn’t believe it.  What will it take to make them behave? I had NEVER been as angry with them as I was that day.   But they were still completely immune to it.  

I realized at that moment I would never have full control of the class.  I was completely enraged, and they still had no fear of me, like they fear the other teachers.   They may come up to me in class and tell me I am their favorite teacher (one on Friday even told me he loved me), but no matter what I do, I don’t think I can get them to respect me.  

Drunken husbands - or - the fishing caste

On Friday I had a very interesting conversation with our maid/cook, Lady S.  She speaks English well, but still with a very heavy accent.  So I’m not always sure I am interpreting her words correctly. Or our driver’s, for that matter.  But the story below is what I believe she was telling me.

I had come home, exhausted as usual, from the gym.   For once, I had no lesson plans or reading comprehensions to frantically make before heading off to teach my students, so I grabbed a glass of milk and double rich chocolate protein powder, drank it in the kitchen, and just chatted with her for a while.  I think she was bored, too, because she was cleaning out the spice drawer.  

We started the conversation rather dully.  I would look at the particular spice jar she was cleaning, smell it, ask the name, and promptly forget the name.  Some she would encourage me to taste.  Eventually we both grew bored of that activity (she has quite a few spices in that drawer) and, I meekly put my milk glass in the sink.  I always feel weird creating more work for her, right in her presence.  Clearly I was doing nothing but loafing around while she worked. 

I started a second attempt at the conversation by asking about her marriage.  Our driver, Driver A, had told me that Lady S had a love marriage (previously, I had believed the opposite- he had told me that HE had a love marriage- again, difficulties in interpreting the people’s words here).  Driver A had been very self-righteous, proclaiming how much better arranged marriages were than love marriages, because, in love marriages, “the love leaves within six years”.  I had asked him if he loved his wife at all (since his was an arranged marriage) and he told me yes.  He said children were smarter now than in the past, because more people were getting arranged marriages again.  I guess people have seen the error of loving before the marriage. 

Marriage is a weird topic here.  Everyone thinks that their idea is the best.  I guess it is like that in the US, too, with some Christians so ridiculously against gay marriage.   But marriage in general seems to evoke very strong opinions in India.   Teacher R told me she had asked her students why people get married.   Her reason?  To have kids.  I personally thought that was an awfully short list of reasons.  Don’t you want more than just kids out of a marriage?  A sense of belonging, love, family?  What if you are unable to have kids? Is it okay to end the marriage then?  Teacher R is a Christian, incidentally, if you are keeping tabs on the various religious beliefs associated with marriages. 

Anyhow, after hearing about the marriages of the people that my maid and driver know, I sure am glad I don’t have to be in their situations, regardless of whether they had love or arranged marriages. 

Back in the kitchen, Lady S was telling me how she fell in love, and got married at 16.  Sixteen years old, can you believe that?   She is about my age.  I was a sophomore in high school at that age.  Granted, the school system here is different- I think she’d be out of grade school by then.   But still.  Married. 

If I understood her correctly, her mother never gave her ‘the talk’, and so she didn’t know she was pregnant.  A friend told her at 7 months.  She apparently didn’t even know how babies were made.   And so her daughter was born.   Lady S is 29 years old now, with a second daughter who is now about 3 years old. 

About five or six years ago, her husband started the drinking and yelling.  His job (I believe she called it ‘poon’, but I can’t figure out quite what word she was saying) is a low-paying job where he runs errands for other people.  For example, if I need to give my husband a piece of paper at work, I could hire him to run the paper over to him.  It seems like a pretty common job here in India.  He earns about 4000 rupees/month ($89).   Lady S earns twice that.  Can you imagine supporting a family of four on $267 a month?

Lady S comes to work at our spacious two-bedroom apartment after feeding her daughters and dropping them off at their school.  She stays until noon or one, making fancy food for us, putting our barely worn clothes in a washer and then dyer, putting dishes in the dishwasher, and cleaning our floors and bathrooms.  She then picks up her daughters, and takes them home.  She cooks for them, and hand washes all of the family laundry.  Hand washes her dishes. Cleans the home. Plays with her children, helping them learn.  What a busy life she has.  She has to do all the housework twice each day.  And it is much more difficult the second time around.   Her husband comes home from his job around 4:30 pm.   He demands food, yells a lot, eats, and leaves the house to go get drunk.  Every. Single. Day. 

Lady S doesn’t really like drinking.  A lot of people in India don’t really like it.   Now I can see why women don’t like it. Driver A- he will go out and drink with his friends, too.   He doesn’t tell his wife.  I had thought it was a bit funny, at first, him hiding the one day a month when he drinks beer with his friends, but now I see how sad the situation is.   

Lady S is from a fishing caste.  Their family has been here for years and years.  Apparently, the name of her street is even her last name.  And the men of the fishing caste are great at drinking.  Lady S told me that for every three men, two will be complete drunks.  Her husband included.

‘But,’ she told me proudly, ‘he never hits me’.  Well, maybe that is the silver lining.  

Driver A elaborated this for me a bit.  Again, is a Muslim, so he doesn’t have the same family history, background, etc as Lady S., who is a Hindu.  But he still, around his community, had stories to tell.  He told me that most husbands will come home, and immediately pick a fight.   ‘The food is too salty. WHY DID YOU PUT SO MUCH SALT IN THE FOOD?”  Often, this seemingly stupid little topic results in a ‘coin’ around the wife’s eye (black eye) from being hit with a fist.  The husband will leave, and possibly not come back for days.  If he is back, he will engage in that childhood game we all stopped in middle school, “Kids, tell your mother that…” The kids relay the message.    The mother listens, and responds with “Kids, tell your father…” Driver A says that a week or so later, the fight is over and everything is peaceful.  For a day or two.  

Driver A additionally told me that drunk husbands will come home around 1:00 or 2:00 am, after drinking the night away, and roughly push their wife awake, “make me some food, woman”.   She has to get up and make a meal for him.  Remember that there aren’t refrigerators in these families.  So food is basically cooked from scratch for each meal.   Driver A, his chest puffed up in pride, pride informed me that he doesn’t do that to his wife.   He always makes sure to eat before going home as to not bother her.  I didn’t ask about whether or not he hits her, though. 

Lady S told me her husband’s shouting doesn’t bother her anymore.  She knows he won’t change, so why worry about it?  She seems complacent.  I am glad that she can be at peace, but it is so painful to hear her story.  I don’t want her to have to settle.  I want her to have a better life.  I want her kids to know that it can be different, to find something better.  But this is the life that the fishing caste knows.  Normal life.

She told me, again, how surprised she was that the previous renters had never yelled at her.  That the husband had never yelled at the wife.   Normal life to us is alien to her.  No wonder people in India like working for the foreigners so much. 

Free massage

Yesterday I redeemed my free massage from Gold's gym. It was okay.  The massage was the first thing that seemed even semi-formal there.  For example, when we first signed up, we didn’t even pay for our gym membership (since we didn’t have an Indian bank account yet) for the first two weeks.   No one seemed worried.  I redeemed my two free personal trainer sessions without ever producing the coupons.  When I decided to sign up for long-term PT, they told me to just pay in the next couple of days. 

But the massage- before we started, the coupon was the first thing she asked me for! 

Having never had a massage in India, I asked the front desk a couple of simple questions.   Do we tip?  They laughed. No, no, no!  What about your clothes?  Do you take them all off?  I wasn’t sure, since women seem to cover up much more here, if massages were done over the clothes or something unexpected like that.   The woman at the counter just blushed and stammered she’d never had a massage before and didn’t know.  

I went back to the changing room, because the massage room is inside, and waited until the masseuse arrived.  I was sure it would be a female, because you can’t even get your backpack checked by a male here.  Very same-sex segregation for all activities that involve even the most remote amount of touching.    Plus, it was inside the ladies’ locker room.  Sure enough, a heavyset woman wearing a blue and green salwar kameez came up and shook my hand. 

She took me into the massage room.  It was certainly the smallest possible room you could make to still function as a massage room.  It had the standard narrow table, and a couple feet of space in each direction around it.  The table was covered with blue and white striped towels, rather than sheets.  An additional folded towel sat upon the table. 

She told me to change.  I looked at her, curious.  Change into what?  The towel, apparently.  Since there aren’t sheets, you are supposed to wrap the towel around your body.  She also told me to strip down to my undies, but to be sure (as she emphasized) to keep them on. 

She closed the door, and I folded my clothes neatly on the tiny wall shelf.  Dubiously I wrapped the towel around myself and climbed up on the table.   Unlike normal massage tables, this one didn’t have a place for the head.  It just was a flat table.  Also unheated. 

When she walked back into the room, the first thing she did was pick up a remote control and turn the air conditioner on!  I’ve never had that experience before!  Massages are supposed to be warm, but I suppose in that tiny room it gets too warm, too fast.   But she must have known the proper setting, because I never felt cold.  

I say the massage was okay for several reasons.  The first awkwardness occurred nearly immediately.  She started with standard, normal small talk, ‘where do you live?’ but then immediately stunned me with her follow-up question of, “do you need a maid or cook?” and proceeded to tell me all about her sister or cousin or whomever it was that needed a job.  I patiently listened, and told her no.   Maybe that IS normal, standard small talk in India, but it was certainly unexpected (and uncomfortable) to me. 

The next moment of weirdness came when she pushed my underwear down!  She specifically told me to leave them on, then proceeded to move them.   It was so weird.  I mean, I guess it is good that they aren’t in the way for the lower back and hip massage, but people in the US sure seemed okay working around them….    So that was just too strange for me.

It was a half hour massage, so she did my back and legs only.  It was a Swedish massage rather than deep tissue, so it felt okay, but I don’t think it really got any knots out of my back.  So it seemed a bit like a waste of time.

Near the end of the session, she told me she did home visits, too.  Semi-interested, but mainly acting out of politeness, I asked her rate.  500 rupees ($11.11) for a 1-hour session.  Quite a different price than in the US!  After the massage, she pulled a business card from a drawer under the table and wrote her name on it. She scratched out the image on the card (of a car and driver for hire) and told me the number on the card is hers.

My husband says business cards are extremely important in India.  If you get one, you are supposed to hold it lovingly and gaze upon it, pretending (or actually) studying the printed words with an intensity that says, “yes, I will respect and call you”.   Still naked under the towel, I did my best to do this without feeling too dorky. 

When I arrived home, I asked our maid, Lady S, if 500 was a good rate.  She said yes, it was.  We then had one of those common, but still fun conversations where we try to figure out what the other person is saying.   She said what I thought was ‘pretty center’ which I found very confusing.  What did she mean?  She pointed to my computer, and had me type.     I thought she was telling me the name of a better massage parlor, so I amended my name guess to Pretty Zen Center.  Then Pretty Zenter.  Eventually I learned she was actually saying ‘Priety Zinta’, a famous movie star in India.  Apparently Lady S could give me her masseuse contact, if I wanted.  But she told me that the masseuse is pretty old, so I should stick with the woman I met today.  Overall, a rather worthless conversation, but enjoyable nonetheless.

I like talking with Lady S. She smiles a lot and seems to enjoy herself.  Maybe if I call this woman I’ll get Lady S a massage, too. She says she has never had one before. 

Gold's Gym, Bandra

Time to get into shape!

In the past, I used to work out on a fairly regular frequency.   In high school, I was on the power lifting team.  Yes, with my scrawny little arms!  In undergrad, I was playing various sports 3-4 times per week.   My friend AEI and I would go to Gold’s in Battle Creek and lift weights on a regular basis.   Then came grad school.  I definitely started slacking off.  For a year or two, I stuck to mostly running and workout videos.  Then the hip pain came, and, having never been a fan of upper body work, I worked out less and less consistently.   Eventually the hip pain diminished, only to be replaced by back and shoulder pain. I am fairly certain the back and shoulder pain is the result of bad posture in front of a computer.  Regardless, it still exists today. My back is pathetically weak. 

My husband and I decide to join Gold’s gym in India.  I’ve gone running a couple of times, then decided to actually take advantage of the two free hours of personal training.  I had fancied myself an expert on all of the machines, but it has been a long time, and I figured I could use some re-training on my form.   I especially wanted help on how to properly strengthen my back, since I always end up in pain when lifting. 

Wow.    That is all I can say.  Having a personal trainer is AMAZING.  I was sweating bullets my first session.  In my second, I couldn’t get my legs to stop shaking.   I’m sure some people are much better at motivating themselves than me, but having a trainer made me work so much harder.  I guess it is easier to quit your shoulder workout when no one is watching. But with the trainer, when my arms started to shake, and I would have quit, he just grabbed the bar and helped a bit and made me finish the reps. 

Not only did I work out harder, I think I worked out better.  When I have been working my shoulders in the past, I would always get a sharp throbbing pain in the left side, and quit.  I haven’t been doing push-ups for years because of it.   But with my PT, and just tiny adjustments, or a poke in the back to remember to work certain muscles- I’m absurdly sore, but not in a painful way.   

Now, despite my last post, which detailed the ridiculously expensive ($13 Cinnamon Toast Crunch, for example) things in India, many things are in fact cheap.  Mainly, things that involve labor. That is why people can afford to have a maid, a cook, and a driver.  There are 14 million plus people in the city.  Labor is cheap.  Yesterday, my teacher friend told me that hiring a hitman is only 10,000 to 20,000 rupees here ($225-$450).  A more innocuous example would be free delivery on anything.  You want one scoop of ice cream? (Who would want only one scoop is beyond me)   You can have it delivered for free.   Less than a buck total in price.  As I said, labor is cheap. 

Which brings me to the price of a personal trainer.   In the US, we certainly can’t afford it.  I don’t think I know anyone who can afford it.  Here, it is still expensive.    But only about $8.00 per session, which is (relatively) amazingly cheap.    Even the price of our gym, for a full year, was less than $35 per month.  And we are in a huge, expensive city  (well, real-estate-wise.  Our rent here is much more than our rent in Chicago). 

So, I decided it is now or never.  I will never again be able to afford a personal trainer.  So this is the year.    My first real session was today!

So, what is a Gold’s Gym like in Mumbai?   Pretty much the same as it is in the States, I feel like.  Granted, it has been a few years since I’ve been to the Gold’s BC gym, but it even has some of the same designs. It is missing the superman hues of Gold’s BC.  It only uses silver and red, plus a sort of dull tan/orange color. It has a lot of silver paint on all of the beams and support posts, open ceilings, and big pieces of decorative red stuff sticking out in various places (I think this description only makes sense if you have seen a Gold’s gym).  It has two floors, even, though not divided into a ‘women’s only section like the BC gym.

It has changing rooms, a spin room full of cycles, a sauna, and a massage room.  I get my free massage (for signing up) tomorrow.  It has a juice bar, too.  As far as I can tell, it doesn’t have the clothing to sell. The lower floor has the weight machines (and a rock climbing wall, but it seems to be unused), and the upper floor has treadmills.    The floor itself is a nice light hardwood.  It isn’t too hot inside, thank goodness!  Everything is a bit smaller than in BC, but, like I said, real estate is pretty expensive in this city, so that doesn’t surprise me. 

The equipment- it certainly has less equipment than the BC gym, due to the space constraint, but it is nice and well-maintained.  Probably much better maintained, since labor is cheap, you can get it fixed right away. It is much more clean, too.   There are five or six people walking around, just to constantly clean the machines, mats, and floors.  Occasionally, I’ve seen a manager walk behind them, checking their work.

The music- very loud.  It is a great beat for running, certainly.  But very difficult to hear my PT talking.  At night, it takes on a club-like experience, playing the latest songs from Lady Gaga, etc.  I believe it is mostly American music, or music with a good beat and no words, but today I heard Sheila Ki Jawani, which is this incredibly popular song in India right now.  Half the words are in English, so I’ve caught on to that song, at least.  I of course, am the master at brutally messing up the words of songs, so rather than singing along the name Sheila, I sing ‘She-Ra’, which makes me smile each time I hear the song (probably 4 times a day). 

One difference is certainly the people.  There are extremely buff men walking around, just like any Gold’s gym.   Something that at first really amused me was that some men were wearing winter stocking caps.  But I THINK these must be men who are religious and must cover their hair.  I’ll ask at some point. I guess the knit hat stays on better when working out.  The men seem like they are in pretty good shape.   Even so, you still don’t see too many men running.  For the most part, you see people on the treadmills walking.   Walking, and talking on their cell phone at the same time. 

The women, for the most part, are not as physically fit LOOKING as they are at a Gold’s in the States.  There are some super fit, super strong, awesome at kickboxing women, but you don’t see such skinny, pure muscle women like you’d see at a Gold's in the US.  Of course, I’ve only been to the gym a handful of times.  Again, I haven’t really seen any women running.  Most are walking on the treadmills. They are walking, with their waist length hair swaying back and forth, because very few women seem to tie their hair up here.  There is a spin room, for cycling, so I’d guess people work out quite hard in there, but I haven’t seen it in action.  You also, occasionally, see a woman working out in her salwar kameez. 

But overall, it looks very much like a Gold’s in the US. The people seem really nice and polite inside, too. Much more so than out in the general world.  I guess it is true that working out makes you happy.  So the atmosphere in Gold’s India feels very much the same.  The biggest difference is just the number of employees walking around, wanting to help you.  There are at least 10-15 trainers walking around.  They will correct your form, encourage you, etc.   So that is quite nice.

So how did my session go? 

It was great!  I started with a 10-minute walk to warm up.  We went into working my back, arms, shoulders, and chest.  He makes me sporadically do jumping jacks, run stairs (those kill), and jump rope, too.  Which is good, because usually I never get my heart rate up!   We did lower back and sit-ups.  He stretches you, rather than you stretching yourself, which is wonderful. Amazingly wonderful. They also sort of crack your back each time, which I love.  I feel like I’m in less pain already with my back, after only a week.    Then I did an elliptical-like machine for 15 minutes.  In total, I guess I was working out for nearly 1 hour, 45 minutes, rather than the 1-hour the session is supposed to be.  I’m sweated like a pig and loved it!  

My PT did tell me to lay off the buttered chicken leftovers that I’ve been eating, though!  

My PT seems really nice, I like him.  He is the same age as me, been training/working out professionally since he was 16, is married (his wife is a teacher, too) and he has pet fish and birds.  He also only sleeps 4 hours per night.  So he is the 3^rd or 4^th Indian to tell me that.  I’m starting to REALLY believe we have the sleep thing wrong in the States…  

I have a tendency to grimace when working out.  If it is hard to do the rep, I clench my teeth; sort of growl- you know the drill.   But my PT told me that it is really bad.  He said that when women do that, they get square faces.  Now, personally, I always thought female bodybuilders have square faces because they were on steroids.  So if anyone else has an opinion on that matter, I’d like to hear it.  It was just the first time I’d ever heard it….   So I am supposed to smile throughout the workout.  That is ridiculously hard to do.   But I snuck a peek around at the other women, and they were indeed smiling.  So it must be a common thing to do here.  That, or just everyone loves being at the gym!

The Price is Right

And our next item up for bid is a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Breakfast Cereal.   

Whoever can guess the actual retail price without going over wins! Let’s start the bidding with you…

Here is a list of the outrageously good and outrageously bad prices we have found here in India.   And yes, I am ashamed to say, we bought every item on this list.  If the stickers were in American dollars, they definitely would not have been purchased.   It sure teaches us to travel with a calculator. 

Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Conditioner                      $31.11                 (1400 rupees)

Haagen Dazs ice cream (1 pint)                            $12.78                (575 rupees)

Honey Bunches of Oats Cereal                             $6.11                  (275 rupees)

20 stems of cut orchids                                          $8.88                  (400 rupees)

Half-dozen small bananas                                      $0.44                   (20 rupees)

1 L of milk (about 1 quart)                                     $1.00                   (45 rupees)

Pepsi 600 mL                                                         $0.56                   (25 rupees)

Cheap domestic wine                                             $12.00                 (540 rupees)

1 L of OJ (about 1 quart)                                        $1.89                   (85 rupees)

500 mL Gatorade (about 2 cups)                            $0.78                   (35 rupees)

WHOLE pineapple                                                 $1.22                   (55 rupees)

Box of tissues                                                         $6.00                    (270 rupees)

Whey protein powder (2 lb bottle)                        $52.11                  (2345 rupees)

Johnnie Walker Black Label 750 mL                 $77.78        (3500 rupees)           

Basil (three meals worth of pesto)                        $0.89                   (40 rupees)

Bottle of water (1 L)                                             $0.38                   (17 rupees)

Electric toothbrush                                                $12.78                 (575 rupees)

6 pack of granola bars                                           $5.00                    (225 rupees)

Jar of oats (maybe like a small Quaker Oats)       $2.44                   (110 rupees)

Trident gum                                                           $2.11                   (95 rupees)

HP printer ink                                                        $17.56                  (790 rupees)

1 upscale haircut (for men)                                    $13.33                 (600 rupees)

1 haircut, where our driver goes:                           $0.56                   (25 rupees)

From a store similar to Target:

Bath towel                                                  $6.89                   (310 rupees)

Hand towel                                                 $1.91                   (86 rupees)

Washcloth                                                   $1.29                   (58 rupees)

Small decorative pillow                              $1.76                   (79 rupees)

Women’s shirts (kurtas)                 $4.91 to $15.98     (221 to 719 rupees)

Cable TV (for 1 year)                                             $148.89              (6700 rupees)

Vitamins, 1 month                                                $1.50                   (67.30 rupees)

Peanut butter                                                            $4.67                  (210 rupees)

Car wash, every day (one month)                           $11.11                  (500 rupees)

Gillette deodorant                                                    $3.31                   (149 rupees)

Gillette shaving cream                                            $4.67                  (210 rupees)

Contact lens solution (off brand)                            $3.33                  (150 rupees)

And the actual retail price of the box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch Breakfast Cereal is  $12.00 (540 rupees)! 

PS I’d like to thank my husband for the idea for this particular story.

Orchids

I bought two beautiful bundles of orchids today.   The flower shop is located on the sidewalk, next to a park where kids play cricket and soccer. The store is simply one line of ten gallon buckets, each brimming with flowers.  They probably have five or six types of flowers, all quite lovely.   The buckets are manned by two gentlemen, one of whom was sitting  directly on the sidewalk trimming flowers and laying them on newspaper. 

The very first bucket in line contained the orchids I purchased.  I wouldn’t buy them in the US, because they are dyed blue, and for the most part, we eschew such things in the States. We like our flowers natural.  But I figured, in India, the more garish the better.  It is the land of color.  Plus, they are amazing to look at, and match my furniture.  

The gentleman wrapped the bundle of flowers in clear plastic with a printed white heart pattern, just like it would be wrapped in the States.  I handed over the money, and the gentleman trimming flowers handed me a beautiful, full-blown yellow rose.  Yellow just happens to be my favorite color.  It smelled wonderful. 

I, of course, am terrible at negotiating, so it did lead to troubles.  I bought two bundles, for a total of 20 stems (each stem with many buds and flowers) for 500 rupees, or $11.  I was very pleased with this price, since potted orchids in the States would cost more than that for even one stem.  

My driver, on the other hand, was very displeased.  He started arguing in rapid Hindi or Marathi, and eventually the men handed him a 100 rupee note.  Apparently, I paid too much for the already incredibly cheap flowers. At least I got to keep the bonus rose.

I meekly handed my driver the yellow rose and told him to give it to his wife.  I hope she likes it.  It was beautiful.

The concert

In early January, when we had first arrived in Mumbai, my husband forwarded me an e-mail, accompanied by the simple phrase, “do you want to go?”   I, naturally, thought it was a joke, like in Chicago when I would leave Joffrey Ballet pamphlets sitting about the home, knowing full well the image could never convince my husband to take me again.

After all, the e-mail was for a concert.  My husband has been to a grand total of zero concerts in his life.  My modest number of concerts is three; as a third grader I went to see the New Kids on the Block; I saw Matchbox 20 as a high schooler; and I saw Toby Keith in concert while in college.   Never have either of us been to lollapalooza, nor the free concerts in Grant Park, despite living, for three years, in an apartment building that in fact overlooked the musicians.   Thus, to me, it was not a serious question. 

After a few minutes of face-to-face, rather than e-mail conversation, I became aware of my mistake.  Yes, my husband truly did want to go to a concert.  I was flabbergasted.  I assured him that I wouldn’t have fun, but would go if he really wanted to.   After all, we have to make friends somehow.  

Now, it isn’t to say that I don’t like music.  From Thanksgiving until New Years, I have my radio on continuously.  Yes, I listen to the all-Christmas music station.  It makes me incredibly happy.  But my radio is off for the non- holiday season.   I know the words to all of my favorite musicals, such as The Sound of Music, Grease, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Annie, The Wizard of Oz, etc.  I love those songs. I can, of course, sing along to any Disney Princess movie.  I am great at identifying the 1990’s WWF theme songs. I enjoy listening to Lady Gaga, and pretty much any music my parents played in the house (Beatles, Stones, Eagles, Doors, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, etc).   I just don’t listen to music to listen to music.  It is always a background thing for me.  

Looking back, I do remember that my husband used to play that car radio game where you name the song and singer before the other people in the car.  At one point, he had a large collection of CDs.  But we are getting old, and I had forgotten he actually had a desire, at one point, to just sit and listen to music.    

I have mentioned before how obsessed the city seems to be with Bryan Adams. When I noticed his name on the concert e-mail, I recognized it, just as one might recognize Lex Luther as the bald bad guy on Superman, without really remembering what Luther did that was so bad.   But you know you’ve heard the name before, vaguely remember that Lex Luther is no good guy.  That is about as deep as my Bryan Adams memories go.  I knew that I would recognize some of his songs.  But for the life of me, without google at my side, I couldn’t tell you what those songs were.    

Fast forward to last Saturday, and we were arriving at the concert.  We met up at a coffee house, with other members of my husband’s company, to pick up our tickets.  For the first time in five months, I bought a cup of coffee.  I was worried I might fall asleep.  

We arrived at the grounds a short rickshaw ride later.  It was actually quite confusing to find the location, and I’m very glad that a Hindi-speaking co-worker was in the same auto as us.  The concert was an outdoor concert, of course.  Like San Francisco, there are dry and rainy seasons here.  I understand it, but it is still mind-boggling to know, with a 100% certainty, that it will not rain for so many months straight.   For a Michigander, you have to be prepared for anything.   Heck, I hear it is 40 degrees right now, in February!  My cousin is facebooking about flip-flops in winter. In Michigan, you are always prepared for any form of precipitation and wild temperature fluctuations.  It is just weird to have (to me) absolutely no change in the weather on a daily basis.  Or at least, I would call the weather changes here too subtle to even matter on a daily basis.   To the people who were born and raised here, of course, they are quite varying.  

The concert was held on a big, fairly even ground, and the walls were made of the sheets of corrugated metal that acts as housing/roofs for so many people.    The walls were held up with thick bamboo sticks.   I actually even took a photo of this.  It is rather blurry, but you can see the bamboo sticks and wall.  And a police guard.   I think the walls are actually permanent.  From the picture, you can see that it has a pretty nice sidewalk.  

Outside the concert, there were (I believe) four entrances. The VVIP1, VVIP2, GOLD, and SILVER.   Us SILVER ticket holders had to walk to the opposite side of the ‘arena’ to enter.  We got in our lines (gender specific, of course), and were told to throw away our bottle of water.   There seems, in general, to be a lack of trash bins in this country.  So we gingerly placed our bottle on the stack of other discarded items thrown about on the ground, and glanced around dubiously, feeling guilty for littering.  No one blinked an eye at our littering, though. 

Inside, it was huge.  The hard-packed dirt was covered with bright green nylon tarps.   You can see gaps in the cover from the photo.   The SILVER section was in the very back, so we couldn’t even see the stage unless we sort of jumped.  The light scaffolding was directly between the stage and us.  Instead of watching Bryan live, we would be watching him on the four large screens projecting images from the stage.   

I of course, immediately found the most important piece of information- the location of the bathrooms.  You don’t want it to be dark and realize you have no idea where they are located!  There was a line of port-o-potties on either side of us.   For once in my life, the line for the women was much shorter than for the men!  That was an exciting bit of unexpected luck.   Only once did I have to snap at someone not to cut in line.  So the people at the concert seemed a bit better behaved than the general population.  

We also noticed how tall all of the people seemed to be.  They were, for the most part, our own height.  It really brought to life how important it is to be able to afford good nourishment for your children to grow. Clearly, most people at the concert were wealthy.   It was the first place I’ve been where I didn’t quite feel like a giant.   

My husband and I quickly rubbed our rose-scented bug spray lotion on every nook and cranny of our exposed bodies, while his co-workers laughed at our American weaknesses.  But I know how many mosquitoes are in that location, and I wasn’t taking any chances.  By the way, when I got home, I found ZERO new bites, so that lotion is pretty amazing.   And well worth the laughs!

We pushed our way to the front of the SILVER section to see what we could see.  Ahead, it looked like a large area that we are presumed was the ‘gold’ section.   That section could actually see the stage.  To the front right and left were the VVIP sections.   VVIP1 had chefs, even.  You could see their hats from the distance.   They also got some free red glow stick thingy, which you could also see quite clearly from the distance.  I, of course, was instantly jealous and wished I had a free red glowstick thingy. 

The VVIP1 tickets cost 10000 rupees.   Those were THE most expensive tickets. That is about $222.  Our ‘cheap’ tickets were 2000 rupees, or about $45.    I don’t go to concerts in the US, but it seems like a small range between the cheapest and most expensive. Especially for India.  $45 certainly isn’t pocket money here.  

Any large gathering requires knowing the attendance, and this concert was no exception.  At one point, he called us, '20,000 something friends’. So there were about 20,000 people at the concert.   The area was so large I would have had no way to guess how many people were there.  But I was surprised by how UNCROWDED it was.  True, we stood near the back, but there was plenty of space around us.   Being India, I had expected quite a crowd.  But it was peacefully nice.   

Men in multi-colored clown wigs passed out free packets of potato chips (herb and lime flavored, they were delicious), and vendors walked through the crowds selling tiny bottles of Pepsi and other pops (for about $1), waters, corn snacks, samosas, etc.  We ate the free potato chips, but avoided the yummy looking food, since we didn’t know how it had been prepared.  I still wasn’t quite ready to litter, despite our early actions at the entryway, so I shoved my empty Pepsi bottle and chip packets in my back pocket.  At least, they stayed there until we found the designated spot on the ground where everyone else threw their trash.  

When we entered the concert grounds, canned music was playing.  It was all pretty good, basic music that any American would enjoy.  So I started to get excited about the concert and even cracked a smile, which I am sure relieved my husband!  

He wanted to find a place to sit on the ground, but I refused, under the worry of stampedes, which seem to happen with regularity in this country.  No need to be trampled by 20,000 people when some silly thing happened.    There were some people sitting among the throngs of standing people, but it was dark, and I just didn’t want to be bumped.  

When Bryan Adams finally took the stage, he simply started playing.  Eventually, he took the time to stop singing and said, “Hi, I’m Bryan”. But that was nearly the extent of his speaking. He just sang, with maybe two small breaks, throughout which he was talking rather than singing.  It was very impressive, according to my husband, who knows musical things like that better than me.

When he started playing, however, I was immediately disappointed. I did not recognize the song.   I took that as a bad omen- wouldn’t he start with a song everyone loves, to get them excited?   Well, based on the cheering, probably everyone else did recognize it! He continued playing.  And playing.  It was a full hour before I recognized a single song!  Oh my, that was boring for me.  

I entertained myself, during that first hour, by watching a man with a very talented air guitar.  He was dressed in all black, and had 16 images of Barak Obama on his shirt.   He had glasses, short, grayish hair, and sweat dripping over his entire body.   It was clearly one of the best days of his life.  He was basically air-guitaring a wide circle around us, since we were in a fairly open space.   He was so enthusiastic, and so incredibly happy.  I was so jealous of how happy he was.  Yes, some might say he was just making a fool of himself, dancing around with his air guitar, jamming right next to random strangers, down on his knees at time, running full force at others, bumping into us occasionally, and making up odd dance steps.  But I just wished I could feel that incredibly happy over this music.   At one point, my husband, looking at him, simply said, “I’m so glad he was able to get a ticket”.   I felt the same way.  You could just see the excitement and happiness exuding out of him. 

Watching him really made me think I should stop taking notes in my blackberry and actually listen to the music I don’t recognize.   To say I didn’t recognize the songs isn’t completely true.  Quite frequently, I would recognize the opening keys of a song, or a line or two.  It really perplexed me at first, as to why I didn’t recognize more.   I finally realized I recognized the songs/ intro strumming because of my iTouch.

My sister gave me her old iTouch, with plenty of songs on it.  However, many of the songs she had herself purchased, and iTunes wouldn’t give me permission to play them.   So I had, before leaving for India, gone through it and removed the songs she had purchased from iTunes. I’m sure there is a more time-efficient way to do this, but I did it by clicking on each and every song in my iTunes library, and listening to see if it would play or not.  So effectively, I had gone through all the songs on the iPod, but had only played the opening second or two of each song, to make sure it would work!  Then I would move onto the next song.  As a consequence, I also knew many song titles.   So there you have it.  Thanks to iTunes making me delete my sister’s purchases, I know the beginning sounds of at least 1000 songs, but don’t have any clue as to what the rest of the song is about!

At one point, when I again had never heard the song, my husband leaned over and said, “if you don’t recognize this one, then you’ll only recognize one all night.” Sigh.  That was disappointing to learn!  Another time, he said, “you know this one!”  To which I replied, “nope.”  Apparently he had played it to for me before.    Feeling guilty, I retorted that I know music about as well as he remembers the tree names that I teach him.   I can identify quite a few trees, you know!

After that first hour, it was much less boring, and I enjoyed myself.  In fact, I recognized about five songs.   But it still didn’t turn me into a concert-goer!

The help

I read an amazing book last year.   It was called The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  It told the story of some southern, African American maids right around the time of the equal rights movement. It is a great book, and I thought it was an appropriate title to borrow, and compare my current life to, now that I live in India and have help of my own.

I woke up yesterday morning to a text from our maid/cook, Lady S.  She had texted me, “Hi mam it’s Lady S sorry I am not coming today my dothar not filing well. Can ill cam tomorrw.“  Now, she speaks English quite well, but I know that people speak English much more frequently than they write it.  Her spelling still surprised me, however, as she can read and follow a recipe great (trust me, I’ve eaten the results). But what really surprised me after the long text was what she said to my response, “thanky mam”.   It just sounded like it was from a classical novel set in America a couple hundred of years ago.  

It really made me think about how awkward (to me, at least) the entire situation is here.  We have this woman, with a set of keys to our home, who comes in each day, without a contract, or health care, and she orders our food, orders our water, cleans the house, does our laundry, waters our plants, makes our beds, makes our meals, and we pay her a grand total of $178 a month.  And that is good money.  Foreigners always overpay the help.   And her English sounds like something that could probably be taken from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Something is wrong with this picture.  What century are we living in? It really disgusts me to even be participating in this charade.   But it isn’t as though it helps her if I don’t hire her.  I’m not sure what I should even feel. 

I haven’t been to her home, but my driver, Driver A (who is quite chatty), happened to mention a few details about his home to me.  He has one bed that he, his wife, and teenage son share.  They have a TV.  They eat chicken biryani quite frequently. He does make a bit more money, $245, plus overtime, but he also works 10-hour days, whereas Lady S works about 3-4 hours a day.  Yesterday, for the first time, he bought his very own cell phone. Previously, people had just given him their old phones to use. 

In the book, The Help, bathrooms are a huge issue.  People had to have segregated bathrooms, even in the home. Maids couldn’t use the same toilet as the family.  Most of the nicer apartments we saw here in India, while apartment hunting, were the same way.  Certainly not separate but equal, which has been proven to not exist, anyway.  It is like Plessy v. Ferguson was transplanted here, and never overturned.  The bathrooms we saw were disgusting.  In America, the kitchens are so important.  Here, they are just extensions of the maid’s quarters, and thus have cheaper floor tiles and counters than the rest of the home.  Many are even partitioned from the home, so you can shut your cook inside and forget about her.  I feel like I stepped back in time.  To a worse time period. 

Driver A, when he wants to use a restroom (well, toilet as they are called here), must travel to a building complex, like a rest area on the highway. He can’t just walk into McDonald’s and use it.  Or walk into a hotel.  He told me he isn’t even allowed in those buildings.  Now, I find that incredibly hard to believe, but I can’t just look at someone and tell that they are the help rather than the people who hired the help. I wasn’t born here. Both Driver A and Lady S are clean and well-dressed.  Driver A even has a few threadless T-shirts.  So I’m not sure I buy that story completely.  But that is what I was told. 

I, on the other hand, can waltz into any building and use their bathroom.  It is easy and convenient for me.  So unfair for him.  In south Mumbai, where there are very few of the rest area-like toilets, he might have to go 15 to 20 minutes away to go to the bathroom.  A previous ambassador, who used one once in an emergency, told me they were absolutely disgusting. 

This isn’t to say there aren’t disgusting bathrooms in the States.  We all have our preferred gas stations based on bathroom-quality.  But any one of us can use said bathroom.  I have even seen homeless people bathing themselves in Starbucks, although I would guess that they, perhaps, are shoed away rather frequently.

I went shopping yesterday morning with Driver A.  He mentioned that Lady S had called him that morning, asking for my phone number.  Driver A told me Lady S’s daughter had a school program today (they do a lot of school things on Saturdays here). 

So she lied to me. She told me her daughter was sick, but really, she is at school doing some banner thing. It makes me so upset.  I’m sick of feeling like I can’t trust anyone here.  I’ve already caught both the landlord and our driver in a lie.  And now her, too.   What was so hard for her?  Why couldn’t she just tell me she wanted to go to daughter’s show?  Have I in any way come across as some mean person who wouldn’t let her watch her daughter perform? 

It is really lousy, because now I have to have a conversation with her about how she can’t lie to me.  Also to stop putting our underwear on the line instead of the dryer.  But I am a non-confrontational person, so I really do not enjoy having a maid and driver.  Certainly not this have-a-serious-conversation aspect, at least. Having a maid and driver are SO much more work than I expected. You have to constantly write down what activities you do with them each day (did Driver A get overtime?  Did he pay for parking? Was it after 8 so he gets dinner money? Did he buy gas? Did I pay for that delivery of toilet paper or did Lady S, etc), so that at the end of the month, when they tell you what they want you to pay them, you know if it is true or not.  I know the people who previously employed them would find occasional errors, and they trusted both of them.  And I don’t trust either of them.

Here I am, stuck in a foreign country, for another 10 months, surrounded by people that I don’t actually trust.  People who have keys to my home.  Who have the keys to my car.  Who, by American standards, I am underpaying. What a weird system.    I guess it is easy for me to say it is weird.  I just wonder how many people in India think it is weird.  Weird is relative, anyway.  But what book, fifty years from now, will be written in India about The Help?

Lady S is from a fishing caste. She young (27), has two daughters (8 and 3), and is very beautiful.  She must be fairly modern, too, because she has some highlights in her long hair. She is taller, too, than what I would guess is the average height of an Indian woman.  She always wears fun-colored salwaar kameez to work.  Each day she take off the dupatta  (scarf) and hangs it on the doorknob, which I like. Those things just get in the way.  It makes her look like a no-nonsense type of gal.  She seems nice, and normal enough to me.  She cooks pretty well (although her chicken was really tough last night) and she taught me how to make chapattis (the round, flat piece of bread that you eat with basically every meal- it is your silverware) when I told her they were awful as a re-heated dish.   Well, I didn’t say awful.  I just said they tasted better fresh. Before the ‘daughter is sick’ lie, I got along with her fairly well. 

Driver A, on the other hand, could be the Indian version of David Hyde Pierce’s Niles Crane from Frasier.  If I were a playwright, he’d have a TV show.  He looks like him (well, the Indian version of him).  He acts like him.  He is completely neurotic like him.   Driver A does have a much better love life, of course. He is 35, been married for 14 years, and has a kid of about the same age. 

Driver A is small and skinny.  He has short black hair with a slightly receding hairline and bald spot. He wears an overly large silver-colored watch each day.  I always wonder where he got it, because it clearly doesn’t fit. Was it a gift passed through the family?  Some day, when he doesn’t drive me crazy, I’ll ask.   He has a very nice smile, and loves to laugh and talk.  About anything.  Music, politics, the best places to shop….but his favorite topics are money, and his previous employers. 

Driver A is a Muslim, but his wife works outside the home.  He also loves to drink, which he doesn’t tell his wife.  He goes to booze parties and tells her he is still driving me around (great, he doesn’t even mind telling lies to his wife, who knows what he’ll say to me). I really want to fire him, but when I spoke with the person who owns the home we are renting, he told me that, relative to the typical driver in Mumbai, he is great.   

Now, Muslims, of course, believe there have been many great Prophets to spread the message of God. Jesus, of course, being one, but the most recent being Muhammad.  I am fairly certain (in only a semi-sarcastic manner), that Driver A believes his past employers are the most recent Prophets, because he worships a framed photo they gave him and tells me of their glorious teachings (and how I could be better, like them) each day.  It is absurd. Even the day his wife made us the biryani as a gift, he gave it to me, telling me something along the lines of, “it is like I am giving it to them by giving it to you”.   

Of course, one of Niles Crane’s best characteristics is the fact he is neurotic.  Driver A, on our very first day together, with him as my official driver, told me he hasn’t slept in two days due to depression of his previous employers leaving.  That is when I learned he sits and worships the framed photo of them, which is adorned with a light, just like artwork at the museum.  He sat, crying, not eating or sleeping, for two days straight.  And he admits this to me, that he hasn’t slept in 48 hours, on our first drive together!  It doesn’t exactly promote confidence in him.    

Each day he complains to me about money, whether it be the foreign people who stole his jobs, or how much money he made working a certain party, or as a valet person for the night.   I am sick of it.  It is fine if you want to tell me about your family, or your trip to Malaysia. But please stop telling your employer your wages from previous jobs. 

Our car’s fuel pump broke on the 3^rd day or so of his being my driver.  The circumstances around everything, at first, looked highly fishy, and that is when I found out he lied to me.  It was out of fear of losing his job, not fear of “I did something wrong” (at least according to the home owner who has known him for years), but still, knowing he lied doesn’t make me put much trust in him.   He spent that night in tears, not sleeping, too.  And he tells me this! He is the most emotional man I have ever met. 

He knows where everything is located, which is great. Anything I want he knows.  It is amazing, since there is nothing as awesome as Meijer here.  But he is a pretty bad driver- we’ve been in two very close calls already, and it has only been two weeks.  One of them was definitely his fault for not paying attention, too. 

Driver S, the guy who, in the past, drove me from Chowpatty to school each day for two weeks, was a much better driver.  And didn’t cry in front of me.  He didn’t whine for more money.  He even refused some of my bigger tips.  I really miss him.   Driver S didn’t argue with me.

Last night, after going to a concert, Driver A refused to pick us up!  He wanted us to walk to the car (wherever it was parked) because he couldn’t be bothered to come to the main road where we were standing and waiting for him.  He is our driver.  I don’t care if he wanted to stand by the car and wait for us.  His cell phone didn’t work for 15 minutes after the concert, so we walked towards the street, for a cab, so we could go home if he never put his darn sim card back in the phone (which I know is what he was doing, because he’d been playing with it the entire day).  And then he had the gall to talk back to me when I told him he was our driver and it is part of his job that he should come to us when we call him rather than ask us to walk to his location.  Especially because we were standing on the main road, on the way back home, whereas he was on some side road off the beaten path.  I was so mad at him.  I really wished I could fire him. 

I wish I could go back to a normal, American life where I can walk where I want, when I want.   Where books like The Help are stories that are mostly in the past, not a large part of modern life.