Well, as my husband’s never-ending case progresses, I am back in Delhi for another week of non-adventures. My last blog series on Delhi was so boring I even had trouble writing it. Did you really care that I ate choco flakes each and every morning, and that the bowl was smaller on the last day? Didn’t think so. So, this time around, I’m going to try (keyword is try) to be less verbose (can you use verbose for writing?) and squeeze a whole week into one entry. No minute details on the showerhead. Again, the keyword is TRY.
I am not fond of flying (though I am fond of window shopping at airports), especially in India when I am surrounded by mostly men (some of whom take photos of me, even in the airport) and women who can only be regarded as pushy. The flight in was no exception- I got into a death stare match with one woman who kept trying to push in front of me in the security line. I eventually won. Being a foot taller helps, although she was a foot wider.
I do have to say that her pushiness was balanced by a very nice woman who switched seats with my husband so that we could sit together. Therefore, the total grumpiness level of flying was a wash. The flight in was at the crack of dawn, 6:05 am, but it was Kingfisher (so I got the awesome pre-flight juice box that oddly elevates my happiness) and I was sitting next to my husband so I felt very content indeed.
My husband snoozed, and I read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The guy next to me was either trying to (1) touch my leg or (2) realized he was making me uncomfortable and thus became uncomfortable himself when he kept putting his arm over the armrest onto my side and then quickly removing it as I moved my entire body as far away from him as possible.
But anyhow, back to the book. I had tried, once, to watch the movie. I believe it might have been on the flight to Mumbai from Chicago, actually. I found it incredibly boring, and didn’t last more than five or ten minutes. But I have always been a reader, and was enjoying the book, although I don’t understand why it was necessary to use so many swear words. I guess she just truly speaks like that, but she does seem to have a bit of a potty mouth.
I got the book from Friend E. She just moved back to the US, and she and her husband are even cheaper than me, because she was trying to sell back all of her already used, illegally copied books to the street sellers. (You buy a lot of books on the street here, take them home, and then realize that the page numbering is completely off and that the book is probably a copy and that the poor author didn’t get any money for your purchase. It is really annoying, and now that I know about it, I know not to buy a book from anywhere but the real, not-under-a-tarp, bookshops. But it takes a few lessons before you learn it, simply because, as far as I know, such a practice doesn’t even exist in the US.) Even my driver laughed at her when he found out what she was doing. So I squeezed Eat Pray Love from her stack before she sold it. She wound up getting maybe $5 for the stack. Maybe she can buy a happy meal at the airport.
So now that I have the book, I was happily reading it while sipping on my Kingfisher juice box, sitting next to my husband. That is the good life. The slightly unpleasant aspect of life arrived when we landed at the Delhi airport and our driver was nowhere to be seen. Let me take a moment to remind everyone how wonderful the Delhi airport is to me. It is so empty. It is so clean. It smells nice. The bathrooms are good. Did I mention it is empty and clean? I am very content while walking along those flat moving walkways. But once we got outside, and didn’t see a sign with our name on it, a tiny bit of stress started.
Stress for my husband, not for me. I had nothing to do or see. But he had a meeting and he, naturally, didn’t want to be late for it. A few phone calls later and he made contact with the car rental shop. No one at the rental place speaks English, at least not well, despite the fact that every single person there tells us they are proficient in it. After a lot of empty threats, finally the company calls the driver and tells him to mosey along and pick us up. A few minutes later he casually saunters up and unrolls his piece of paper with my husband’s name on it. We are finally in the car, but the ten or fifteen minutes wasted waiting on him has now put us squarely in rush-hour traffic.
Eventually, after a few more calls, the driver figured out where he was supposed to go and dropped my husband off at his client’s office. Then I was dropped off at the hotel. Before I left, the driver gave me his card. I don’t think I’ll be calling him.
I wasn’t very happy with the first hotel in Delhi, so my husband and I are trying a new hotel this time around. The last hotel was very pretty, but the food was incredibly expensive and the rooms just smelled awful. Plus, don’t forget that the first room they put us in had carpet. On the walls. There are some things in life that are just too difficult to forgive, and carpeted walls are one of those things.
Now, this hotel was beautiful, too. I have absolutely zero knowledge of architecture and painting or styles. My knowledge has solely been picked up from garage-saleing with my mom and dad. Mom will pick something up, say, “oh I love this art deco piece.” (By the way, it is always art deco that she likes; now you know what to buy her for Christmas. That or paintings of Dutch stuff.) Well, the constant flea marketing plus one architecture tour on the Chicago River years and years ago are the extent of my knowledge about style. So, now that you understand how well versed I am in the topic, let me say that the style of this hotel is Art Deco meets the 1960s meets India. Got it? I think it is awesome, and I love the appearance. The other hotel just seemed plain after the crazy carpeting in this room.
Of course, the vinyl marbling in our bathroom horrifies the geologist in me. But that is another story.
So much like Mr. Darcy’s little sister Georgiana was determined to be pleased when she first met Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, I was determined to be pleased with this hotel and thus adore it. Sure the rooms are a bit smaller, and it took 27 minutes (no joke) to check in, but those were minor details compared to the pretty pink couches in the lobby and the fact that the room smelled like…get this…. Nothing! Exactly the way I wanted it to smell. So I was very pleased indeed.
Of course, as per any Indian hotel, all of the employees were overly nice and concerned about my well-being. The bellhop even insisted upon showing me how to use the remote control, and jokingly pointed out the beer in the mini-fridge, to which I replied I prefer wine, allowing him a giggle. I think they are often treated as non-entities, so I always try to be nice and smile and treat the hotel employees as humans. Because, in fact, they are human.
So there I was, in my nice Art Deco-1960’s-Indian-style room.
Throughout the week, I explored the building. Heck, it is a small building; I explored all of it on day one. The first thing I found (naturally) was a lovely bakery inside of the lobby. Each day I allowed myself one cake found them all to be delicious. Yum! By Thursday the cake employee was offering suggestions because he felt like I favored the chocolate varieties too much. So I tried the rasmali cheesecake (if people remember the white dessert served at my wedding, that was rasmali, but not in cheesecake form). It was the first cake I didn’t really like. My officemate in Chicago makes much better cheesecake. By that point of course, the cake dude recognized me and slipped a piece of chocolate with “To the Best Guest, Emily” written on it. He told me he’d be gone the next day to take an exam. I wished him luck, and he got slightly teary eyed and told me that no one, not even his own girlfriend, had wished him luck. I was the first. Isn’t that odd? Is it less common in India to tell people good luck? In America it is a phrase everyone says automatically without even thinking about it. Or maybe he was pulling my leg. I don’t know. It was semi awkward. I do, of course want him to do well. I have no reason not to. But I also didn’t want to sit and hear all about the subject, either. I never saw him again, so I don’t know how he did on the exam.
The hotel is rather small, less than ten floors, but it had a nice gym and pool, which I never used.
On Monday, my husband’s team decided to do dinner at the hotel restaurant, so that was fun. In total, there were eight of us dining, including an adorable toddler son of one member of the team. It was fun to wear something other than gym shorts and a tank, meet them (it was the first day on the case for a pair of them), and interact with people again. I don’t want to get rusty in my socializing skills! I had a great time, but I was amazed that, after waking up at the crack of dawn, they could take the time to enjoy a meal for two hours, leave at midnight, and still do more work.
The tomato soup was really good, by the way. In fact, their breakfast of tomatoes stuffed with spinach and cheese was really good, too. I ate more tomatoes this week than I have in a month before. I guess I’m on a tomato kick.
I am also on a mediation kick. What? I’m sure every single person who read this has the same reaction. Sure, I’ve meditated a tiny bit before, at the end of a Flow class at the gym, or at the end of a video session of Yoga Booty Ballet. But I’m not exactly good at it, or found it an integral part of my life.
But what I AM good at is being convinced by TV commercials. You have no idea how much I want this darn orange scooter they keep showing on TV. My husband rightfully laughs at me for craving everything I see on the TV commercials. At least I never bought Fair and Lovely skin cream. I’m immune to that one commercial, I guess….
Anyhow, the combining factors of an ingrown toenail that is really painful (and thus I don’t want to wear shoes) and the fact that she mediates a lot in Eat Pray Love convinced me to try it. I sat on the floor in the comfy hotel robe (I’m a sucker for trying that one at each and every single hotel) and started with one of the mantras mentioned in the book, “I am that”. I made it six minutes before I had to uncross my legs and re-cross them the other way. Another four minutes. Ten minutes for the first session wasn’t too bad, I guess. I tried it again on Monday evening and made it twelve minutes and then seven on the next leg. I guess I’m getting better. I also switched from “I am that” to “I am at peace and I am happy” which seemed to work much better for me.
The next day I managed twelve minutes without moving, then fifteen that night. It was no longer my legs that made me twitch, just my aching back and lack of concentration.
So on Wednesday, I decided to remedy the back problem with a massage. Well, who am I kidding, I just wanted a massage. But I really do have a lot of back pain. It had been almost completely gone until I started flying (and thus carrying a heavy backpack with my computer) frequently.
Now, massages here aren’t quite like the US. I feel like anyone could just be hired off the street to do a massage; it is a lot more rubbing and a lot less pressure, no matter how hard you tell them to do it. In other words, they aren’t very good. But they are cheap, and I figured it was a nice hotel so it would probably be a lot better than the woman who does them in the gym, because she was terrible. Ironically enough, as I am proofreading this, that woman called. I ignored it. She always tries to sell me chocolates or her sister (as a maid) when she gives me massages. It annoys me. One free one and one paid one was enough.
I’d tried one other kind of massage before in India, a Thai massage. If you look at pictures, it sounds really cool- they put you in yoga poses, etc. But really it isn’t cool at all. They do very few poses (mainly just the one on any image for a Thai massage). The rest is the same low-key rubbing.
Anyhow, I went down to the hotel spa (honestly, I was actually looking for a haircut, but I couldn’t find that) and signed up for a back massage. $20. It was about the same as before, but she did do some nice thing to my neck that sent chills down my back. I (probably naively) translate chills and pain as to doing a good massage. So that part was okay.
The end of the massage was funny; she use oil instead of lotion, so I was supposed to shower. Fortunately, she got the picture that I was modest and left the room so I could do it in peace. I turned on the faucet, but I couldn’t get the showerhead to work. Very clearly there was a knob to pull or turn. I twisted and pulled to no avail. I decided to try the movable handheld showerhead instead of the fixed showerhead. I twisted and turned that knob, too. I just couldn’t get either to budge! Finally I soaped up, squatted lower than one would for the limbo, and knelt under the very low faucet to wash my back. I couldn’t reach my neck, but I just kept my hair up and took care of it when I got back to the hotel room.
When I exited the massage room all four female employees, plus one male were just standing there, staring at me. Not in a creepy Indian-man stare, just they were all obviously bored and hanging out together. But it was still awkward to walk out and see all of them, especially because I promptly forgot which one gave me the massage (I know, that is terrible, but you are on your stomach, you don’t really see their face much and everyone was dressed alike, pretty, and had black hair up in the same style) and just hoped it was the one who gave me the glass of water.
So did the massage actually do anything for my back (the theory being that if it doesn’t hurt so much when I’m trying to sit and meditate, it would be easier)? Nope. Well, yes and no. My back did feel much better. But when I wasn’t focusing on my back pain, my mind wandered from my mantra to the idea of getting a haircut. I haven’t had one since arriving in India. My morning meditation was interrupted by housekeeping at the eleven-minute mark. I didn’t do it that evening.
The next day, Thursday, I quit. It just isn’t for me. Besides, I had moved on to a new book.
Also, after reading Eat Pray Love I’m really jealous we don’t have that medicine woman from Bali. She seems amazing. I bet she could have fixed my back in two hours.
I have ‘sort-of’ made a friend here. Friend might be a bit of an overstatement. A person to smile at might be a more accurate term. My floor is a happening place. The first morning I went down the elevator with a Chinese man (my guess is Chinese b/c he had a shopping bag that clearly had nothing but Chinese writing on it). As he got on, I noticed he still had the sticky ‘Medium’ tag on the back of his collared shirt. I hesitantly tried to tell him the problem, but finally just picked it off for him, and we both had a good laugh and grin. We now smile warmly at each other every breakfast from across the room.
So far I have only raided the minibar once. By that I mean once each day. I have the Mars bar, each and every single day. Chocolate is my weakness. But it makes me so happy! It is becoming a standing joke between myself and the guy who checks the minibar, though. Every day he knocks and everyday I tell him I ate the chocolate.
On Tuesday, as I stood waiting for the elevator (ironically enough, with the man who’s shirt sticker I fixed), I gazed absentmindedly at some of the hallway decorations. The floor was a beautiful white marble, by the way. Perched atop the marble was a pedestal, about thigh high. At the top of the pedestal was a small tray filled with grey rocks. I wasn’t quite sure what the heck it was for, but they also had rocks spilled about the floor for some artistic purpose so I figured it was part of the décor. On my way up, after lunch, I noticed matching black marble pedestals on the lobby level. They looked like they had peanut shells in the top tray; I looked closer and realized that they were actually reddish rocks. And then, it hit me. Memories from the 1980s flooded my head and I realized that these were, in a previous life, ashtrays. The realization that I had completely forgotten something that was once so common and globally prevalent made me incredibly happy. I mean, happy that smoking in most places is such a thing of the past that I don’t immediately recognize it as a fancy ash tray and instead had been turning my brain trying to figure out the purpose of a pedestal of rocks.
I am in Delhi, so it was entirely expected to experience power outages throughout the week. I wondered if the key works in the door during an outage but I was always sitting around in my bathroom and too lazy to switch to real clothes when the power went out. So I never tested it. Normally the outages are during the day, but a half dozen or more happened fairly quickly on Wednesday evening. I was glad I had my cell phone, because it was DARK in that room. Also, for some odd reason, only the bathroom lights would automatically restore when the power was out. So I just sat in bed, in the dark, and watched those lights, every five or ten minutes, abruptly shut off and then turn back on. Originally I’d gotten up and turned the room lights back on, but there were so many outages it wasn’t worth it. I just sat in bed and played brickbreaker on my cell phone instead.
The TV must have died in the power outages. A nice guy in a blue jump suit came and fixed it. I am pretty sure he didn’t speak a lick of English. Or he was deaf. Either way he was fast and efficient. He probably just had to flip a fuse. He went out and got the most unstable looking ladder you could possibly imagine. He placed it by the door and opened the grill on the ceiling. His ladder placement scared me; for some reason he placed it all the way to the left side of the narrow hallway when the fuse was on the right side of the ceiling hole. Maybe he knew what he was doing, though, because his ladder was leaning precariously to the far left and he leaned precariously to the far right. A perfect balance, I suppose.
A few words about those grills in the ceiling. They sort of creep me out. They are open and you can peer up into them. There is one in the bathroom, too, right about the showerhead. You know when you hear about some creepy person videotaping people in the hotel bathroom? I now understand how they could do it. I really don’t like that open grate just there. But of course, I let my imagination get away from me. I’m sure there isn’t actually a creepy person with a video camera hooked up over the showerhead.
During the power outages I also watched a Baraat (a sort of parade where everyone dances their way to the wedding). It was right outside my bedroom window. The first Baraat I attended was for a college friend of my husband, back in 2009. It seemed so full of life. Hundreds of people were dancing in the street and having fun. Now that I have watched so many more, however, it just looks like a dying tradition. The one I watched had less than two dozen people and of them, only three were dancing. It was sad to see. It is the same story in Mumbai; we drive through them a lot but they are always small and few people are actually dancing. Maybe it is always like that and the one wedding I first attended was an exception, I don’t know. But it is sort of sad rather than fun to watch.
Breakfast room service on Wednesday had been completely messed up (coke instead of diet coke, and an omelet full of yummy veggies instead of a very plain, egg-white only omelet for my husband). As a consequence, he actually went down to the breakfast buffet with me, which was nice but short. The next day the cook apologized profusely and sent up some fruit, chocolates, and cookies with breakfast.
I may complain a lot about living in India, but once you are ‘in’ someplace (in this case, a guest at the hotel) everyone treats you fabulously and nicely.
Wednesday I had been in a really bad mood for some reason. Thursday was much better. Probably because we got the nice free breakfast items. Also because my Internet was finally working. The three days before it had been going in and out and I couldn’t even write e-mails half of the time. So good Internet is apparently now a requirement for happiness.
By the way, my husband and I both agree that this hotel serves much, much better (and cheaper) food than the first hotel. It also smells much, much better than the first hotel. However, the first hotel was fancier with bigger rooms. The first one also had a better minibar. In fact, the food was so expensive at the first hotel; it was cheaper to just eat dinner from that well-stocked minibar. So if you are traveling in Delhi and want to know the hotel names, just let me know.
One interesting thought occurred to me on Thursday. The toilet sits on an incline. What? you are probably asking me. Yes, that is right. The seat is not parallel to the floor. It is decidedly inclined. I’d guess by maybe 15 degrees, but I didn’t bring a protractor so I could be a bit off. If you are curious, the back is lower than the front. Tall as I am, my feet don’t reach the floor with this one.
Anyhow, I have been puzzling over this in my head for over three days, trying to decide why exactly the toilet was on an incline, because, as far as my memory goes, this is the first time I’ve ever experienced it, when I finally got a hypothesis. It brought me back to a picture I had taken in Kuala Lumpur, see it below. Pay attention to the lower left image.
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| Check out the lower left image! |
Notice how the person is standing (my cousin corrected with ‘squatting’) but if your shoes planted firmly on a toilet, I think it is perfectly fair to call it standing, too) on the toilet. I had laughed at this photo and wondered who the heck would make such a mistake. Then I showed it to my cook. She told me everyone does that. I showed it to my driver. He told me the first time he used a western toilet, he didn’t know what to do and that is exactly what he thought he was supposed to do. It makes sense; you are used to being in the squatting position over hole in the floor, just replicate the same position on the western toilet…. Well, not to me; why not just squat over it instead of on it? Anyhow, the point is this. My driver also kept assuring me on the superiority of the squat toilet rather than western toilet because, when you go number 2, there is more pressure and you get more stuff out of you (he really enjoys talking about his bowel movements). No idea if that is true or not. I’ve never had a problem…. So, back to the inclined toilet. Presumably, when you are sitting on this thing, your torso is no longer perpendicular to the ground. In fact, if you sit parallel to the wall, your knees are elevated above your hips; you are slightly mimicking the squat position, thus to an Indian’s eyes (or at least my driver’s eyes) in a better position to fully expel everything from your body…. I have no justification as to whether or not that is why my toilet is in an incline position. It is pure hypothesis. But just something to think about.
On Friday the cleaning guy came extra early. There are too many people in India, so they really disperse the jobs. One guy cleans, another comes later to check the minifridge (and refill that candy bar), and a third comes in the afternoon to water the plants.
The cleaning guy this morning was rather creepy. He started off nice enough, asking where I was from, etc. I was semi-afraid to mention Chicago- that same day was the day the Chicago jury decided someone was not guilty of the 11/26 bombings; the Mumbai equivalent of 9/11. So I stuck with my usual answer of “USA but I live in Mumbai”. Anyhow, he kept talking, did a very, very overly thorough job of cleaning (he even took the obviously never used, folded shoe bag from under the luggage rack and dusted it) and then, horrors of horrors: he insisted on putting slippers on my feet!
This is why I have such an issue living in India! Geez Louise! I mean, I thought I was safe from weirdoes inside the hotel. No one stares at me in that creepy manner and everyone is polite and nice. But now even the darn room-cleaning guy is playing Prince Charming and I have to star as Cinderella? I don’t know if he is always like that, or only like that to women, or only like that to people he wants a tip from (clearly I did not tip him), or only towards blondes. I don’t know. All I know is that it is freaky, weird, and just depressingly odd. I also find that I have NO idea how to respond to such a situation.
In other news, my husband got really mad and yelled at the front desk because our room keys never work. His, in five days, has NEVER worked. He has to get a new one each day and then I let him in the room. Mine often dies, too. On Friday I changed the key three times. So I will grant everyone the idea that they are really annoying. I had been voting that the key death was due to power outages, but on Saturday I was actually window-shopping in the atrium when we had another outage. It was super dark down there! Fortunately power kicked back on immediately. My key worked fine when I returned. So it must just be that the majority of the keys are old.
On Friday (before yelling at the front desk) we went to dinner in the hotel. We got a bottle of wine because the only wine by the glass was an awful Indian wine. After one glass I realized why people say not to mix alcohol with cold medicines. I thought I was going to pass out right at the dinner table. Needless to say, I stopped drinking and the nearly full bottle sat unused in our hotel room for the remainder of the trip.
Saturday was gearing up to be incredibly boring; my husband’s 10-2 meeting also had a phone call from 3-5 so a short work day was growing longer by the minute. I woke up Saturday convinced his meeting had been moved to 8:45 am…. It is probably a bad sign when I can’t remember if dreams are real or not! Of course, my other dream had been that I saw Jordan Knight of the New Kids on the Block at our Founder’s Day parade in Climax. I was super excited in the dream. Clearly that dream was false because it was always Joey that was my favorite, not Jordan.
Anyhow, it was supposed to be boring but my Friend R, from UofC was in town for a busy wedding/work weekend. We met at her house, which was great fun to see. Her mom made me a fabulous cold coffee plus milk plus ice cream drink and some yummy rotis. Also she fed me mangos. It was a very good introduction to her home! It was nice to just sit in Friend R’s bedroom and see her childhood. Eventually we decided to get pedicures.
The pedicures were rather lousy, in the end. I came home to look at them and noticed bits of the old red paint still visible under the bubble gum pink paint (bubble gum pink; I figured I needed a change). But the pedicures, even if our toes weren’t the best, were a great setting for a much needed gossip and gabfest. It was so wonderful to talk with a friend again.
She gave me some good advice; basically to toughen up and stop thinking that everyone is staring at me. When people take photos, yell at them. We’ll see how good I am at following it!
Oh, exciting (for me…. because I have no life). On Saturday evening I was finally properly dressed and shoed when the power went out. I grabbed my key and went into the hallway to test the ‘does the key work during a power outage theory?’ It was DARK in the hallway. I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in the hallway before. I had to keep my hand right on the handle/key slot so I wouldn’t lose it. But the key worked! So now you know….
Waiting for my husband to come home…got a new high score on brickbreaker: 9880. So close to breaking that 10,000 mark!
Saturday we went to dinner at a restaurant called La Piazza. It was located in the Hyatt hotel, maybe thirty minutes away. We’d heard two good reviews and wanted something yummy (Italian, of course). And it was the best diner so far in India!! Yea! Their bread was amazing. They first served some normal large loaf of bread, and after we devoured that they gave us pieces of bread cut like a pizza. They were amazing. The seasoning was incredible. Some of it was fresh rosemary. I did a good job filling up on that before our meal even arrived. We both had salads and then I had pumpkin ravioli for my main course.
Now, I’ve complained in several blogs about the lack of good apple pie in India. I have also been systematically testing all of the pumpkin ravioli on every menu. There are a lot of vegetarians here, so it is pretty common. I had been incredibly disappointed each and every time. Regardless of the description, each plate would come smothered in a disgusting thick white sauce that would cause an instant heart attack. Pumpkin ravioli should be light and savory so you can taste the pumpkin. Come on people! Some of the raviolis didn’t even have pumpkin in them. Or at least, it was so little you didn’t notice. So, fast-forward five months and we are sitting at La Piazza. Out comes pumpkin ravioli. A very light buttery sage sauce. It was translucent, thank goodness. Some milk foam. Heaven. You could tell the raviolis were handmade, and fresh, too. It was amazing. Have you seen TV commercials were someone eats the food and they close their eyes and just look so happy you know it is fake? That was me. And the expression was not fake.
The desert was only so-so, but it was served with very good ice cream.
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