What a week: Chandigarh wedding day 3

Day three of the Chandigarh wedding was the most relaxing day I have spent in India.  Wedding festivities didn’t start until 8:00 pm that evening, so we had the day to sleep in, rest, and enjoy.

My husband and I woke up and made it to the continental breakfast for the first time that weekend.  I had cereal, toast, and hash browns.  I’ve noticed that whenever we go out, I tend to not eat Indian food.  I think there are two reasons for this (1) my cook makes much better food than anything you’ll find in a restaurant, and (2) I’m getting bored of eating Indian food, since it is what we have at home each day.  Regardless, we stuffed ourselves silly, and decided on our daily plans. 

Friend IH and I decided to go swimming in the rooftop pool.   I had already asked the front desk, and was assured that it was okay to wear my bathing suit as-is.  They are an international hotel with international guests, they proudly informed me.   So we went to the spa, were given keys, towels, and water bottles by incredibly helpful (and very bored looking) employees, and headed out to the pool area.   

The roof was completely empty- perfect.  We selected a pair of lounging chairs, dropped our pile of sunglasses, books, sunblock, and towels, and dipped our toes into the pool.  COLD!  It was obviously unheated!  I guess, in India, in general, heat is not a necessity for pools, since it is usually quite warm.    

The air was absolutely perfect that day.  It was heavily overcast, so the sun didn’t shine at all.   It was pleasantly warm, rather than the heat beating down and exhausting you. The air, normally a bit muggy and heavy, was aided by a good strong breeze that rustled the shrubbery surrounding the roof.  Beautiful.  The pool had rapid ripples moving across it.  Birds flew overhead, occasionally landing at the pool to take a sip. 

I realized, during that day, that luxury in India is the absence of people.  Up on that roof, with the nice breeze and green foliage in every direction, and only the birds and two stray cats for company, I was happy.   Happier than I’ve ever been in this country.  But it was because we weren’t in India.  We had been transported into a magical country where you couldn’t hear the sound of cars honking, or see people gawking at you, begging for your money.   Just peace.  That saying, “you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl” is so true.  I’ll never be as happy as when I am surrounded by nature. 

Friend IH and I were doing our best to jump in (feet first, of course, as the pool was shallow and had warning signs not to dive), but we were slow.   Basically, we were taking a step, then giggling and orchestrating that ‘I’m cold’ dance that every little kid does when entering the pool.    Eventually Friend IH decided we had to jump, rather than take the baby steps, and we counted to three (first, of course, deciding if we jump on ‘three’ or on the word ‘jump’) and splashed our way in.  

It was still cold, but after a few repeated dunkings we got used to it, and began to leisurely take laps around the pool.  It turns out that Friend IH is quite the little fish, so it was nice to be with someone who could rescue me if I started to drown, my swimming ability being a newly acquired skill.   We spent the time drifting and chatting amiably about our lives.  Being alone, without all the eyes staring at us, made us feel safe and without a care in the world.

Friend IH spotted the two cats that would become our afternoon buddies.  I’m not sure how the cats wound up on the roof, but they were some of the healthiest looking cats I’ve ever seen in India.  Bright green eyes and bushy tails, they were terrified of us and hid behind the bushes.  

Eventually Friend SK came out to the pool, announcing he’d just placed an order for a grilled cheese sandwich and French fries.   That was our cue to jump out and beg Friend SK to order some for us, too!    While we waited for the delivery we sat, chatting, and laughing at Friend SK when he declared the stray cats to be dogs.  

Friend SK had come from the gym, and he told us it had been a creepy experience.  I’ve started to become less angry when I am stared at (I guess you can’t stay angry forever), so I was doubly surprised that, as a man, he was being stared at so intensely. But he had actually left the gym because the men (employees of the hotel, I believe) actually just stood in the gym and watched him work out.   That is really weird.  

We did notice, every 10 minutes or so, that an employee would wander to the roof, nonchalantly make a lap around the pool, maybe under the pretense of cleaning-up, and leave.  Occasionally they would stay for a couple of short minutes.  But overall, it wasn’t bad staring.  More like they were making sure we weren’t drowning.   So who knows?  Maybe they thought friend SK was working too hard and wanted to be on hand if he had a heart attack in the gym.  After all, the men and women in India do their workouts with a cell phone attached to one ear, so maybe they aren’t used to seeing someone concentrate fully on the exercise equipment.  Or maybe they wanted to be useful and hand him a bottle of water.   Either way, it is creepy, and I’m glad no one was around the day before when I had worked out.   

Soon our sandwiches (which turned out to be open faced, sort-of-grilled-cheese-like, but still quite delicious) and fries came and we ate blissfully.  The cats crept close, but ran when I tried to feed them a fry.  Sandwiches were soon followed by tea, and the presence of my husband, who had a more successful work out than Friend SK.  Maybe the skin color has something to do with it. 

My friends started playing Fruit Ninja, and I started reading.  But my book was about the hustle and bustle of Mumbai and the fairly recent burning of Muslims by Hindus; it really didn’t fit with the mood of the day, and I soon stopped and just closed my eyes to enjoy the pleasant breeze.

I’ve changed a lot since arriving in India.  I’ve started listening to classical music, probably because it is so nice and peaceful compared to this city.  I’ve been working out a lot more, and a lot harder than ever before.  And I’ve certainly become much more rude and grumpy. But that, the closing my eyes and enjoying the pleasant breeze, could very possibly be the biggest change.  I’d never just lay in the sun in America.  It was a waste of time, you’d get burned, it was boring, etc.  But here?  It was wonderful.  Not a care in the world, just the sound of the plants waving in the wind.  

I’m not sure how long we stayed outside, but eventually we were awakened to the realities of life.  My chest was turning red.  The rest of my body, covered modestly with a towel to avoid the peeping eyes of the employees, was still white.   But the red chest and face stood out, and it was time to leave the fairly tale and go back to the real world.  

This is a completely non-scientific opinion, but I’m sure that in India, the number one advertised thing on TV is fairness cream. White is might here, and the lighter the skin, the better you are.  They have it for women, for men, and each commercial break must have 2-3 individual ads promoting the cream, guaranteed to make your skin shades lighter.   So there I was, burnt to a crisp.  Normally I’d be mad, since it is obviously increasing my risk of skin cancer, but I just thought of it as a non-violent way to protest this country’s viewpoints, and wore my burn proudly.   What a weirdo.    

After the pool, we napped, showered, and got ready for the last wedding event, the reception.   Friend IH and I were both wearing south Indian silk saris, which are incredibly difficult to tie.   So I started a good hour and a half early to get ready.  My personal, incredibly silly way to tie one on myself is to quickly tie it in a disorganized manner, and then mark, with paper clips, where the pleats should start and end.  Then I take it off, and fold all the pleats very nicely, and keep them clipped together until the end.  That takes care of the part wrapped around your waist.  But there is also a part that goes across your chest and hangs over your shoulder.  So I pleat that part, too (the part that hangs over the shoulder).   Then I put the whole thing back on, and tie it nicely, and only have to deal with the pleats across my chest.    It worked out okay, and Friend IH helped with the finishing touches.

We tied hers in a much more normal manner, as there were two of us to work on the pleating.  We then bangled ourselves out and headed to the reception.   

The reception was beautiful, again.  It was at the same location as the Sangeet, but decorated completely differently, in beautiful whites.  It had a TV monitor playing pictures of the bride and groom.  More food, more dancing, and even more fun!

When we first entered, we did a little (or big, who knows) social faux pas and bypassed taking a photo with the parents of the bride and groom.  They were standing right near the entryway, and we thought they were just posing for a photo amongst themselves.  But after passing them by, we realized that every other guest stopped for a photo!  So we decided to fix the problem by sneaking out and re-entering.   LOL, they’d obviously notice that the only non-Indian guests were re-entering, but at least we’d get that photo!

So we tried. But there was now a steady stream of guests entering, and no good time to cut back in line!  We waited, and then, suddenly there was a gap.  We were about to take advantage of it, but we saw that the gap was because the bride and groom were entering!   So clearly we couldn’t cut in front of them!  We cut behind them instead.

They took their photos, but then the bride and groom stayed in line!  So now, rather than posing with just the parents, we looked like we had just pushed our way to be the first people to take a photo with the bride and groom.  To top the hilarity off, the groom pushed his mom out of the photo and took it with just us instead!   So now, we still don’t have a parent photo.  But after that, we did out best to stay out of the limelight and got ourselves out of the way!  

We spent several hours eating, and then dancing, and then everyone was kicked off the dance floor to eat, AGAIN.  Completely stuffed, we headed back home to pack up and fly out early the next morning.

What a week epilogue:

In Mumbai, I tried to determine the best place to stand while waiting for my bag to appear at baggage claim.   People are pushy here, so even if I find a place they’ll just elbow me out and I get stuck in the back row of viewing.  At least I’m taller than everyone.  Finally, I spotted a space next to an Asian of non-Indian descent. He had track pants on.  It looked like he meant business in maintaining his coveted spot at the baggage claim.    I’ve gotten quite good at believing stereotypes here, so I hoped that he was Japanese, played the stereotype that he would be extra polite, and took a firm, wide stance next to him.  I figured that, if he did elbow me in the face, at least he’d take the time to apologize.

A few minutes later, he was still standing firm.  But an Indian male had pushed me out of my superior viewing position; I was back to peeking over his shoulder to see my bag.  Urgh.  Back to the realities of Mumbai.   I miss that peaceful rooftop pool!   

What a week: Chandigarh wedding day 2

Day two (the Baraat and actual wedding ceremony) of the Chandigarh wedding festivities started early.  We woke up, ate some delicious granola bars (thank you, Friend IH), and got ready for the day.  The men folk had to be at the groom’s house early, to have their turbans tied; so we women stayed an extra hour around the hotel, comparing bangles and decorating ourselves to the nines.

The groom’s house was beautiful, with a bright yard and potted flowers everywhere.  It was so nice to see.  The house interior had cream-colored walls and beautiful furniture with Indian artwork everywhere.   The large dinning room table had a lace cover that seems to be the standard for any Indian household, regardless of what state they were born in, or country of current residency.

The girls joined the guys who were patiently (due to the advent of iPhones and blackberry phones) waiting their turn to have their turban tied.  The process was fun to watch.  The person doing the tying would scrunch up a huge piece of bright red cloth, and sprinkle it with water (maybe it had starch, too?).  He’d then ask the next guy to stand up, and tie a white kerchief on their head.  Next, he’d take one end of the red fabric, and the person who would wear it would take the other end.  They would stretch the entire distance of the room to straighten the cloth, then spin it into the proper diameter for tying.  

It took some time to actually do the tying.  With my husband, who was the very last person, he would first wrap one band around his head, sort of like a headband, and then had him put his glasses on over the band.   He continued wrapping, trapping the glasses securely inside.   Towards the end, he would pull out a metal object, shaped like a pencil, and use it to tuck and smooth out the turban. 

For my facebook friends, this process is posted in my newest photo album.

While my husband was being tied, the groom was outside taking photos.  He sat, in a magnificent white embroidered outfit, complete with a long sword in a sparkling scabbard (I believe it is traditional for Sikhs to carry swords), while white pearls were tied to his turban.  

There was no dancing down the street to the wedding ceremony, nor were we accompanied by drums and horse, which I had thought was the definition of a Baraat.  Instead, we all hopped into cars and drove to the Sikh temple. 

One of the surprises at the temple were the men’s facial hair accessories.  I am used to women decorating their hair, and pulling it up in various ways, but this was the first time I have seen a man do it.   The men had turbans on top of their head, and tight little hairnets for their beards.  I guess it serves the same purpose as a woman putting her hair up, to be fancy and/or keep it out of the way, but it was something I had never seen before.   It looked a bit painful, actually.  I wouldn’t want pressure on my chin like that!  But I am sure they are used to it.   There were turbans of many various colors, and, upon asking; I learned that the groom’s side was in red, and the bride’s in pink.  But I also saw other shades of color, too.  

When we arrived at the temple, we first went to a grass clearing and watched garlands and presents be exchanged between the two families.  I stood a little back, in the shade, a trick I learned from Aunties at a previous wedding.   The exchange was rather short, and we all trickled into the basement for breakfast.

Any breakfast with the delightful sweet gulab jamun is good by me, so I was quite happy.  There was a nice variety of Indian foods, and we stuffed ourselves silly.  We then headed upstairs to the actual wedding ceremony.

In the Sikh temple we are required to cover our heads, so the women used the ends of their saris, or the dupatta (scarf) that is worn with any salwar kameez.   We looked like the glamorous women from the 1950’s going for a drive.  The women sat cross-legged on the left side of the room, the men on the right.  Friend IH and I sat together, chatting happily (it is perfectly okay to talk during wedding ceremonies in India) and playing with the most adorable baby girl imaginable.

The ceremony itself was fun to watch, as I had never been to a Sikh wedding.  They had a bright gold structure, sort of similar to the mandap at my own wedding, but very ornate.  There was a couch or soft table item under it, and a man behind it.  Throughout the ceremony, he kept changing the color of the cloth on the couch/table thing.    The bride and groom sat in front of the structure. 

The bride looked absolutely amazing.  Her back was to us at all times, except for four brief moments, but she kept her head down so it was difficult to see her face.   She had a beautiful red and gold lengha, and fantastic jewelry that looked heavy enough to break a non-Indian’s neck.  She had red and gold bangles up each arm, and many gold bells around her wrists.  Her tikka on her forehead was a large fan, and she even had a nose ring.

It was a very short ceremony.  Hymns were sung, and they walked around the structure four times.  More hymns were sung.  One thing I liked (that I learned from the booklet) was that some of the words spoken were picked, at random, by opening the text.  The verses chosen were considered to be appropriate lessons for that day.  So I guess, since you never know what page you will open to, any and all lessons are fair game.   I thought that was kind of nice.   Since you never know what will come to you in marriage!

One thing I didn’t like was the sweet that was served during the actual wedding.  It was, according to the booklet, equal parts wheat, sugar, and ghee (butter).  It was, according to the Americans, gross and gave us bellyaches.  

After the quick wedding, we wandered back to the cars, uncovered our heads, and drove to the lunch venue.  All of us were still quite full from breakfast, and queasy from the wedding snack, so the drive wasn’t the most fun part of the trip.  We also decided that perhaps the roads weren’t as safe as I had originally thought.  Yes, there were painted lines, but since there was (relative to Mumbai) little traffic, the cars were traveling much, much faster than in Mumbai, and passing each other, like maniacs, when there were clearly cars in the other lane.  I was terrified we’d wind up in a head-on collision, especially after seeing a car in the ditch, which was completely smashed up.   Of course, there were no seatbelts in the car.  Terrifying. 

But when we arrived- it was beautiful!   Decorated in whites and oranges, a huge yard outside of a building had long tables full of food, plenty of seating, and even white couches to lounge in and stare at the bride and groom.  We headed toward the fruit/bar area, but noticed plenty of flies buzzing around.  There were two schools of thought: Friend IH said that the flies were good, because it meant the food was fresh.  My husband says they are bad, because they probably had just landed on cow manure or some other delightful thing and would make us sick.   I ate the fruit. My disposition didn’t change any. 

We soon realized that there was seating indoors, and proceeded to secure a table large enough for our group of nine.  Inside was quite entertaining.   An incredibly drunk man decided to sit at our already crowded table.  Note that he was already three sheets to the wind.    Then, while proceeding to have conversations with each of us (many of his questions repeated), he commandeered a bottle of vodka from a very polite (and patient!) waiter with a bar cart, and poured himself a drink.  He probably filled the glass half full, of just vodka, and then argued with the waiter as to how much tonic (or whatever clear mixer it was) to add.  Apparently, the waiter added a bit too much.   Astonished, we watched him drink the whole drink, and proceed to make at least two more in the next hour! 

After his not-so-stimulating conversation with our table, Vodka man decided to get up and eat.  I was watching him carefully, and was completely shocked that he could even stand.  But he managed to get himself a plate of food just fine.  And then- I was laughing so hard- he managed to sit at the table that was very clearly being set for the wedding party!   They had rolled out 5 or 6 circular tables, in the very center of the room and were very nicely setting the places, and rolling napkins.  He just plopped himself down at one end and ate his meal without a care in the world.   He calmly ate his meal, left, and the bride and groom got to come down off their high pedestal (literally, not figuratively) and eat.

While we were conversing with Vodka man, the Bride and Groom were sitting outside, on a very fancy gold and red couch, on a stage (fortunately with a built-in fan) taking mountains of photos.  With every single guest.   I remember how much my face hurt after only an hour or so of it.  They have that bridal boot camp to get your body in shape in America…. I wonder if they have smiling boot camp in India.  

Other interesting tidbits of information- apparently the bride or groom has high connections, because a government official came to take a photo with them.  They marched in with the military/police, all armed with guns for the official’s safety!  So that was a new wedding experience.   They stayed for a bit, resting on the couches indoors, but it was a relief to see them go, because it is hard to enjoy your third flavor of ice cream while men with guns are blocking the paths everywhere.

The food was great, again.  I had penne with marinara sauce and broccoli, and all the different desserts (well, I only tried four or five of the desserts).  But it was all fun.   We headed home around 4:00 pm.

After the wedding festivities, we took a quick nap.   When I woke up, I felt like a complete zombie.  I had kept dreaming that I was sick, with lung congestion.  My chest felt really tight.   But I still wanted to work out, and in my dream, my husband told me to, “at least go lift some weights!”  So when I woke up, still in a zombie-like state, I thought he had really told me that, and it encouraged me, rather than hitting snooze, to get up and go to the gym!   Of course, I found out later I had dreamed his encouragement, but it was still nice of him.  

The hotel gym was very nice, with modern equipment, and little bottles of water conveniently sitting in the corner waiting for me to drink.   I lifted weights, but their smallest free weights were way too big for some of the smaller muscles, so I used water bottles instead.  

Working out was of course followed by more food!  We had a very good dinner at the hotel restaurant, but the portions were really small.   We then closed out the hotel bar (hey, it was only open until midnight or so), which was called ‘Lava’ and was decorated straight out of the 60s, except for the fact it was actually missing the lava lamps.  But it had the crazy retro egg like chairs and psychedelic wall decorations. 

Exhausted, we all went to bed, ready for day three of the wedding festivities.  

What a week: Chandigarh wedding day 1

Having successfully finished my last day of the teaching job, I rushed home to begin packing.   My husband would be flying in around midnight, and a few short hours later, we were taking off to Chandigarh for a wedding.  I was incredibly excited.  Two other friends were flying in from America and I was overjoyed to be with friends again.  

When I am in a rush, I am quite the fast packer, but when there is time, I take forever.   I put out all of my jewelry, sort it, make lists and happily cross items off of the list when it is properly arranged in the suitcase pile.  Heck, even if they are already in the suitcase pile, I still put them on the list.  It is just satisfying to be able to cross those items off. I pack and re-pack and happily waste time away while watching The X-Files and munching on the strawberry ice cream that was my flavor of the night. 

Our flight was early, so we reached the airport sleepy and exhausted, and were disappointed to find our flight was delayed, apparently due to weather issues in Goa.  Now, personally, having lived in the USofA, and thus having flown through snowstorms and thunderstorms and plenty of fog, I think that this country has some funny contradictions.  They will drive you through any kind of traffic imaginable (or unimaginable, if you haven’t been here), while talking on their cell phone, without a seatbelt, and yet they seem to delay flights at the drop of a hat for seemingly perfect weather.  This is the third or fourth ‘weather’ related delay in my few months of being here.  

Now, Indian airports have some good things, like really cheap bookstores, shops that sell good chocolate, and barely any security line for the women, but one thing is a disaster. You can’t check into your flight early.  So until the airplane gods (probably, actually, people who have the same job as my sister…) knew exactly what time the flight would take off, you can’t even print your ticket or check your bag in, much less go through security and peacefully sleep at the gate.  No, you had to sit with the other 200 people on your flight in the pre-security section of the airport.  So we all sat, loudly chatting on cell phones; or paced, dodging between massive suitcases (well, mine was massive, at least, and in the way), as we impatiently waited to learn with the delay was over.

The Mumbai domestic airport has two separate terminals, and we were in the lousy one. I knew from previous experience that the nearest bathroom contained only squat toilets (which were out of TP when I last used them), and the further restroom has only one non-squat toilet.  Plus, the crepe vendor in this terminal never has the good flavors (it should be against the law to run out of bananas and Nutella).  There was an argument about cash at one of the other food vendors, so my husband couldn’t even get a snack for some time.  Needless to say, it isn’t the best airport to be sitting in for extended time periods.

Eventually the cash argument was over, and my husband’s second attempt at food was fruitful and he came back with a hot apple croissant.  I, of course, always hungry when I see others with food, immediately went and got my own.  It was okay, but a bit skimpy on the apple part of the title.

I wasted the two extra hours away by alternately staring off into outer space, people watching, and reading a Chetan Bhagat novel.  I learned, after becoming obsessed with his books, that he works out at the same gym as me, even with my personal trainer!  But, like a dork, when I finally got to meet him, he asked me what I do, and I said I was a housewife.   Boring!   So that conversation died right away.  Sigh.  I’m like Rachel on Friends.  A complete dork when meeting someone awesomely famous.  I’ve also met a few Bollywood singers at the gym, but I don’t really watch their movies, so it is meeting the famous author that makes me nervous!

His books are great because they take place in India, but are fun.  They are just about normal people. Most of the reading I do about India angers me (i.e., reading about the air quality facts mentioned in my last post), but his just make me laugh and enjoy myself.  

When the allotted time delay was up, 200 people rushed to the counters to check in their bags and print their tickets.   Of course, we were all intermingled in line with the people on other flights, and thus the airport was much busier than it would have been if they had just taken our darn bags two hours previously.

We passed through security and settled down to wait again.  My husband slept, I surfed the web and continued reading.   This terminal is small, so eventually we were herded onto buses and taxied to our flight.  I finished my first book of the day and started on a second, reading about Charlie Radbourn, an amazing pitcher… back in 1884.  

We ordered cookies, juice, and I braved an airplane chicken sandwich (not advised).   A couple of hours later and we were landing in Chandigarh airport.  

Now, that place was really something.  Another wedding attendee later told me that a Frenchman had planned the city in 1952.   The city itself is gorgeous.  But the airport was another story; it was tiny (about the size of the K-zoo airport) and extremely ugly.  I’m guessing it was also planned in 1952; but by a military man not big on tasteful décor of any kind.  The first moment when I realized this airport was different was when we alighted.  We excited the plane and found ourselves in an empty lot.  Usually at this point you jump aboard a bus and it drops you off at the baggage claim area.  But here, we were trusted to walk the distance of the lot, to the terminal, by ourselves.  It was nice to be trusted.  

The airport itself looked more like I imagined a war-zone base to look like, rather than the beautiful city of the north.  I’m not sure if it is because it hasn’t been updated since 1952, or because of the nearness to Pakistan, but it certainly was not aesthetically pleasing.   Barbed wire and watch posts surrounded us, the buildings all looked like crumbling, white-washed bunkers, green tarps served as temporary awnings, and the walls were composed of sheets of corrugated metal.  Large piles of sand/dirt and rubble were strewn about.  Perfect movie set for a war film. 

When we finally exited the airport, I turned and noticed the completely modern, not-yet-opened new terminal.  I’m sure the place will look a lot better in about one year!  

We were greeted by a driver who took us to the hotel.   The drive was so incredibly beautiful.   First, there were actual lines on the street, designating lanes.  They were semi-obeyed, which means they were obeyed much more than any other place I have seen in India.  Each road was lined with trees, canopies a bit dusted from the lack of rain, but still a nice green color.  Oh foliage, how I missed you…. on many roads, peaceful, decorated boulevards separated the lanes of traffic.  The earth was still parched, and the ground, if you looked closely, still had litter scattered about.  But it was so easy to overlook those details when your eyes soared to vast amounts of greenery.   And the space!  There weren’t swarms of people running across traffic, or knocking on your window when the car stopped.   In that ten-minute drive, Chandigarh won my heart over like Mumbai never will.  

When we arrived at the hotel, we went through the most laxed security into a building yet- no body scanning metal detector, a first for entering hotels in India.  My purse was still scanned, though.   Most of the male employees wore turbans of various colors and sported beards, which I learned is a common sight in this part of the country.  The hotel had a beautiful lobby, with an inlaid floral design on the floor.  It smelled a bit like shampoo, but that is a better smell than most places I’ve been, so I quickly got used to it. 

We checked in and headed up the elevator to our second floor room.  The elevator was glass, and gave a nice view of a shallow pool and the lobby as we rode up.  It was completely quiet and incredibly peaceful, except for the speed, which made my stomach lurch uncomfortably.     

I did find the elevator amusing, however, when I noticed, in English, instructions on how to use the elevator.   “Press button for desired floor.”   Really? Was that sign necessary?   Is there ANY person literate in English that wouldn’t know how to use the elevator without those clear-cut directions?  So it was a cute little diversion to think about each time I rode it.  

Our room was nice, with a good bathroom (finally, bathrooms seem to take a backseat in this country, but they were very nice in this hotel).   The space was nice and big, and there was even a ‘pillow menu’ with about 14 different types of pillows to choose from…  we just kept the standard pillows in the room.    The room had cream walls adorned with watermarked black and white photos of smiling farmers.   Did I mention how peacefully quiet it was?

We very quickly discovered what room our friends were staying in, and headed down to say hi.   It was so wonderful to see friends again.  So we hugged and giggled, and Friend IH made me happier than I had been in a month when she presented me with a gift of deodorant.   She had also, wonderfully, brought us several boxes of delightfully yummy granola bars, which are difficult (and expensive) to find here.  But the deodorant!  It was a surprise!   I’m pretty sure I hugged that little canister more times than my husband that weekend.    I have yet to find good deodorant here, and was at the end of my very last one. I’d been using it conservatively- only for the gym or around my husband; and when I was alone, I made-do with this awful, smelly, non-aluminum containing stuff I had gotten at a store in Churchgate.  I have successfully found men’s deodorant for my husband, but none for myself.  Women in the locker room at the gym seem to prefer to spray this useless stuff that makes me cough.  So I don’t even know the right person to ask about finding good deodorant.  So, if you can’t tell from this little paragraph, I was exceedingly happy with the gift.  

Friend IH and I then proceeded to the highly important tasks of girl talk and playing dress-up and deciding which outfits to wear for the next three days.  We had both brought along enough clothes to dress two or three women, so this required a lot of decisions.    She was a great sport, letting me dress her up in everything.   We ended up leaving for a nap before reaching our final decision for the evening, but I eventually guilted her into wearing my green salwar kameez with lots of sparkly jewels for the first evening, while I wore my new pink lehenga.  My husband and Friend SK wore American clothes, and looked very nice, too!

We arrived for the first night’s event, the Sangeet, exactly an hour late, which I do believe, in Indian time, translates to being exactly on time.   It was outdoors, with long paper lanterns hanging from tall trees.  The tablecloths were pink, red, and gold.  There were swanky black couches to lounge on when your feet were tired, but overall, there were minimal decorations and the beauty of the greenery got to do the talking.  A dance floor was next to a pool with candles surrounding it.   We arrived on a red carpet and even (awkwardly, in my case) posed for pictures.

Once we arrived, we were, of course, swarmed by waiters offering various appetizers.  Some waiters were quite persuasive, refusing to leave unless you tried something.  It was a bit creepy.  But most of the waiters were quite nice and left politely when you said no.   In true Indian fashion, the men were all drinking whisky, and I even braved the dangers of ice to have a mojito.    

It was basically a nice big party with plenty of food and drinks, and choreographed dancing by the families, and the bride and groom, as entertainment.  It was so much fun to watch people dance!  We met a ton of sweet cousins/friends and had a fabulous time.  By the end, my shoes were kicked under a table, and the wonderful feeling of grass between my toes was blissful.

I do have to say, though, that the best part of Indian weddings isn’t the food, chatting, and dancing.  It is staring at all of the fabulous attire.  Friend IH told me she felt like all the people were giving her the up and down eye, and then focusing on her flat shoes, but they all complimented her afterwards, so hopefully it wasn’t a bad eye. 

Exhausted, we left around midnight and headed back to the hotel to prepare for day two.   Official mosquito count:  only five bites!

What a week - part 2

My last day of teaching was bittersweet for multiple reasons.   Yes, I will miss some of my students very much.  To some, I definitely will be glad to say good riddance.  But there is one to whom I can never say goodbye.

I haven’t been using proper names in this blog, but his name deserves to be mentioned.  Abdul Aziz Qureshi.  Just a little boy, with a round, happy face, and eyes that smile.  One of the well-behaved students.  A bright boy who took advanced mathematics classes twice a week.  Whose smile was genuine and happy and made one involuntarily return the smile.

Two Saturdays ago, while the world was glued to CNN, hearts dropping and sending panicked facebook messages to friends in Japan, one family was oblivious to this earthquake.  No TV at home, but they were still in mourning.  They were mourning little Abdul Aziz.  

Two Saturdays ago, Abdul Aziz was playing with his friends.  The city is a dangerous place.   I recently read, in Maximum City, by Suketu Mehta, that breathing Mumbai’s air is the equivalent of smoking 2.5 packs of cigarettes per day.   That Mumbai’s air has 10 times the permissible lead levels.   But there are so many more dangers than just breathing the air.  The ground is uneven, not due to hills (though, on a rare clear day, you can see some large hills/mountains in the background), but uneven due to unkempt roads.   Rubble and trash line every street, regardless of whether the rich or poor live there.  For adults, walking is a constant battle with uprooted sidewalks.   For children, there is no green grass on which to play.  If they play sports, they play them on the streets, which are cleaner and less rubble-strewn than most areas.   There are very few playgrounds with slides and other things to climb.  So they find other things to climb.  Not trees, which don’t exist where Abdul Aziz lives.  But there are plenty of construction sites, none of which are well secured.

Little Abdul Aziz was playing with his friends on one such site that fateful day.  Spotting a crane, they climbed up to play.  But something went wrong this time.   Something on the crane moved.  It moved, and crushed the bright little boy.

I can’t imagine how horrible this must have been.  To be Abdul Aziz. Or to be the friends, playing with him, running frantically home to his mother.  To be Abdul Aziz’s mother, probably running frantically back to his tiny body.   When I close my eyes, I see his face.

Because I was in Bangalore on Monday, I wasn’t notified of the event until Tuesday.  Just a text message, stating only that he passed away on Saturday in an accident.   My stomach just dropped.  Earlier in the day I had heard from one friend that she still had not heard from her Grandma in the earthquake (fortunately, I have since heard she was found okay).   It is just too much at once.

I was completely unsure as to what my actions should be.  Will there be school counselors available?  No answer.  So I did what I find calming.  I bought 29 packets of crayons, and 18 coloring books.   I took them in, and talked a bit with the students.  I passed out the crayons and coloring books and told them it helps me to color when I am feeling sad. 

When I first arrived at school, some students seemed excited about the death.  I don’t think it was in a bad way, or that they are bad people.  But I don’t think death means as much to little kids, perhaps.   It was exciting news to share.  Sad, and they cried, certainly.   But they still wanted to be the first to tell me.  Some wanted to share feelings, some didn’t.  They asked me if I cried.  We talked, colored a bit, learned a bit, and went back to coloring.  I hope I handled it okay.

The next day was to be my last, so I felt doubly guilty for leaving them in this  situation.  Fortunately, there is a new volunteer who is quite good, and she will be taking over for a couple of weeks, so it is good to know they are in capable hands.

Of course, in the previous blog, I already described my busy morning of the last school day.   But the teaching portion…here goes.

I arrived, as usual, a bit too early.  I had taken an auto, since my driver was busy with the funeral plans, and it drove faster than I remember.  Being an open vehicle, and a warm day, I also arrived with large sweat marks covering my back, and a huge plastic bag filled with 300+ pieces of paper for the students to work on while I am gone. 

I smile at the four security guards stationed at the school entrance, and they grin back and escorted me to the plastic waiting chairs just inside the school grounds.  Fortunately, the chairs are in the shade, so I drop the bag of lessons and pull out my blackberry to continue on the quest for higher points in the game of brickbreaker. 

Shortly, two other teachers joined me, and we head upstairs to our classrooms.  They tell me that today we will release balloons to honor Abdul Aziz.  Apparently on Monday each student had written him a message.  That afternoon, I had peeked at one kid’s message.  “Abdul Aziz, you are my best friend in the world”.  The day before, the same kid was the boy that his classmates had been shouting at to say something when I asked if anyone wanted to talk. He had declined.  I feel like he, at least, understood that the loss was forever, and felt much more than a temporary sadness.  

The day went much like the others.  We did a reading comprehension and worked on our math skills.  I still hadn’t decided how to tell my students that I was leaving, so as time clicked by, I kept putting it off.  Eventually, twenty minutes before school ended, one of the teachers came up and told me it was time to end so we could do the balloon release.    Well, it was now or never.

I said something, very briefly.  I honestly can’t remember exactly what I said.  I didn’t want to cry or do anything sad. But then the other teachers brought me a gift and cards!  The school does a lot of art projects, so they gave me a candle and paperweight that had been made by students of the program.  Plus signed cards.  It was very sweet. All the children crowded around me, shaking my hand and telling me ‘best of luck’.  I only pretended to read the cards, because I felt myself tearing up.  I read them when I got home a few days later.  The messages were so cute.  Some just told me they loved me and would miss me, some apologized for doing nasty (what they call being in trouble).   It was very nice.

Earlier in the day, the other teacher kept pulling students out of my class, and I even went to ask her what was going on.  Of course, now I know that she was pulling them out to sign the cards!  But I didn’t figure it out at the time.  I’m glad I didn’t.  It was a very nice surprise.

When everyone was done shaking my hand, our bags were back, and we said the school prayer together for one last time, we headed down the stairs to release our balloons.   Everyone was fairly orderly, for being kids, and the teachers passed out green balloons that the kids started to blow up.   I hadn’t been part of the planning for this event, so I hadn’t thought through the logistics, but very quickly, a teacher points out that we don’t have helium. These balloons will just fall to the ground, not take off in the air.  

And there you have it.  That one day completely summarizes the school program. There are plenty of sweet, hardworking, and well-intentioned teachers in this program. But there are always unexpected bumps in the plans that seem to screw up the organization and follow-through.

We didn’t release the balloons.   I guess they decided to buy helium and release them another day.  I’m glad I didn’t have to watch.  I know that events like the balloons help, for some people, to heal the pain, but it doesn’t for me.  I just think about the poor little balloon landing somewhere and getting swallowed by a cow that I will eventually eat.  Yeah, I’m not a romantic.  Just often too practical.    

So, after a very anti-climatic non-release of the balloons, the children slowly walked to their tiny little homes, and I walked with the other teachers back to the rickshaws.   As sweet as the candle and notes were, I just felt growing excitement to be done.   

What a week - part 1

It has been an entire week since I have written, and I have been itching to do so each day.  I go to sleep at night, penning fantastic stories in my mind that I promptly forget each day.  So finally, today, I have free time.  In fact, from here on out, I will have free time every day, because today is my first day on my new, selfishly me-oriented schedule. 

I woke up at 4:30 am to wish my husband a happy birthday, but was so excited for my day, I found it hard to go back to sleep.   Eventually I did, and I settled into my routine of waking up, eating a quick breakfast and gulping down as much water as possible (since I do believe we sweat half our body weight each night), and headed off to the gym. 

My husband says I am a creature of habit, and desperately in need of a routine to be happy.  I do believe that is true.  Every day, after the gym, I stretch on a bright orange yoga mat while watching exactly one episode of The X-Files (I’m up to season three already).  I eat some lunch, watch the end of the episode, and then shower.   Usually at that point I had worked on stuff for teaching, went to teach, came home, ate dinner, prepped for teaching until 11:00 pm, and then watched Two and a Half Men and went to bed.   And repeated the next day.   The only variable is what flavor ice cream I eat on any given day.

But I still wasn’t happy.  Something about doing all that teaching, 8-10 hours a day with the prep work… it just wasn’t exactly how I planned to spend my free, unpaid time this year.  Yes, teaching kids is worthwhile, but I discovered it wasn’t the way to my happiness.  At least, not when I spend each night googling information about random countries like Sri Lanka, compiling it into a reading comprehension worksheet, and then making sure a 10 year old, mostly Urdu-speaking child could read and comprehend it.  

So, as I said, I finally get to start my selfish me-schedule today, minus the daily episode of Two and a Half Men, which has been suspiciously absent from the channel line-up since Charlie Sheen was fired….  The wheels that got the schedule (the me-schedule, not the TV schedule) in motion started spinning nearly a month ago.  As everyone who has been reading this knows, I haven’t been too happy with this teaching position, and had been considering quitting for awhile.  Of course, I didn’t.  I am (1) a non-confrontational wimp (except when I am cut in front of in line), and (2) I don’t like disappointing people.  So I continued with it, becoming less and less happy, and spent less and less time on the googling each day.   But then my husband’s job got incredibly busy.

His case is consuming so many hours that he hasn’t been home in Mumbai for the entire month of March (save a pair of layovers totaling about 30 hours, most of which he slept through).   So, as a dutiful wife desperately missing her husband, I travelled to Bangalore each weekend instead.   Some weekends he was so busy that I mostly slept and read books while he continued in the office.  But we did have lovely meals at the Leela Palace, with the best hazelnut ice cream you could possibly imagine.  It was even topped by a piece of sculpted chocolate.  Amazing. 

The upshot of this is that I was missing at least two days a week teaching, and I was resentful of the teaching job, because it meant I couldn’t stay longer if I so desired.  As this case seems to go on infinitely (as far as typical cases go), it was no longer worth it.  During my three days in Mumbai, I worked twice as hard to make lesson plans covering five days, making me even more irascible (great word, I picked it up from Anna Karenina and use it every chance I get).  

Finally, after the second weekend of Bangalore travel, I got my nerve up, called, and quit.    Despite my many attempts at a clarification, half the people still think I am MOVING to Bangalore, which I am not. But I do plan to spend more time there.   So no, I couldn’t quit for my own goals. But I could quit to see my husband.

Regardless, I gave my two weeks, and they are now up! 

I know it was the right decision because of how happy and calm I am.   Certainly, I felt a little guilty.  I am abandoning these children.  I genuinely like and will miss about half of them.  They also have no teacher.  But they had no teacher before I came, either.  This class is at a weird time and is far from the train.  It is hard to find someone who will do all of that work for only $111.11 a month….  But overall, I am just happy and relaxed. 

As evidence for or against that happy and relaxed state I claim to have achieved, see my actions for my last day of school.  I had an incredibly busy morning planned- I needed to get my lehnga blouse fitted for a weekend event, the copy machine at the school wasn’t working, so I had to make a few hundred Xerox copies of future lessons to leave for the students, I had an appointment with a potential car insurance guy, and of course, my personal training session at the gym.   It isn’t hard to do all of that with a driver.   The tailor’s is on the way to the gym, and my driver can have the copies made while I am working out.   Pick up the altered blouse on the way home, shower, and be ready for the 1:00 pm meeting with the car guy.

But you should never make plans here, because they always fall apart. 

My driver texted me early in the morning, saying he couldn’t come into work. Well, what he actually wrote was, “My uncle elder son is off today terefor i am on leave today” which confused me.   I wrote back, asking his meaning, and he just called.  Apparently, his cousin (his Uncle’s son) died that day, around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.  And my driver had to take care of the body.  So he was taking the day off.  Ironically enough, just the day before I had been asking him about Muslim funeral practices. 

My poor, poor driver.  He has had the worst possible month.   His mother, who had heart bypass surgery last year, has been back in the hospital.   She stayed for about a week, and seems to be okay now.   His wife, just days before the text message was sent to me, was also admitted to the hospital.   I’m still not entirely certain what is wrong with her.  Something in her women’s area gives her pain while menstruating (none of the women here use birth control pills, which eliminates those cramps, and thus every single female complains about cramps, even to me, a relative stranger).  He calls it a ‘bubble’, if that sheds light for anyone else as to what the problem could be.   But the pain was much, much worse this time.  It is so bad, she can’t keep food down.  I tentatively asked if they were worried about cancer or something similar, but he said no.   He told me he’ll bring the medical records for me to see, but I haven’t seen them yet.   They seem to make any visit to the hospital last 7-10 days here, so she was still in the hospital when this cousin died.

So I was sympathetic, and also, sadly, slightly suspicious.  I mean, who has this many health issues in a row?  I had promised him I would give him an advance on his salary (to pay for all of the hospital bills), so I met up with him in the evening.   He looked so amazing!  He was in his traditional Islamic attire.  He had an all-white dishdasha complete with a white kufi cap (sort of like a bigger Jewish yarmulke).  I’m so used to seeing him in jeans and novelty T-shirts that I didn’t even recognize him at first.  His son was accompanying him.  I was so excited to finally see this kid.  Despite being 12 or 14, he didn’t look a day older than 9 or 10.  He had a round face, smiling, and was utterly adorable.   The three of us walked to the bank together (I refuse to carry that much money alone), and it was so evident how much my driver cared for his son.  He kept making him walk to the side, in the middle, away from the cars.   It was very sweet to watch.   His son was incredibly shy, though.  I shook his hand, and tried to get him to speak.  My driver had warned me he was shy (though he said he doesn’t stop talking at home), so I wasn’t surprised.   So I mainly just smiled at him (which even made him shy away!).   

As we walked, my driver told me details about his day. The cousin had died around 3:30 in the morning. He apparently had to go over to the house, prep the body, and take it to the site.  I’m not entirely where the ‘site’ was, but my driver had to personally carry him, on his shoulders.  It sounds sort of like the pallbearers we are used to seeing in America.   But the American pallbearers don’t carry the body for too long. It sounds like my driver had to carry it for quite a distance.  Either they don’t exist, or cost too much money, but they didn’t have a hearse for the body, and no taxi driver would let them put it in their car.  So they carried it.   My driver told me he couldn’t ever remember being in so much pain.   His shoulders just ached.   

As a side note, as these activities took place a week ago- his wife is again in the hospital.  He is supposed to hear something further today….

But that was the end of my day.   Let’s go back to the morning, when I had just gotten his text message stating that he wasn’t coming in today.    I hopped out of bed, worried, mainly because I wasn’t sure where to make the Xerox copies, knowing I had to do it so that my students would have lesson for a week or so, even after I left the teaching job.   I don’t live too far from the gym, nor the tailor, so I decided, for the first time since moving to Bandra (aka, 6 weeks ago), to actually walk outside by myself.   I went out, walking on the street, enjoying the views.  Women sitting on the street, with baskets of fish, cats prowling and meowing around, were smiling and chatting and smiled at me as I walked past. The autos honked and swerved around me.  Basically, I was treated like everyone else, not the sideshow freak to stare at.   Yes, Bandra really is the place for the white folk to live.  I was relieved to discover this, and relaxed, enjoying the fairly shaded walk. 

While walking, I kept my eyes peeled for a copy machine.   Yes, the shops all look like tiny abandoned buildings, but they are actually thriving businesses.  I found one, and mentally tucked away its location for later.  After five minutes or so, I came upon the small open corner of a building where the tiny little old tailor with sparkling eyes sits at his sewing machine.  Various articles of women’s clothes adorn the white walls, and two other men are cramped in the tiny space, chatting over coffee or tea.  The tailor gave me a huge grin when I walk up, and I asked him to measure me and fit the blouse.    The cost?  50 rupees, or $1.11.  And it will be ready to pick up whenever I want.   I tell him I’ll pick it up at noon.  

Grinning, I hail a rickshaw and head to the gym.   This isn’t too bad or hard at all, I thought.  I began to immediately wonder why we decided we needed a car at all, but of course it will be wonderful come summer, with the air conditioner, and during the monsoons, with the windows that successfully roll up.  Plus, despite my grumbles, our driver is amazing and knows where everything is, pays our bills for us, etc.  So it would be a very tough life without him.  

I arrived on time for my personal training session, and went upstairs to run for 10 minutes as my warm-up.  When I came back down to the main floor, and hunted for my PT, Trainer V, I was distracted and cajoled to enter into their fitness contest they were holding for the day.   I eyed them suspiciously, but their enthusiasm was convincing, and I reluctantly followed them to an empty bench and mat which had various weights scattered about.

The contest was simple.  Fastest time wins.   It started with 30 weighted stair-steps onto one of those plastic aerobics steps.  With five or six trainers around me, shouting personal encouragements, I started stepping as fast as I could.  Of course, once I started, I enjoyed it.   After the 30 steps we quickly switched to 30 push-ups, then 30 sit-ups, then 30 squats.  30 shoulder presses. I did pretty well up until they made me jump over a bench 30 times.  That was exhausting.   It was a flat bench press, and I stood with my hip perpendicular to the length of it.    You put your hands on it, and jump side to side, OVER it.  It was exhausting.  And after that, I had to do 30 up and down jumps.  Not easy jump rope-like jumps, but jumps where you try-to-kick-your-backside jumps.  Those were really hard.   We also did a ‘burpee’ but it was different from what we call burpees in the US, so I lost some time as they explained to me their version.   It ended with 60 seconds of plank, which I am utterly amazed that I finished in one go after the rest of the events. Regardless, after 7 minutes and 15 seconds, I was done, exhausted, and breathing heavily. 

My trainer finally found me, after I was done, so that was disappointing he didn’t get to watch!   Some one kindly passed me their homemade version of Gatorade, which was just as gross as the real thing.   But I drank it gratefully and watched the next female competitor, mentally comparing.

Her sit-ups were much better than mine.  Have you ever seen the movie Bend it Like Beckham?  Have you seen the scene where they are doing sit-ups?  They were like that, where they come fully up.   I guess we always do ‘crunches’ in the US, which I thought were better for your back….    But my push-ups were much better.  We both did girl push-ups, but rather than a flat plank from head to knees, she was bent at 90 degrees and only lifting weight from the hip to chest, rather than knee to chest.   I looked around, but no one else seemed concerned about her form.  In fact, my trainer, just like an obnoxious kid on the playground, got down and started counting the wrong numbers!  16, 14, 10, 21, 19, etc.   Just when you think our worlds are similar, you find the differences!   Everyone was laughing at him, not annoyed.  Her bench jump?  She stood at the end and made baby jumps, not actually jumping over the bench!  

It really surprised me that no one was correcting form. Now I wonder if my form was okay in all of the events. I feel like in the US we’d have been told to do it right and they wouldn’t count until it was done…. Of course, that probably holds true for my sit-ups, as well!   But here no one cared. They thought the short cuts were funny.  

But- here is evidence for the fact that quitting my teaching job was a good decision- I wasn’t annoyed at the cheating.  It just amused me!   After watching one other person, I was convinced that there was no way I’d be able to place, having actually done the proper form rather than racing.  But I wasn’t mad. Just satisfied I had tried my best.  What a difference in mood from other days!   

Days later I could still barely lift my legs.  So it was a good workout.  Later, I found out I placed second in my age group.   I asked them how many people were IN my age group.  No answer. But at least three since the top three were listed….

Exhausted from the gym, I had to finish my busy goals for the day.  I hailed another rickshaw, went home, showered, and headed downstairs to pick up my blouse from the tailor and make the worksheet copies.   As I exited the building, I ran into K. who was accompanied by the car insurance guy.  K. is our landlord’s go-to-guy.  Confused, as it was only noon and our appointment was for 1:00 pm, I escorted them back in to the building.  

Now, the gym story was evidence for my good mood.  This story is further evidence of my irascible nature.  I was a bit grumpy, because I had told the tailor I’d be back at noon, and I don’t like going back on my word.  But it is India, so I figured he wouldn’t mind.    I brought K. and Insurance Guy upstairs.    I have probably mentioned this before, but we’ve had a right struggle trying to find car insurance.  It seems like it should be easier to get people to take your money.   So I was overjoyed that I would finally get this done. 

They sit down. I offer water.  It is declined.  Insurance Guy pulls out a bunch of paper work.  Tells me it will cost about $180 for the car.  It is expensive (for India), but I say fine.  I’m sick of running around. Where do I sign?  I write the check, etc, and then he says, “the car is still in the previous owner’s name?” to which I reply NO.    What kind of idiot is he? Who buys a car from someone but doesn’t transfer ownership?  Maybe I am the idiot, actually.  Maybe that is normal behavior here.  I don’t know. But regardless, he tells me he can no longer give me my old rate.  It is now an extra 250 rupees, or about $5.56.   I just lost it.  I said, “No, you already gave me that rate.  Look at my driving record in the US.  You’ll see I have no accidents (pretty easy, since I don’t own a car!), etc”.  I argued.  Finally, I told him to get out of my house.  I don’t want it anymore.   They both try to say no, we will work this out.  My voice got louder, “I don’t trust you.  I’m not paying this extra money.  And you, K. I’m not at your beck and call.  You don’t show up yesterday, you show up an hour early today. Get out! GET OUT! GET OUT!”.   I swept up my folder of car information, turned my back on them, and dramatically put it on a shelf that is probably out of reach for the general height of the Indian population.  I stared at them, fire probably shooting out of my eyes, until they opened the door.   I grabbed my purse and bag of student lessons waiting to be copied, and followed them out the door.   Yep.  We took the same elevator.  I didn’t look at them, ignored them, and marched out of the elevator first and walked down the road.   

I immediately called my husband.  By this point my firm attitude was crumbling, and I was nearly in tears when I told him what had happened.  I was just so disappointed that we lost the insurance, again.  I should have just paid the darn money.  But at the same time, I was SO incredibly happy to finally bellow at the top of my lungs and release some of my anger.   In the end, my driver told me that cost was way too expensive, so it was good I didn’t pay it.   So I guess it turned out okay, as long as they don’t pay the $20 hitman to get me knocked off.  Apparently those killings are on the rise again…   A poor 74-year-old man was just killed by a hitman…who needs to kill a 74-year-old man?

Anyhow, I walked along the road, picked up my blouse, and headed to the copy shop.  I spent about 300 rupees, or more than the disputed car insurance money, on copies of paper for my students that I will never see filled out…   regardless, I was done, and headed home to relax a tiny bit before my last day of school.   

Power outages

Power outages are fairly common in India, so it shouldn’t surprise me that I am writing this (well, the first draft of this) in the complete dark.

This outage actually appears to be isolated to the Bangalore guesthouse my husband stays in while working on his current case.  The English-speaking employee of the guesthouse assured me that this particular outage is not a city outage, but is entirely my husband’s fault!   Apparently his propensity for hot water combined with air-conditioned cool air has short-circuited the electricity three times this week.  We always did wonder why people turn the water heater off.  I guess we now know why!  

Of course, when I told my husband that amusing little theory, he quickly countered that it was impossible.   You see, when you enter the guest room, you put the key in a socket that supplies electricity to the room.   Sure, it saves energy.  But it also means, for example, that the mini-fridge is completely useless, because each time the guest leaves the room, the power goes out, thus spoiling that leftover gnocchi I so diligently saved after one dinner.  As my husband is only in the room for the sleeping hours of the day, that leaves a full two-thirds of the day with no power consumption whatsoever from the room.  I think my husband’s logic wins.  Just don’t tell the guest house guys.  I want them to keep making me toast in the morning.  

We don’t have power outages in Mumbai, so I had relaxed my guard and was a bit startled when it happened.  Fortunately, I faired much better this time around, having a nice bright computer screen to tote around the room.  It saved me from stubbing my massive big toe on something.  But it reminded me of a power outage I had experienced in Jaipur, which is an amusing/embarrassing story worthy of being re-told.

In 2009 I was doing the golden triangle tour  (Delhi-Agra-Jaipur) with my husband and some of his classmates.  The tour stopped at this amazing store, which sold inlaid marble work.  It was all incredibly beautiful, and expensive.  I didn’t even want to fork out the money for the coasters. 

It was a very hot day, so I was dressed in Indian attire, which is much cooler  (temperature-wise, not appearance-wise) than wearing jeans.  I mean, there are lots of beautiful Indian clothes, but this particular style is dorky looking.  Kind of like mom jeans in America.  It is a long tunic (very nice) paired with incredibly baggy pants (super ugly, as compared with the really cute tight pants that can also be paired with the tunic shirts).  Imagine Princess Jasmine’s pants, but covered up by a big top, thus eliminated the nice curves of her body.  We aren’t cartoons, and they just make your hips and legs look huge.   But all of that extra room for air really insulates you against the heat.  It is refreshingly cool inside the pants, as opposed to the stylish tight pants, where are super hot (temperature-wise AND appearance-wise). The upshot of all of this is that my pants had roughly a 50 -inch waist.  Similar to drawstrings that we are all familiar with, there was a flat, thin piece of cloth strung though them.  However, they were very unlike our gym shorts and pajamas in that the PJs usually have a sturdier string, and big security knots tied at the end to ensure the string doesn’t slide into the pants.  These pants had no such security measure. I, silly and un-initiated in the wearing of baggy pants, had not yet thought of the ramifications of this drawback.

One of my unspoken life mottos is to take advantage of every bathroom when traveling, because you never know (especially in India) when the next one will appear.   Also to always carry toilet paper on my person.  Taking advantage of these mottos, I used the public restroom of this marble shop right before we were planning to leave. 

The moment I sat down, the power went out.   Now, the bathroom part of the process wasn’t too bad, but the dangers of those drawstring pants!   In the darkness I lost my grip on the string, and it dashed away to hide in the folds of the baggy pants.  I tried SO hard to fish it out to re-tie, but I couldn’t find it!   The dark remained.  It was, until tonight, the longest power outage I had experienced.   Five minutes or so isn’t a long time if you are in front of your computer, or have a cell phone or flashlight.  But if you are sitting on a toilet in the pitch black, frantically trying to fix your pants so you can wear them, it is an incredibly long time!   Since the waist is twice as big as my own waist, I can’t even pull them up loosely for the short walk to the car.   They would just fall to the floor if I tried.   Grasping the pants with one hand, I finally got up to wash, figuring I’d wait until the light came back to look for the string. 

Now, everyone has bumped and stumbled through their own home in the dark.  But here I was, in a bathroom that I had never seen in my life, bumping and stumbling, with one hand protectively holding my pants up.  I honestly don’t remember whether I found the sink or not.  Thinking back, it seems highly doubtful- how would I have washed my hands if they were occupied elsewhere?  Regardless, it was still dark.  I heard people calling my name, looking for me. Everyone was ready to leave.  But where was the door?!  It took me several more minutes (well, at least it felt like forever), with one hand against the wall, searching for the door, and the other hand holding my pants up…. but eventually I found a door, and pushed through it.

Shock.   I hadn’t found the exit.  I had found the men’s room!  Complete with a man inside of it!  And light!  I was confused and embarrassed; he was amused and showed me the door.  I guess the women’s room must have had a circuit that was tripped during the power outage, because the men’s room and the rest of the building had power…. And it had been back on for a long time!

I quickly rushed though the three rooms of merchandise to our van, doing my best to keep the arm holding the pants up on the wall-side of the room. I sat in my seat, and patiently picked and prodded, until, thirty minutes later, my efforts paid off and I got the string back and securely tied my pants.   For good measure, I added knots to the end of the string, too.  

Just in time for our next stop on the tour.

Airport Grumps

I dislike flying in general.  

In third grade, our teacher would annually hold a paper airplane contest.  The person who made the best flying airplane had the honor of taking a flight in her private airplane.   I purposely made a lousy paper airplane. I was afraid to fly....  Of course, my brave sister flew with her constantly!

I am no longer afraid to fly, but I still dislike it.  It probably has to do with that sea sickness/air sickness/car sickness that I am so prone to succumb to.  So I am automatically not in the best frame of mind whenever I am required to travel.  Unless I am walking.  Them I am quite happy.  Except here, of course, where I am stared at like an exotic creature and sweat drips off your body at a previously unheard of rate.  But in general, walking is my preferred mode of transport. 

I am sitting at the airport today, waiting for my flight, and silently yelling at a man.  Yes, it finally happened.  A man (rather than a pushy woman) cut in front of me.   It was very obvious, too, because it was at a food stand, complete with the red ropes to separate the line.  He?  He saw the long line, and decided to bypass it and walk straight past the counter, through the 'pick up here' section, and walk in front of me to the 'pay here' front of the line.   When the person in front of me finished, I very dramatically pushed past him, and dropped my single bottle of water (loudly) on the counter.  I looked him straight in the eyes, and said, "There is a line." He started some pathetic attempt of, "did I not say you could go first?  Am I not chivalrous?" (well, he didn't say the second part exactly like that, but it was what he was implying.  And no, he did not 'say' I could go first.  I pushed my way in front of him).  I rolled my eyes, and said something to the effect that there are a lot of people behind me, still, even if he isn't cutting in front of me.  I wasn't worried about him cutting in front of me.  I had already pushed my way there.  But I was concerned about the people behind me.  I did my best to block him when I left, but to no avail.  He cut in front of the other people.

I am definitely going to get into a shouting or fist fight before I leave this country  I just can't take the rudeness. 

Coincidences

I just had a lovely evening.   For all appearances, it was a completely normal evening.   But sometimes, you are just in the right mindset to turn something ordinary into something inspiring. 

My day actually started off in a rather creepy manner. I awoke to a mysterious sound emitted from my phone.  Confused, I knocked over four items to pick it up, and on the third try correctly spelled my password to access the screen.  Finally able to look at it (much easier to do in the morning since I had my LASIK a few years back), I noticed that I had just received an e-mail from Mom.  My phone shouldn’t be buzzing when I get e-mails.  Slight spooked, I read it.   Gramps isn’t doing so hot, and is waiting for blood tests to see if anything is wrong.

Not only was I sad about the news, at this point I was also confused and feeling superstitious.  Why had my phone alerted me to wake up and read bad news?  It very tactfully had ignored all of the other e-mails I received throughout the night.  But it seemed to know I’d want to read the information about Gramps right away. 

On its own, this isn’t too weird.   After all, I was sleepy, and had gone to bed with a fever.  I didn’t, but maybe I COULD have imagined the e-mail sound….   But to add flames to the fire of confusion, last night my computer was burping.  Yes, you read that right.  Burping.  I have no other way to describe it. It sounded like a random burp every few minutes or so.  Irregular and infrequent enough that it startled me and made me jump each time it occurred. It was, in an odd sort of way, scary.  It wasn’t a funny, nice burp, like my computer was playing a joke on me.  No, it was a loud and aggressive, mean one.  Like a good scientist trying to explore all possible sources, I closed my Firefox windows.   It still burped.   Now that is just plain weird.  So I have no idea how or why it happened.  And now my phone is mysteriously alerting me to bad news.   I’m beginning to think my inanimate objects have emotions.  Or digestive problems.   I guess Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines, is about to start….

By the evening, I had forgotten about the new, living status of my various pieces of technology and was excited to meet a new friend. 

You know how parents are.  They love to talk about their children.  Having always been perfect and wonderful children (please note that there is no sarcasm in that sentence, it is the full truth), they like to talk a lot.  For example, I was congratulated on my engagement many times before I was engaged.  He had asked my parents, they promptly told all 1000 people in our town, and I had to very politely act confused when people would congratulate me before he had actually asked me. 

So it comes as no surprise that my Mom fell into conversation with someone doing volunteer work at her school. Naturally they start talking about their children.  At some point, they realized that my sister had dated his son, back in 8^th grade or so.  They then discovered that their daughters have the same name.   Eventually they hit the jackpot and discovered that their daughters both happen to live in the same suburban Mumbai neighborhood!  Not your typical discovery for two white parents in a Michigan school! 

A few e-mails later, and we had an ice cream date for tonight. We smiled at each other, and then proceeded to internally debate the merits of adding walnuts or almonds, chocolate or white chips to our ice cream.  Once the important decisions were complete (she went with a small ‘vanilla’ with white chips and almonds, I had the medium ‘vanilla’ with dark chips and walnuts), we walked outside and sat at the glass table.  

It was a very nice evening, and the loud honking car horns were, for the most part, easily ignored.  For once, the mosquitoes were occupied elsewhere, and the giant rat that lives in the shop only ran across the floor twice.   All in all, very nice and peaceful settings for a good back home conversation. 

After a quick warning from the shop employees not to lean against the plastic chair backs (which had permanent marker ‘x’s on them to remind us), we, sitting up straight and munching on ice cream, settled into an hour and a half conversation.

 We shared our basic life backgrounds.  Further coincidences propagated quicker than our ice cream melted. It turns out that we both went to the same college.  We even lived in the same dorm, and enjoyed the same dorm foods!  But the best coincidence, I think, was to find out that I actually already knew her husband!  We were both in SNRE, and frequently even sat next to each other in Woody Plants (which we both claim is the greatest class on earth and we both still attempt to discuss the Latin names of trees with our spouses)!  He is actually one of the very few people I distinctly remember, and I always wondered what he has been up to these past few years.   It was my own personal episode of “Where are they now?”

But despite the many similarities in our lives, there was one thing that was completely different.   Our attitudes here in Mumbai.  She is so incredibly happy to try everything offered to her.   I have sat around, being grumpy.  She is busy, taking classes six days a week.  She isn’t spoiled with a car like me.  She even takes the train each day!  The train in India is an adventure only for the strong-willed.  Despite classes, and working to start a ministry here, she still has taken time to see and travel all over Bombay.  And she loves every minute of it.  Yes, she has frustrations here, too.   But her attitude- it was great.  She can just brush the troubles off and remain happy.    I really envy her great attitude.

Meeting her inspired me to try harder to enjoy myself.  To relax.  To put some effort in being here, and taking advantage of what Mumbai has to offer me. I think I am going to be a better person for having met her.  

I’m quite happy for the many coincidences that lead to our ice cream date tonight.  Thanks, Sis, for dating her brother twelve or so years ago… who would have thought it would led to this chance meeting?   

I just hope the coincidence that, in one night, two pieces of my inanimate technology apparently developed emotional and digestive capabilities was just that, a coincidence.   I’m going to trust Louis Pasteur and believe that there will be a much more mundane outcome than the beginning of T-1000 world domination…  But, to borrow a line from John Connor, “there is no fate but what we make for ourselves”.   So I’ll work to make my Mumbai fate a bit brighter! 

P.S. Upon re-reading this, many sentences probably won’t make much sense to you unless you have Terminator 2 memorized, as I have….  It is a great movie.  Watch it again. 
P.P.S.  Apparently Gramps just had the flu bug and is getting better.

Holy Cow

I just finished reading Holy Cow, An Indian Adventure by Sarah MacDonald.  Sarah is a bit more loose with her vocabulary than I typically like in a book (or in general conversation), but she creates an incredibly humorous and accurate portrayal of the troublesome life of a white woman in this country. 

I am certainly a much watered-down, boring version of her.  My husband isn’t risking his life in Pakistan and Afghanistan during the war on terror- he is just risking his heart from a lack of exercise with his sixteen-hour workdays.   But we are still separated for days on end.  Sarah tries everything India has to offer, including drugs, which are certainly not on my menu.  I’ve branched out only as far as trying a few Indian sweets.  She, rather than sitting at home grouchy (like myself), decides to go and find herself- she travels and explores the major and minor religious centers of India.  I am channeling my anger at the gym and by doing my very best (so far futile) attempts to quit my teaching job. 

The book evolves along, starting with her hatred of the country and its daily frustrations.  But then she begins to make friends and travel.  Her travels focus on learning about the various religious experiences India has to offer.  I find the fact that so many people in the world worship so many varieties of gods in so many different ways fascinating, so I enjoyed that section of the book, though I know it would probably bore many people who are less interested in the multitude of world religions.  She meets incredibly famous gurus and hears the Dalai Lama speak.  Apparently a living female religious figure makes her breast grow until she takes off the ring representing that mother. Eventually she finds her peace in the overwhelming country, and of course, by the end of the book, she loves India and is tearful to leave.  

I’m at day 69 of my own trip to this sensory overload of a country.  My brain is still stuck in her first few chapters, focused on the frustrations and hating the country’s behavior towards women with a passion.  But who knows, maybe I’ll evolve like her and wind up crying like a baby when I leave.  I rather doubt I’ll leave with her sense of religious understanding, however.   She travels, everywhere, and mostly alone.  I am not exactly a fan of traveling, and in this increasingly smothering weather, I am prone to throwing up each time I step out of doors.  Trust me.  I got heat sickness on top of a glacier once.  For me, a good day is starting to become a day when I don’t have to go outside and interact with the general public or weather.   A complete 180 reversal from the old me, who considered a day wasted if I didn’t get to go outside for a walk and enjoy the crisp fresh air and weather, or chat with a new person on a bus.  Granted, my favorite season for breathing the fresh air was winter…  an air condition that is impossible to obtain here in Mumbai. 

Surprisingly, rather than making me feel better about common shared experiences, or happy that the future will be bright, the book just depressed me.   I spend so much of my life angry here, frustrated with the futile processes and hoops that we jump through (the most recent frustrations revolve around our car - we bought it nearly two months again and it STILL isn’t in our name, and now our car insurance is expired, and no one even wants our money to cover us), that it is just awful to hear even more troubles.  I’ve developed my own mantra, “It’s just India,” to explain away the frustrations, and repeat it frequently on a daily basis. It does help to calm me down….  but I have also started giving Americans a bad name by blatantly pushing people in airport lines (of course, only if they pushed me first!), and mouthing off to the women who dare to cut in front of me in the various lines in which I am standing (well, not the little old grannies, just the women who are obviously NOT grannies). 

But each time I have to interact with the public, I build more, not less, anger.  Individuals are different than the public, of course.  Once you know a person, they are nice, incredibly helpful, and friendly.  But the nameless, pushy, rude faces?  I feel the strong urge to just push them back before I’m swallowed up.   Unfortunately, in a city with 14 million odd people, there are a lot more nameless faces than familiar ones! 

Last night, I watched the movie My Name is Khan.  It was amazing; it managed to make you laugh, make you cry, feel anger and feel hope.  It is a fictional story about a Muslim named Rizwan Khan who is born with Asperger’s syndrome.  As an adult, he moves from Mumbai to San Francisco, has a wonderful life, and then 9/11 strikes and everything changes.  The story of his journey across America sort of reminds me of Forrest Gump.   In the movie, as a child, Rizwan’s mother taught him that there are two types of people in the world- good people and bad people.  You can’t determine whether someone is good or bad by religion, but by their actions. 

I think, since being in India, I have come up with my own division of how to tell good people from bad.  Everyone I have met, or had some form of relationship with, is lumped into ‘good’.  Everyone I interact with, outside of an introduction, is ‘bad’.   No matter where you go, be it the gym or the teaching center, if you have an ‘in’, people treat you wonderfully, politely, nicely, even if you don’t know each other by name.  Offer you food, look at their cell phone pictures, etc.  But once you are outside that circle, shopping, waiting in line for a bathroom, etc, people do their best to walk all over you.  It is so odd.  Clearly, I am being silly with this categorization, but it really does, at times, seem to be a clear-cut line.  Perfect sweetness and politeness if there is a chance we’ll see each other again vs. complete rudeness/pushiness if we are strangers.   

But back to the book.  In Holy Cow (this is a complete paraphrase off the top of my head), one person tells Sarah that Indians are happy because they look at someone ‘below’ them in life and say, “I have so much more than them, I am so much better then them, and thus I am happy.”  Whereas an American looks at someone with more and says, “I wish I had what they had.  I’d be happier then.”  

Two thoughts struck me immediately upon reading this comment.  My Indian driver’s reaction and my own.  A few days before I had read the book, my driver asked me to give him music from my computer.  I was happy to do this, but he has only 2 GB of memory, so I can’t give him the entire 12 GB library.  I’m not exactly the kind of person who enjoys sitting and listening to music, so I sat him down in front of my computer, taught him how to use the mouse pad, and made him click and listen to each song.  After twenty or so minutes, he just ecstatically bursts out, “Look at me!  All of the other drivers are sitting outside in the heat, but here I am, at a computer, listening to music!” Apparently it was his first time at the controls of a computer.  And he wasn’t rejoicing in it just to be happy to learn how to use one.  He was happy because, as he said, he was experiencing something that those now ‘below’ him did not get to experience.   It set him apart.  He was special.  

I believe my reaction is a bit different than what was said in the book about Americans.  I’ve always known what I want.   When I was a kid, reading Little Women, I was always a bit worried when it came to the chapter on building castles in the sky.  For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it is set in New England around the time of the Civil War.  In this chapter, they are describing their dream futures.  Sixteen year old Meg wants a handsome, incredibly rich husband and wonderful dream home, fifteen year old Jo dreams of being a world famous authoress, twelve year old Amy of being a world famous artist, and thirteen year old Beth?  Beth just wanted a happy, unchanging home close to her family.   I was like Beth. For heaven’s sake, I cried when my parents re-sided our home and got rid of the tarpaper brick exterior.  I am not good with change. I was a bit ashamed of coveting Beth’s castle.  Sure, I wanted to be a writer, like Jo.  But not at the expense of my family.  I think it has always been most important to be near and dear to a family.   Of course, which book character dies?  Beth, the one with no ambitions.    So I was secretly worried that I too would die if I didn’t find something to be passionate about, career-wise rather than baseball-wise.  

Well, fifteen to twenty or so years later, I haven’t changed.  I'm still stubborn and fearful of change. Yes, like the person in Holy Cow said, I’m an American looking for something I don’t have.  But the difference is that I had it. And we voluntarily left it behind, to seek my husband’s castle instead.  No wonder I’m grumpy here.   I don’t care to own designer purses and jeans.  I don’t need a designer job.  Yes, a job is a way of ensuring your family can happily exist, but I could never exist just for a job (that is the problem with grad school….) I just want a family that can be close, care, and joke together.  Being here in India just puts that further and further away each day.  Thank goodness for Skype, at least.  

I was reading reviews on Holy Cow, and some people (read that as Indians) really hate it.   But her personal experiences are all true.  Women lose their self-confidence here.  Men creep us out when they look at us.  Fortunately, I haven’t been groped, but you hear stories about it all the time.  Instead of complaining about her text, why don’t these people tell men to stop harassing white women?  I can be dressed from head-to-toe in Indian attire, and I still won’t feel completely at ease around the men here.  That isn’t to say I am not safe.  But feeling safe and comfortable are two completely different stories. But it is the freaks that creep her out.  It is just honestly. 

I’m sure, when people look at America through new eyes, they see many issues that we are blind to, having been indoctrinated in the culture since birth.  When you are used to a country, you don’t see the glaring faults.  Maybe I will spot many more faults when I return home to America.  But it is the reviewers who are blind, not Sarah.  Every country has faults.  It is better to admit it, fix them, and move on then to ignore them and try to deny them.  Her book expresses exactly how I feel in the country, so there must be some truth in it.