Hotel Delhi: Saturday

My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi, and I was joining him for a week of hotel adventures while he worked entirely too hard.  I had arrived at the hotel Monday and by Saturday was desperately hoping for more time together than the week- all we did was eat breakfast together.   

Despite being a Saturday, my husband had another all-day meeting.  I woke up at six, or whatever ungodly Saturday morning time that he got up; I ordered more choco flakes and cold milk; I made him a cup of tea for his sore throat; I carefully side-stepped the dying cockroach that was about to crawl into my shoes; I went back to bed.   I woke for the second time around ten, the sound of construction even louder than before.  I can’t sleep through anything, so even the sound of other people’s doorbells and the quiet ‘housekeeping’ announcement from down the hall kept me up.   

I was hungry again, so I turned off the ‘do not disturb’ button (someone has to clean up that nearly dead cockroach), turned on my computer, and opened the thick and thin gold curtains to peer out of the window.   My goodness.  I think it rained last night.   I was absolutely shocked!  I was so excited, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up in case I was mistaken.  But if I wasn’t, I couldn’t wait to run out and smell that grassy space by the pool.   The roads were wet.   The roof of the building next to us was wet.   The pool area was wet, but that was probably from their cleaning…. but would people spray the road?  

It isn’t monsoon season, so any rain is mostly unexpected.  This place is like living in San Francisco- you don’t have to check the weather report before leaving the house.  You never need to keep an umbrella in the car.  In short, it is absolutely nothing like living in Michigan, and this unexpected rain had me absolutely delighted and I even momentarily forgot my hunger to check whether it had indeed rained or not.

Of course, while I was waiting for my computer to load, I realized it was May 21, 2011; the date that the nutcase said was the day the rapture would occur.  So I got a bit sidetracked making sure people in time zones where it was already 6:00 pm weren’t ascending to heaven without me.  Unfortunately, despite being in India, I still live by Eastern Standard (or Daylight) Time, so it was a bit too early for any of my friends and family in the Americas to know whether or not they’d been saved yet.  I figured I should check my friend’s status from Asia.  It is a bit like the Santa tracker, and people in China and the east get to ascend first, and then the people on the west coast of the Americas.  Regardless, the cloudy weather was negatively affecting my web browsing, so that was frustrating that I couldn’t more fully enjoy reading up on the rapture.

When I had convinced myself both that it had rained, and people weren’t yet breaking the laws of gravity in Delhi, I went to lunch.  I sat for an hour and a half while I drank jasmine green tea and ate steamed veggies with chicken (I have to eat healthy so I can later eat a lot of cake).  I finished Philippa Gregory’s The Queen’s Fool. I think it is my favorite book she has written so far.  Of course, I’ve only read six of them.   What, twelve more or so to go?   But I like it.  A commoner instead of a princess or nobility tells it, so it is a bit different. 

I came back up to the room, hungry still (I ate so slowly I think I finished digesting and should have stayed for my next meal), and was disappointed to see that they didn’t restock my mini-fridge.  No bar of Swiss chocolate waiting for me to consume.   I felt like I’d look like an idiot going back down to the empty dining hall only ten minutes later for cake, so I went back to reading on the bed….   Only five hours to go until the rapture!

I napped, and awoke when housekeeping tried to enter my room with the replacement chocolate bar.  It was spoiled and bad.  I called for a new one.  It was stale, too.  I ate half of it and took a shower.

I stared at my eyeballs for a while.  I have very awesome eyes, I think.  They are hazel, and change colors, and I stared at them for so long, I can understand creeps in the TV show like Law and Order who do weird things and pick eyeballs for their collection.   They are really pretty.   Can you tell that I am getting bored with my environment?

Eventually, at some awful time for a Saturday, nine or ten, my husband came home.  We ordered pizza this time, it was cold, and I enjoyed watching the thunderstorm from the window. 

What a boring Saturday.

Hotel Delhi: Friday

My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi, and I was joining him for a week of hotel adventures while he worked entirely too hard.  I had arrived at the hotel Monday and by Friday was getting bored.

I woke up officially feeling lousy, and didn’t get out of bed (except to eat breakfast, I never miss meals) at 11:00.  I tried half-heartedly to take a shower, but the shower/tub was very poorly designed, so I quit and just got dressed instead. 

The shower is lousy for multiple reasons.   First and foremost, the showerhead is attached to the ceiling rather than the wall.  So if you don’t want to wash your hair, you are out of luck.  I guess I could go find a shower cap, so it is really my own laziness, but it is still really annoying.  Secondly, the dials for hot and cold can’t be reached unless you stick your hand right through the shower stream.   So you can accidentally scald yourself by turning the water on wrong.  Third, if you want to use that darn hose instead (like I did when I didn’t want to wash my hair), the holder for it is at knee level.   So it a pain b/c you have to bend down when you want to have both hands free.  Fourth, the darn knob for the hose is broken now.  So you can’t use it, anyway.    Hence my reluctance that morning.   It isn’t as though anyone will smell me all day, anyway. 

I sat and wrote for a bit; at noon I decided to go for a walk and see the cost of a facial.  Maybe I could successfully miss the room servicing this time.   Fourth try is a charm….

Eventually, she put a green mask on my face, and I had to wait for it to dry.   As soon as she told it me it would be fifteen minutes I desperately needed to use the restroom.  Fifteen long minutes.  I had wet cotton over my eyes, and thick blankets around my body.  The thin lavender skirt I was wearing as a strapless top, provided by the beauty parlor, scratched at my back.  I thought about counting, but that seemed even worse then not knowing how much time was left.  In the next room over men were listening to the TV.  I think a politician was talking- he kept using very short, concise phrases.  I kept listen for words I would recognize in Hindi, but I think it must have been a show in one of the numerous other Indian languages.  They turned it off.   How much time has passed now? I really, really have to go….  I turn my head and the cotton eyepiece falls away.  I take them off, peek at the ceiling.  I memorized its pattern, just like I have the ceiling tile pattern memorized at my dentist’s office.   Once I even counted all of the black squiggle things at the dentist office.  But I never could count them all before I left. 

I thought about how awful it was for my very energetic cousin to sit on a long flight when he came to visit me in San Francisco.  If he could manage those hours, I could manage 15 minutes before I could go to the bathroom.  I shifted my feet up.  I replaced the cotton things.  I squirmed.  I signed.  My headache returned full force.  I still had to go to the bathroom.  I wondered if my husband would prefer these fifteen minutes of torture or his five-hour plus meetings.  I wondered whether the lavender skirt was actually washed or not.    At least I wasn’t thirsty, also.  Oh, wait.  Some water does sound good right now.   I listened to the ventilation system.  It reminded me of rain dripping from our walnut tree onto the car.   Quick, heavy drips, splattered with a metallic clink.    I tried to remember the woman’s name that gave me the facial.  I tried to forget that I had to use the bathroom.   Surely it has been fifteen minutes by now?  In the middle of deciding what I would teach if I ever taught an oceanography course, she walked back in. Thank goodness!   She wiped my face, and ordered me to get dressed.

In that complete awkwardness that is never acceptable in America, she stayed in the room to help me dress.   I modestly turn around to take the courtesy skirt off of my top, and try to put my bra on, backwards like I always do by myself.  “No, no, let me help” she insists.  Oh, this is so weird.  It is just like the massage.  I just get scared away because it is different and the level of modesty is different and it is so awkward to have a random stranger volunteering to hook your bra for you.   I threw my clothes back on as she commented on my weight (Who does that while you are standing half naked in front of them?) paid, and hightailed it out of there. 

Fortunately, my room had indeed been cleaned while I was gone!  I went to the bathroom to inspect my face.  I wiped a bit of green from between my eyes.  I stared at my pores.  I looked the same, except that my eyes were bright red from irritation.  

Sigh.  I took a pair of ibuprofen for the headache and waited for my eyes to de-redden a bit before I could go downstairs to lunch.    I sat around for another eight hours waiting for my husband to come home.   I read a lot.  I still hadn’t turned on the TV, save for that nap on day 2.  I skyped with my sister for a couple of hours.  I heard the awful news that Randy Savage had died in a car accident.  I ordered a cheese plate from the kitchen, complained to the kitchen about the lack of crackers, and raided our mini-fridge again.  

Eventually my husband came home, ordered some food, and he zonked out.  

I couldn’t sleep.  It sounded as though people were running on sheet metal.  Or that there was a strong breeze and someone had left a thick wooden gate open; the repeated thwacking sound as it swung open and shut echoed in my ears for what felt like hours on end.  Who on earth does construction at 1:00 am in the morning?  Or, if it wasn’t construction work, what on earth was happening?

Hotel Delhi: Thursday

Just a quick warning- this is an incredibly boring entry, even to me.  You’d do much better skipping directly to Friday and Saturday….

My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi, and I was joining him for a week of hotel adventures while he worked entirely too hard.  I had arrived at the hotel Monday and by Thursday was settled into a routine of sleeping late and eating choco flakes for breakfast.

By Thursday, I actually managed to actually make it to the gym.  I lifted free weights for an hour and then ran for twenty minutes.  It felt great, although the trainer who just sits in there and watches you really creeped me out.    At the end, he insisted on showing me the empty aerobics studio, and told me I could there the next day to work out in private.  I couldn’t tell, from his tone of voice, whether he was telling me to be nice, or telling me discreetly to get away from all-male gym facilities. 

I had timed my workout such that I wouldn’t have to be in the room until after it was cleaned; I arrived in my room a bit after two.  I was confident it would be clean and full of fresh bottles of water.  Not clean.  I was so annoyed.  The first day housekeeping came around noon.  The next day was around 12:30.  So what happened today?   I pushed the ‘instant service’ button on the phone, and they assured me housekeeping would be up shortly. 

They were, and cleaned, but they left the disgusting coffee/hot water maker mess of wet towels behind.  They are getting lazy, I think.  The coffee maker makes equal parts coffee and mess. It spills so much water from the bottom that I finally took a tray from the kitchen to set it upon so that the mess wouldn’t spread across the entire bedroom floor.

Once the hotel room was clean, I showered and was annoyed during the shower by multiple phone calls from the front desk. The shower is a pain to turn off, so it was a pain to answer the darn gross bathroom phone (I’m assuming it was gross, as it is located IN THE BATHROOM).  Apparently, despite the fact that I twice told my husband’s company that we weren’t checking out until after the weekend, and the fact that I told the same to the front desk, they still had us listed as checking out on Thursday, four days too early. But I stood, dripping water on the floor and toilet (who puts the phone directly over the toilet?), and fought for a Monday checkout and eventually all was okay, except that my poor busy husband had to show his credit card again when he got home.  No wonder they didn’t clean the room earlier….

I next visited the concierge desk.  My husband and I had tried to find a good place to order delivery, but it is very difficult to do in Delhi, because we (1) don’t know all the various neighborhood names and (2) restaurants aren’t very good at putting their menus online here.  So I had fruitlessly searched for a couple of hours before deciding to put the work on the concierge desk. 

I sat patiently, waiting as he called restaurant after restaurant.  Why on earth didn’t he have a stack of delivery menus like any other hotel?  Eventually, he released me, and told me he’d find me when he found some restaurants that actually delivered.   I told him I’d be enjoying the high tea, and to look for me in the hotel restaurant.   I felt a lot better that he couldn’t find any good delivery, either. 

I walked into the restaurant and ordered the high tea (which is only held between four and seven, I was really working hard on timing for this day).   They told me I couldn’t have it, because I was one person and it would be too much food.  Not only am I lonely, because my husband is working too much, but now I can’t even order the food I want?  How silly is that?  I want baby scones and cute mini cakes.  They insisted that I just order a boring, normal piece of cake and tea.  I bet you anything they didn’t have any baby scones and mini cakes prepared.  I grumbled a bit, but I sat and enjoyed my tea and cake while reading.  But it would have been so much more fun if they were mini-cakes.  Everything is better when it is in small pieces!  Eventually the concierge sent me a note with two delivery restaurants on it.  Thank goodness!

After an hour of sipping tea, reading, and slowly nibbling on the cake, I headed back to the room and waited for my husband to come home.  I’m quite good at waiting when I have a good book.  I sat there for five hours.  At the two and a half hour mark turn down service arrived, distracting me with chocolates.  At the four hour mark, I ate the Pringles in a green can and cashews from the mini-fridge.  He finally came home at the five and a half hour mark and we ordered some thai food (thanks concierge guy).  

Despite being incredibly hungry, the food wasn’t that good.  Which means, in fact, that it was terrible, because everyone knows that hunger is the best seasoning.  Anyhow, I ate it slowly and unskillfully with the provided chopsticks, while my husband had to wait over 15 minutes for a darn fork to arrive from the kitchen.   They also brought him some hot chocolate (his throat is getting bad) and I insisted that he swallow a few spoonfuls of honey to help his throat.

Once again we crawled into bed with full bellies, which causes nothing but indigestion.  It wasn’t the best of nights.  Around 1:00 am, for who knows what reason, some hammering and construction started, in what sure sounded like the room above us.   My husband felt sick, and was up and out of bed all night.  Needless to say, I woke up the next day as a zombie.   And my poor husband must have been worse, and he had to actually work for the day!

Hotel Delhi: Wednesday

My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi, and I was joining him for a week of hotel adventures while he worked entirely too hard.  I had arrived at the hotel Monday afternoon, and had been entirely too lazy on Tuesday.  My new goal was to actually do something for the day.  Something, anything.

True to my vow, rather than lounging and reading all day, I jumped out of bed when my husband finished showering, and didn’t let myself crawl back in after breakfast.  I took a shower, spending more time studying the beautiful travertine walls than my hair, and then went on to study the bathroom countertops.   Sometimes all that mineralogy just sticks with you.   For as beautiful as the walls and flooring were, the countertops looked like as though they’d been purchased on a discount.   A dark intrusive basalt, they cooled too rapidly and had a very small, dull crystals.  At first I thought it was a fake.   But the beauty of the walls more than made up for the sink countertop.  Although I do think the walls are a very good fake.

After the shower I sat down to e-mail Mom (the only person who I am good about regularly e-mailing, because otherwise she’ll think I’m dead…. You know it is true, Mom!) and decide on my day’s adventures.  

I had thought about getting a facial, but after yesterday’s dirty towel discovery, I just don’t trust this hotel’s level of cleanliness. Besides, I made a new friend in Mumbai, and we are planning a spa day in June, anyway.  So I can go with gross pores for a few more weeks- I did it for 29 years, after all.  

But I was still desirous of being more productive than the day before. So, I worked at booking my ticket to see Fez, which took multiple phone calls and multiple websites, and was still only half-paid by the time I called it quits for the day.  Don’t ask.  We just have issues with our Indian debit/credit cards.  

After I was fed up with trying to get a ticket, I decided it was time to test the pool, as it would only get hotter.  I lathered up my sunscreen, and went down to the lobby.  A man was already swimming, so I lounged in a chair until he was done.  I looked around.  It was much more private than it had appeared from the window, so I easily relaxed. 

The chair smelled like animal urine.  Based on my observations, I’d guess crow, pigeon, or squirrel.  But those squirrels were so cute!  They played, and chased, and the pigeons were the most beautiful pigeons I had ever seen. Their underbellies were a beautiful bright blue, and at first I had thought a blue jay was flying over my head.  Even the crow’s beaks and feet seemed color enhanced.  It was like walking into Oz after Dorothy’s black and white Kansas.  The green grass was bright and inviting, and the pool a beautiful blue.

I read, waited until the man left, and used the little outdoor shower, as of course, you are always required to shower before going into a pool.  The outdoor shower had a lion head that dispensed clear water into a footbath that was neon pink.   I mean, the water inside was neon pink.  Some form of cleaning agent, I guess (I hope).   I’m not the best of swimmers, but I slowly went back and forth for a half hour until I grew bored and came back out to lounge.  The air was warm, but the only part that was unbearably hot was the shale (?) stone that I had to walk upon barefooted.   I’d stop at the kiddie pool, re-dip, and walk, re-dip until I reached my chair.  I only stayed out for another hour, for fear of burning. 

I came back to the room, and promptly slept until dinner.  How lazy I am.  Pathetic.  The turn down service again came (clean hand towels this time, thank goodness), and I got another dozen chocolates.  Yeah!  He also finally stopped being stingy with the bottled water and gave me six extra bottles, much to my delight.  This guy is going to need a good tip!

For dinner, I decided to actually go to the restaurant, rather than the mini bar, and had a lovely salad with red wine and the very good hotel breads and butters.  It was nice and quiet, and I had already moved on to the next book, The Boleyn Inheritance, which I read as I ate. The food was good, but the mini-fridge was cheaper.  But at least I was semi-interacting with the public. 

Of course, I went back to the room and waited patiently (in the comfy hotel robe, which, after the towel incident, I sincerely hope is actually clean) for my husband to arrive home from a long day of work.

He comes home late, we are grouchy that the kitchen messed up his room-service meal (I ordered dessert), and we go to bed on full stomachs, which is always uncomfortable.  I discovered another difference between the US and India.  Every single time I have ordered a brownie with ice cream, the ratio of ice cream:brownie is lower than in the US.  I don’t like it.  The brownie is so rich, you need that yummy cooling ice cream to counterbalance the rich flavor.  I’m going to have to remember this and ask to double the ice cream next time.   So I just hate half the brownie, which is a complete travesty and goes against my very nature. 

All in all, probably because of the nap, it was a peaceful, fast-paced day, except for the slow nighttime digestion in my belly.  My goal for tomorrow?  To make it to high tea at 4:00 pm.  And to actually go to the gym.  And to not get sick.  Neither of us felt our best as we slipped into the soft cozy bed.

Hotel Delhi: Tuesday

My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi, and I was joining him for a week of hotel adventures while he worked entirely too hard.  I had arrived at the hotel the day before, and we had zonked out by 10 pm.

Around seven, I woke with my husband and pulled the thick gold curtains open. I was feeling lazy.  No doubt about that.   I pushed away the second layer of curtains, gauzy and gold, and stared down ten stories to the ground below.  The pool, which our window faced, was still being cleaned.   To the right of the massive pool were four people on white and blue striped towels, practicing yoga.   They didn’t look very good.  The instructor patiently and repeatedly demonstrated the bow pose. I watched one woman give up and plop down on her towel, sitting with her legs askew beneath her body.  The woman next to her attempted it, at least, and managed to get one hand on her foot.  The only male attendee, who was dressed in all white clothing that fluttered in the wind, was the only one who managed to succeed and hold the pose. 

I went back to bed, reading, as my husband got ready for work.  That was mistake number one.  If I had just jumped out of bed right away, and moved around, then I am sure I would have had a nice, active day.  But when I laze around in bed, I’m always destined to be groggy for the whole day.   So I continued to reread Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl.  Now that I’m unemployed, I can fulfill all of my reading whims, and my current desire is to read/reread all of her books in chronological order.   I started with her two newest, which take place pre-Tudor, and wasn’t too impressed.  They just felt rushed.  I guess, with The White Queen, it was supposed to be rushed, as she is part water goddess, the family name is Rivers, and, like a river, the story sort of flows by quickly, and you don’t have time to catch any details.   The Red Queen was a bit better, but after that pair, it had me doubting whether or not The Other Boleyn Girl was as good as I had remembered it, especially since I had more recently watched the terrible movie version of the book.   But fortunately, the book is just as fun as it was in the first reading.  Thank goodness, and I was completely absorbed as I lounged in bed.  

My husband and I ordered breakfast.  I had overpriced Choco flakes; he had an egg white omelette.  About a year ago I quit drinking coffee, but I was bored and like reading instructions, and so, for those simple, non-coffee related reasons, I wanted to play with the coffee maker.  I dragged it out and read the instructions, which were printed on a thick piece of standing cardboard.   Typical of an Indian hotel, the first electrical socket didn’t fit the plug.  I don’t understand why my husband and I keep coming across sockets that don’t fit.  It doesn’t even make sense to me.    I eventually found one that works, nerdily kept re-reading the directions, and, after it spit water all over the end table, had about half a cup of coffee before it quit working.   Before, I had been wondering why people would pay $5 for a cup of coffee or tea, when it was free in the room.   Now I understand.

After breakfast, I made ‘destine for a lazy day’ mistake number two, and climbed back into bed to continue reading, rather than jumping up and starting my day.   I could have at least done ‘work’ on the computer- I have plenty of wedding gifts to buy, and needed to get my ticket to Seoul asap.  But I continued to lounge on the incredibly soft bed (a real luxury here) for a few hours.  

Eventually I dragged myself out of the bed and took a quick tour of the hotel.  For those of you familiar with New Delhi, the hotel was located in the neighborhood of ‘Nehru Palace’. I went down to the lobby and looked at the hotel shops.   There were only a couple, two or three jewelry shops, two or three little textile shops. Despite being after 11 am, only one was open.  The single open shop had a man standing alert at the door, very eager to sell his wares, which promptly encouraged me to leave before he started to annoy me and show off his supplies.  I guess tomorrow I’ll go a bit earlier so I can window shop in peace.  

I headed back to the lobby, and went out the door to the pool.  I’m not sure if I’ll like the pool or not.   Another large building, hotel or housing, is adjacent to it. A train line overlooks it. Everyone can see you.  In the other hotels that I’ve been to (in Chandigarh, Agra, Jaipur, even in Mumbai), the pool has a bit of privacy, and you know it is only other guests who see you.   But I don’t really want to walk around in my bikini with all of Delhi staring at me.   So that was disappointing.  I might still go, but it sort of lost its privacy appeal.   But I am thinking of putting a towel down and sitting on that green grass.  

I think that grass was the sweetest thing I have smelled since arriving in India.  You just don’t see large lawns here.  It was being mowed, and I just felt at home as the scent of that freshly cut grass engulfed me. 

I walked down to the health club, which seemed to have nice equipment.  I promised the bored and nice employee that I would be back, and headed up to the lobby to figure out where I could purchase sunblock.  After a long series of directions, I was headed outside on my own.

I walked back down the hallway of shops, down an elevator, and entered the street.  The hotel is part of a complex, so I was on a building walkway separated by the road from a fence.  I walked along, stopping to stare at the bakery and kept my eyes out for potential dinner restaurants.     Eventually I left the safety of the walkway and crossed the street.   Fortunately many other people were crossing, so it was easy to mimic their behavior and weave my way through the traffic.  

Once across, I went to the first big building and asked the security guard for the ‘market’, which is where the desk agent had sent me.   He directed me behind the building (which appeared to be a movie theatre), and I walked into a massive square (which was really rectangular) filled with vendors set up directly on the ground. Most vendors were selling computer or cell phone equipment and accessories.  Some were selling clothes.  It was hot, and many of the ‘stores’ had blue tarps suspended above their items.  On each side of the square were small shops, actually in buildings rather than on the ground, most selling the same electronic equipment.  The hotel desk agent had said there were lots of electronics in the market, so I figured I was on hot on the trail of my sunblock.  I slowly walked the length, staring at both sides of the street, both levels of stores, looking for a chemist/pharmacy/goods store.    I walked the entire length, and never found one. 

It ended at a cross street.  Sighing, I turned, took my bearings to make sure I would know my way back, and continued along the next street.   Here I was successful, and found a general shop that had two different bottles of Neutrogena sunblock.   I bought the SPF 50, and headed back to the hotel.  

Now that I wasn’t staring at the shops, I took more notice of the people.   In fact, I quickly scanned the crowd, and realized I was the only female in sight. Urgh.  I was so spoiled in Bandra.  I was suddenly self-conscious in my tight t-shirt and black capri pants.  I kept looking, hoping, first, to find women, and second, women in western wear.  Finally, right by the end of the market, I found one girl in jeans similar to my pants. I don’t know exactly why it matters so much, but for some reason it really matters to me to find people wearing western clothing occasionally.  It doesn’t have to be too many, but as long as it seems acceptable, then I can be acceptable, too. I had brought a darn salwar kameez to wear, if necessary, but it was the middle of the day, and I hadn’t thought about it when I had left the hotel. In the end, in my short ‘going to the market’ trip, I passed hundreds, maybe thousands of people.  Very few women.  Only one in western clothes.  How I miss Bandra!   Though, truth be told, the people didn’t stare at me as much as they do in Mumbai, nor did they harass me as much to buy their stuff.  So maybe the clothing difference is balanced by the lack of annoyance.   Regardless, I was happy to get out of the heat and testosterone and to head back to the hotel.  

After the sunblock excursion, I plopped down into the stuffed hotel chair (also gold), feet up on the footstool, and continued reading.  Shortly, housekeeping came.  Another difference between India and America- all of the housekeeping employees are male, not female!   He came in, expressed confusion that I had told him not the change the sheets, and taught me how to drain the bathtub.   It turns out you have to simultaneously push the button and twist a knob. No wonder I couldn’t figure it out.  Much to my horror, he quickly threw the three apples sitting in the fruit dish away, explaining that I deserve fresh ones every day.  I sighed, but they were already in the trash, and I doubted he’d let me pick them out of it.  He came back to the room with a precariously stacked pile of towels, bottled water, and an apple perched on the very top.   He dumped them on the bed, sat the apple in the bowl, and then pulled two more apples from his pocket.   I just stared, wanting to laugh.

And what the heck were the towels for?  I’d very clearly strung the bathtub clothesline and put our towels up to dry.  A universal signal that we don’t need new towels, right?  What a waste.     He topped off the wastefulness by exiting and leaving every single light on, when I had clearly had them all turned off. 

Once he left, I got out of the chair, went and turned each light off, shined a pocket-apple, and ate it.   Only two more to go.  I don’t want them all thrown away.   It was bruised and not very good tasting.  

Eventually I grew bored of reading, and tried to turn on the TV.  It didn’t work. Confused, as I know my husband had watched some last night, I tried every button.   I physically got up from the bed, and pushed the button on the TV.  It worked.  So what was wrong with the remote?  I figured the batteries were loose, but the battery slot required a screwdriver to open it.  Do the hotel batteries get stolen frequently? What was the point of that?  Finally, I figured that I should throw it as hard as I could, to jostle the batteries back into place.   I picked it up.  It worked. 

Despite being a nice hotel, with a nice flat screen TV, the TV channels themselves were not hi-def, and very wavy, grainy pictures flipped across the screen as I changed channels.  Eventually I stopped, entranced by some fighting zebras.  They can really kick their hind legs!  I soon dozed off to sleep.

I woke with a power outage, which had turned the background noise of the TV off.  Figures that I’d wake up to silence, but sleep through the noise.   It shortly came back on, and I was entranced by the people on the TV, who were building a home out of boxcars, just like the books, and fumed as it went out another three times before finally turning the TV off.  

I figured I should text my friend, who was receiving cooking lessons from my cook, and see how the lessons went (the word is ‘great’), and then grew hungry.  My husband told me he’d be home late, and I should just eat.  I started with a granola bar, left in my backpack from who-knows-when.  I then decided to eat the canned cashews from the mini-fridge.  It was a tough decision- the Pringles, in a green can, had my name on them, but I figured the cashews would do a better job filling me up.   See, the morning laziness continues- I could have at least left the room to eat!  This was probably cheaper, though.  

All too shortly the turndown service arrived.  He asked me if I liked the chocolates from the night before, so of course I answered yes, and he then decided to shower me with six, rather than one, of the little bags.   I did my best to hide the exuberance I felt inside, from having twelve chocolates in total, but I probably did a bad job.   Before he finished, I asked him to clear the apple core that I had left on a plate.  He did and returned- with TWO more apples.   My goodness, they were increasing in number rather than decreasing.  There was no way I would finish them at this rate!

After he left, I carefully sorted out the mint-flavored chocolates, which my husband enjoys.  I put them in one bag and left them at the desk for him to savor when he got home.   I took the rest, opened a bottle of mini-wine, sat on the bed with my book, and enjoyed my wine and chocolate.   Who needs to get dressed and go down to dinner when they have that life?  

After a few more hours of reading (and of course writing this lovely blog), my husband finally arrived home.  We ordered room service, waited impatiently, ate quickly, and got ready for bed.  We discovered our new, clean hand towels were definitely not clean when we found a big blob of foundation on one of them.  Clearly it didn’t belong to either of us, and clearly, it was a fresh, unwashed blob, not a set stain.  Gross.  I just hope our bath towels were actually washed.  

We feel asleep quickly, and I vowed to make tomorrow a more fruitful day.  

Hotel Delhi: Monday

My husband’s work has taken him to New Delhi.  I had spent the past two weeks in Mumbai, slightly bored, and occasionally ornery at his absence.   Weeks of communication that consisted of only ten-minute phone calls, once a day, had tired us both.   So we decided that this week, I would travel to New Delhi and stay at his hotel.  At least that way we could enjoy a dinner together, however late he may arrive home.

After he pulled yet another work-related all-nighter on Sunday and flew to Delhi at an absurdly early time Monday morning, I slept in a few extra hours and caught a later flight.  The benefit of being unemployed, I guess.  Despite our mutual happiness of being in the same city, I still am a grouch when it comes to flying, and wasn’t in the best of moods when I arrived at the airport.   I think I have too many hermit-like tendencies, and airports are just too full of opportunities to encounter human beings.  Having rushed from the gym to the shower to the airport, I was incredibly hungry and thirsty and itching to get past security for a simple drink of water.   But, true to my lack-of-airport-luck, every single vendor in the foodcourt was out of bottled water.  I eventually caved and purchased an orange Fanta with my Domino’s cheese pizza, but then combed the bookstores and bars at the gates in search of water.

Despite being a mega city many time larger than Chicago, the Mumbai airport is quite small, and thus very unlike the massive O’Hare airport, where it might take hours to travel to each and every vendor asking for bottled water (well, heck, there I’d use the drinking fountains and not have had this issue).  Once I was in my terminal, I went to the half dozen vendors and asked.   Finally, the very last coffee shop still had water.  If I were a saint, I would have blessed them on the spot, so happy I was to have water after my 5 km run. 

My flight and cars to and from the airport were paid for, and arranged by, my husband’s company.   Now, they don’t always do that, but when he stays for the weekend, rather than flying home to see me, it is like I am just flying in his place. They would have had to do it, anyway.  But this hotel is so cheap that they are charging us an extra $30 a night for me to occupy the same room.  Silly.  Ever notice it is only the fancy hotels with dumb charges like that?   The internet in this room costs $75/week.  Thank goodness I have the Indian equivalent of a sprint card and we don’t have to pay for that!   But internet is always free at the cheaper hotels.  

Anyhow, the point was, the company arranged a car for me.   I was waiting for my bag, impatiently, because usually baggage claim is quite quick in India, when the guy next to me started talking.  Honestly, I had at first thought he had a mental illness, because he kept mumbling to himself, “not my bag, nope,” etc.  Who does that?  But as the wait got longer, eventually he started talking to me, and I guess he is a normal person (and/or a pathological liar).  He told me, with great seriousness, that he had just come from Mumbai because he was doing modeling there.  I politely asked which magazine.  “Oh, youth magazines” he said.  Who knows?  I rather doubt it.  Regardless, he soon had me stuck in conversation about the various cities on this fine planet, and was begging for information about NYC (like I know anything about it, being a Midwesterner).  Our bags came out, one after the other, and we walked out of the airport doors together. 

He really creeped me out, so when he asked where I was staying, I lied and told him, “I don’t know, the driver will just take me there.”  He got the point and left. But that act of being ditzy backfired, because my next move was truly stupid!   

All of the drivers stand in their white attire at the door with white name signs. I saw my sign and noticed that my name was messed up (I was called ‘Elizabeth’).  I didn’t think much about it- my name had been wrong before.   I pointed to the driver, and we started to walk away, when suddenly something clicked.   That sign had my maiden name on it!   Now, I’ve been married for 9 months, but I’d had my maiden name for 28 years, so I’m still rather attached to it.  I thought for a moment, and realized that there was no reason for any car driver in India to have my maiden name.   In America, sure, it would be an easy mistake.  But I came here with my new name, and I’m fairly certain no one knows my maiden name.  

Completely embarrassed, I shake my head at the driver and go back and look at the other signs.  There was my name.  It was only a couple names down from the sign with my maiden name.   How sad is that?  My eyes don’t go to my correct name (which was correct in both first and last), but they will instantly read an incorrect first name and old surname and claim it as my own.  I tried to explain to the two drivers my mistake, but who knows if they understood or not.  

My driver was quite nice, and enthusiastically tried to teach me Hindi words and told me about all of the countries he has visited, about his wife and kids.  Very quickly we reached the hotel, I bid adieu, and tried to check-in.

The hotel had a beautiful lobby, no doubt about that.  But lately I have been spending a lot of time in a lot of fancy hotels, and I’m starting to shift my focus to room quality and food taste rather than lobby appearance.  It is like that old saying, “don’t judge a book by its cover.”  Certainly don’t judge a hotel in India by the lobby, because the rooms are always a surprise.  So I mostly took in the beautiful yellow and red lilies, ignored the nice chandeliers and floor, and made my way to the desk agent after reluctantly surrendering my one piece of baggage to an overly helpful bellhop.

Check-in was a pain because they required a credit card and I had only a debit card, which they wouldn’t accept.  Eventually, frustrated, I asked them to look up my husband’s information. He’d been here before, last week, and the week before.  She finally gave me a room key, after I assured her that my husband would show his credit card when he arrived after his work, and I headed up to our room.

Urgh.  I about cried.  No way was I going to waste away my life for a week in this room.   First, it smelled awful, initially like a musty old hotel, and then with an after-scent of a cheap lavender spray from a bottle. I looked out the window.  I saw a man urinating in public, plenty of people surrounding him.  Sigh.  After a half hour, I had a roaring headache and was back to being an ornery grouch.  Second, the room was appropriate for maybe a Motel 6, but no way should we be paying fancy hotel rates for a room that has carpeting on the walls.  Yes, you read that correctly.  One wall was carpeted.  It extended from the floor, and up onto the wall.  It was a pretty carpet, twenty years ago.  But now it was a nasty, stained, grayish carpet with flowers on it.  I think it was the carpet that smelled so bad.  The furniture was chipped, the walls were cracked, and the ceiling multiple colors from the various paint patchwork done at previous times. 

The bathroom was nice, at least.  My suitcase and the turndown service came nearly immediately, and I got some nice chocolates to eat as I brooded over the room.   I pulled out my laptop, got distracted by an e-mail war with Mom as to whether or not I was safe (Pakistan was firing on India again, at the border, but that is entirely normal, and I likened it to being near Mexico), and my husband sweetly responded to my despair and called and told me to request a new room.  

I had already gone and smelled some other rooms (I just found open doors and stuck my head in) and had decided that the entire hotel just stinks.  But maybe there was something better on a different floor.  It certainly couldn’t be worse.  So I re-packed my bag (well, it wasn’t hard), stowed the remaining chocolates in my backpack, and headed back to the lobby. 

I know it is India, and you are supposed to be tougher, and ruder than in America, but I’m still not very good at it.  I went down to the desk, and in a very rushed voice told them the room smelled awful, the furniture was chipped, the walls cracked, and I really thought I should have a better room.  All smiles, they switched rooms for me.   My husband had said in his call that he’d be home soon, so I sat on a lobby couch to wait.  I think I confused the employees, as I refused to give my bag to the bellhop, but really, it was completely unnecessary.  

Shortly, my husband came into the hotel and went to the desk to provide that missing credit card.  An employee came up and told him they were changing our room again. See!  I knew what I was doing when I didn’t surrender my suitcase!  We were being upgraded, since apparently he’d complained last week (when I wasn’t there) about poor room quality, too.   His room must have been a real stinker for him to complain!  He didn’t even bother to put sheets on his bed back in college.  

So we went up to the tenth floor, to our deluxe upgrade. In we walked.  It was a nice room.  But it was just what any room in the hotel should look like.  It shouldn’t be ‘the upgrade’.  It should be the regular room.  Plus, the bathroom was exactly the same.  But it didn’t have the disgusting carpet, thank goodness.  It had a cheap looking wooden floor instead.  The ceiling was all one color, no color patches.   The walls looked like they would remain standing.   I could live here.  Too bad it still smelled.  

We unpacked for a bit, and headed down to the hotel lobby to try the non-Indian restaurant.  We eat Indian food at home, so I, at most times, have no desire to eat Indian food out.  They had a buffet, but it was $40/person, so I passed the tempting dessert table and we ordered ala cart. 

The bread was fantastic, and I enjoyed my salad, but my poor husband’s food was terrible.  The chicken was way too spicy, and the marinara sauce on his pasta had a terrible ketchup aftertaste.  Personally, I think almost any tomato item in India has an awful sugary ketchup aftertaste, so I’ve just stopped ordering it.  But my husband has very few food items he enjoys, so he keeps suffering through them (like my eternal apple pie sufferings).  He even tried (much to my shock) a tomato soup the other day, which he claimed was good.  It just made me ashamed that I had never forced him to try tomato soup in the US before, because it was disgusting, full of salt and ketchup, and I had to send mine back after a few spoonfuls. 

However, despite our disappointment in his food, the service was quite nice and polite.  They even gave us free gulab jamuns, and they were by far the best that I’ve had in my life.  So now I’m betting they must do really good Indian food at this hotel.   Maybe I’ll try it tomorrow.  

We came back to the hotel and my husband finally crashed from the all-nighter and went to sleep by 10 pm. Thank goodness he got a full night’s sleep for once.      

Irascible

So I have been cleaning up my folder of blog entries, because it is getting to the point I can’t remember which I’ve published and which I decided were rubbish.   This is one I wrote back in March and never published…. It may or may not be rubbish, but I was certainly in an irascible mood when I wrote it!

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I LOVE owning a kindle.  Yes, I love reading real paperback books, too.  But the kindle has one advantage: a built in dictionary.  This is by far the best thing about any e-reader.  Plus, I can buy and read any book I want on a whim.  It isn’t so great for saving money, especially with that darn one-click purchase option on Amazon, but the instant gratification is wonderful. 

But back to that built-in dictionary.   It is amazing, when the word definition is easily available, at the click of one little button, how many more words you will look up, just for fun.  You might get amused, trying to figure out the difference between two words we used interchangeably.   But I love it for vocabulary building.   My newest favorite word, courteously of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, is irascible.  I’ve been trying to use it every chance I get.  Mainly, I use it while talking to myself, when I am angry about the pathetically difficult process it takes to get anything done in this country.  But now that I’ve started to focus on it, I find it in other books, too. 

Irascible means to anger easily.  Since moving to India, I have this down to an art.  At the slightest e-mail or phone call, like the Hulk, I start shaking and transform into this angry monster.  I always knew that one year in this country would decrease my lifespan by a few years; I’ve now had a two month long sinus infection with no signs of stopping, and the air is really difficult to breath.  But I always thought my shortened lifespan would be due to physical processes, not stress.  But this place is just so darn stressful to live in on a day-to-day basis.   I now know why all of the women are housewives; it is a full time job just trying to accomplish anything here.

For an example:

Our car.  We purchased a car IN JANUARY, from an American couple who lived in India.   It has been well over one month, and it is impossible to transfer the car to our name.  We don’t have the right paperwork with our name (because our bill goes to my husband’s office).  My husband signed the first set of paperwork with a black instead of blue (or vice versa, I don’t really know or care) pen.  The previous owner’s signatures don’t quite match.  Our bills must show that we have lived here for several months.   No one can get the papers transferred.  Finally, our driver found some guy who is going to fix it.  Over a month later.  And I’m guessing that whatever the fix is, it probably involves some shady dealings. 

But wait! More car issues!   Our insurance.   Two weeks ago, I e-mailed the insurance company, informing them that we are buying the car (the insurance runs out in exactly four days).   Any company in America would be eager to take our money.  This company?  One person forwarded it to someone else.  I sent a follow-up to that someone else.  Still no reply.  Yesterday I re-sent it.  Today, I got an e-mail back.  “Your husband’s phone is disconnected”.  That was it.   What?  One, I checked the number.  It was correct.  Two, I had provided THREE numbers for them to call.  Mine, my husband’s, and my drivers.   The sales agent must have (maybe) tried my husband’s phone, once, and quit. Never tried again in the following days.  They don’t even care to take our money.

In my opinion, the worst part was his lack of any attempt at respect in his e-mail:

Dear Emily Mam,

 I had spk to ur driver bt he said  R.C copy only i have. bt i need form & 29 & 30 To  renew  insu policy on mr [my husband’s name was here] name,also i need ispect the vhl.


Regards,

Please tell me I’m not crazy, and that is just about the worst e-mail you could possible write to a human being, in a non-personal setting!  No wonder I’m so irascible. 

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Anyhow, as an update, after this disaster, and that company’s eventual breakdown of communications, my landlord suggested that I get his agent, K, to help us out.  That went terribly (see this blog entry here), and my driver finally, in one day, got me incredibly cheap insurance through whatever company he uses.  

The moral of that little entry is that if I need something done, I should ask my driver first.  It will save me money and time.  Two things I need to enjoy my kindle!

Joining an Expat Club

A couple of weeks ago I joined a women’s expat club, and attended my first meeting.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, or if I even wanted to join (I’m a creature of habit and now was comfortable with my fairly boring life), but I knew I should at least try it out.

The meetings are really just coffee/tea/snacks and a time to meet and chat.   Our meeting was on a Wednesday morning.  I was unsure what to wear for this type of thing, so I went with the standard American uniform- blue jeans and a fitted t-shirt.  I wound up being underdressed (everyone except one other girl was in a dress or black slacks), but I didn’t feel uncomfortable because everyone was quite friendly.

 I had written the address, one of the member’s homes, in green felt marker on a scrap of paper.  I guess I was just too lazy to find a real pen.  I googled it, and it didn’t look too far away, but google maps India is pretty bad, so I gave my driver an hour to find it.   We headed out to the northern end of Bandra and the start of Khar West.  Neighborhoods blend together here, like in Chicago, so I don’t really know where one ends and another starts.   My driver stared at the address for a while, said it out loud, and started talking rapidly under his voice.  I guess he thinks out loud, because after the rapid talking he smiled and said he knew where to go to find the house. 

He drove, and within fifteen minutes was at what he said was the proper street.  “This is 14^th street,” he announced.  “Okay, but it is on 14A,” I retorted.  “Same road,” he said confidently.  I very much doubted that, but we had forty-five minutes to kill, so I decided it wouldn’t hurt to drive around until he figured it out for himself. 

Addresses in India are a bit different than in the US.   We didn’t have a street number to hunt for, just a landmark that it is near.  The same thing is true with my home address- no street number, but I do write that I live opposite a high school. Presumably the mailman delivers a lot of mail to the high school, and drivers drop a lot of people off at the high school, so then, once you reach that high school, the mailmen and drivers look around and find your apartment building. 

So, my address at my last residence of Chicago would have been something like “apartment number, building name, near the double tree hotel, opposite massage envy, Streeterville, Chicago, IL.   Whereas in the US, we would have said “Apartment number, apartment address, Chicago, IL”

Anyhow, we were driving around, looking for that landmark.  In this case the landmark was a nail salon.  We drove the entire length of the road and reached the end, did a U-turn, and faced back the way we had had already driven.  I again suggested that perhaps we should look for 14A road instead of 14^th road.   He merely shook his head, grabbed the scrap of paper with the green ink and went to ask people on the street.   He got back in and continued to re-trace our steps.  

About halfway through re-tracing our steps, he stopped at a Dominos to ask for directions.  Maybe he assumed all expats like pizza, so they had delivered to this home before.  Or maybe it was a coincidence he stopped at Dominos, I don’t know.  He was gone for several minutes, because after he failed to get directions at Dominos he walked around the corner and swung his arms widely in frustration.  I wonder if he went to yell someplace out of my hearing range.   He came back, pointed at the phone number in green ink and said, “Can I call them for directions?”  I begged no, saying it would be weird to call them for the first time and my first meeting.   I assured him we still had plenty of time, and we could call in a half hour if he still hadn’t found it.  “But,” I added, “I think we should get off this street and find 14A road.”  He finally listened, turning left at the next large intersection.  Low and behold, not one hundred feet away, was a sign with the road name on it. 

We confidently drove down the road, searching for the nail salon.   We quickly found it and my driver pulled over and asked a doorman which apartment building was the one we were looking for.   The doorman pointed.   It was a modern building, with a large wooden gate.  We had found it!   I checked my watch.  We were exactly a half hour early. 

I remember my mom telling me once that Gramps thinks it takes an hour to go to any location, which was why he was always a half hour early to our family dinners.  Well, I guess I inherited that genetic trait!  I gave myself an hour to get there, and found it a half-hour too early!  

Being my first meeting, and not knowing a soul inside, I had my driver pull around the block and we parked in the shade and waited.   He requested to turn off the AC and open the windows, which surprised me.  He is always complaining about how hot it is to wait in the car.  I thought he’d be thrilled to sit in the AC.   But he always surprises me. 

I really enjoy talking to my driver.   The day before, he had a long conversation with me, about how he thinks India would be much better off if they were still under British power.  I think, being a minority, he probably has very different viewpoints than anyone I would speak to that I had met through other avenues, such as my husband’s co-workers.   My driver strikes me as very intelligent when it comes to Indian news, though his world knowledge is a bit off, so I enjoy hearing his arguments.   He really regrets leaving school to work, and I know that his life goal is to make sure his son doesn’t have to quit his schooling. He wants a son that can read and speak and have a better life.   I think he believes he would have had a better life under British rule because they would have forced him to go to school.   I pointed out that the British were using the Indians for target practice for a while, but as he pointed out, there were far fewer people getting shot than leaving school.   

I have very little in-depth knowledge of the British/India split sixty odd years ago, but I can’t imagine that being under someone’s power is better than having your own freedom.   Yes, I agree with him, Indian government is corrupt, but it is still a young government.  I guess Americans are still pretty touchy above British rule, even if it did end over two centuries ago!   But I’m not a female working in an 1800s needle sweatshop from dusk until dawn.  I wonder how I would have felt then, when the country was young and labor cheap, about the lack of British rule. 

Anyhow, my driver and I had a slightly more innocuous conversation that day- we just listened to the radio, him pointing out songs he liked, me playing brickbreaker on my blackberry.   He told me it was important to make a good first impression on the people and to show up early, not late.   I love it when he gives me advice like that.  It just makes me smile and feel like I have a grandma rather than a 34-year-old driver looking out for me. 

Eventually he showed me video on his cell phone- his neighbor has a cat, and apparently my driver spends hours every day teasing it with a string.  No wonder he and my mom got along so well!   As we were watching the video, he started repeating urgently, “Don’t look back!”  I waited, confused, and then, as two people pasted us, he said, “see, and now look at them!”  I think it was two women, but it was unclear to me, based on his description whether they were gay women, or gay men who dressed up like women.  What I could see was a broad back in a red sari. 

Regardless of who the person was, my driver told me details about this red-clad person, and he/she is the creepiest individual I can imagine.  They prey on pregnant women.  They walk around a neighborhood, following them.  When one is found, they follow them home, ask the doorman what floor the woman lives on, and then, once she has given birth, returns to the home.  The entire family has to find about a month’s worth of income to give him /her money, so he/she will bless the child.  Otherwise, he/she curses the family.   Once the family has paid up, the person puts their signature mark (think like Prince’s name symbol) on the wall or door of the person’s house, so that other people who do the same thing know they have already been solicited.  

I was so confused, but my Driver told me that people welcome this nutcase.  Weird.  If anyone can shed further light on that story, I’d be glad to hear it!

Time slipped past comfortably, and he soon started the engine and pulled around the block for me to enter the meeting. I actually got a tiny bit nervous- once I know people, I get along with them great, but meeting people is always something that I have felt a bit awkward about, probably because I am a natural hermit and my niche is a comfortable seat with a good book in my hands.  When I was an RA at Michigan, I could memorize people’s names at a drop of a hat, but they were names I was familiar with, grew up with, here, I struggle to remember even one unfamiliar sounding name.   

I followed an overly helpful apartment building security guard to the elevator.   I nearly tripped in the lobby- it had a clear floor, and beneath the floor were brightly colored stones.   I didn’t notice, at first, that the floor was level, and tried, while rushing to stay in sight of the security guard, to take a non-existent step down to the pebble level.   I stumbled, and caught up with him at the elevator.

We rode up the elevator together, and he even pushed the doorbell for me and waited until I was greeted before leaving.  Their door was spectacular.  I’ve noticed here that people really make the hallways of their apartment buildings their own.  Chairs, crown molding, etc.  It seems you can do whatever you want.   These people had decorated the wall with some fancy artwork in the modern style that I just don’t get, and had a door covered with long gold curls.  I don’t think that even remotely makes sense, as I described it, but just rest assured that it was very imposing and impressive looking.   The doorman rang the bell again, and the inner door opened, a face appearing behind the curly shapes.  

She smiled and said ‘hi’ in such a friendly manner that I wasn’t at all put off by her white Chanel high heels that she was wearing in her own home.   Well, I had to google the shoe name later, actually, for this blog.  But I recognized that emblem shape as something to scare and intimidate me.   I wasn’t surprised she was of Indian origin- I figured most people in the club would be, as the city really isn’t diverse in an American city sense.  But I was surprised that she was older than me, at least by a decade or two.  I hadn’t given any thought to the age distribution of the group.  It wasn’t bad, by any means; it just took me by surprise.  

I followed her through a beautiful, marble-floored hallway and through a glass and hardwood cherry door.   On the other side of the door was the happiest, most adorably frantic-for-attention dog.  It was, I think, a Yorkshire terrier.  It just stood straight up, on its two back paws, back straighter than a girl from a Jane Austen novel, and showered me with attention.  So excited, the cute little dog piddled, which I very politely pretended not to notice.   I scratched and petted the little dog until it was taken and safely locked away and none of the other guests got to meet it.

She escorted me to the living room.  It was spectacular.  I feel like it was a home from some magazine, or high-end designer television show.  I honestly don’t know if I’d ever seen anything like it before.  In one corner, oversized white leather couches were adorned with a variety of pillows, including a cow-hair or horsehair pattern.  Opposite the couches were wooden rocking chairs, but very elegant and painted.  A large coffee table, with a red inset was centered in the space.   The white couch that was not against the wall was backless, and wide enough that two people could sit on it, back-to-back, which we did later in the party.  If you weren’t facing the coffee table center, you instead faced a second living space area. This area had a rich dark brown leather couch against the wall, and a long tan leather couch, again backless, opposite the dark brown couch.   The corner was open, and faced a full-glass wall and corner bar.  The legs of the bar were white statues, I think they were of mermaids and Neptune, but my mythology isn’t great and I could be completely off.

Large freestanding vases separated spaces.  Rich gold curtains lined the window-wall, and the bar was covered with Korean art that our host had made herself.  Beyond the large living space was a beautiful table, with crystal chandeliers above it, and dark wood (again, I’m wondering if it was cherry) trunks and cabinets.  It was breathtaking.  

The table was set with ivory and gold teacups and saucers, and very ornately elegant gold and silver flatware.   Stacks of dark blue plates were waiting for us to put the very good tasting snack upon them.  I stood in the room alone, as the host was putting her dog away, and I’m glad I had time to walk to the window and gaze at her pretty balcony furniture without appearing like I was gawking. 

I quietly checked my cell phone- 10:30 on the dot.  Where was everyone else?  

When the host came back, I smiled and told her it was my first meeting, apologizing for being early, and joked that maybe I was supposed to arrive on Indian time.  But very, very shortly, four more women appeared.  

I was, very slightly, alarmed now.  They were all one to three decades older than me.  They had children in college.  But they were all nice people and I chatted amiably with them.  They were all down to earth, thank goodness!   Soon another woman came, who looked closer to my age, with an adorable two-year-old son.  That kid made everyone laugh.  He only wanted to eat food off of other people’s plates.  I would set mine down, while talking, and the next thing you knew, he was running off with my breakfast paneer!   The mother kept apologizing profusely, but I think everyone thought it was cute and amusing, not annoying.  

In the end, maybe twenty-five to thirty women showed up.  I’d say about half, maybe more were of Indian origin, and I was one of the younger people there, despite being nearly thirty.  However, nearly all of the younger women were pregnant.  And I mean very, very, about to pop pregnant.  So I did feel a little out-of-the loop age and lack-of-being-pregnant-wise. I did learn a new India fact.   Women in India aren’t told the sex of their baby.  I guess it makes sense, as a few women will have a girl-child killed and try for a boy.  I didn’t realize that even an American here, who will obviously not kill her child for being a daughter, that they still weren’t allowed to know the baby’s sex.  I wonder how much you have to bribe the doctor to tell you.  

I had a very nice time.  I sat and spoke with one woman, who had also mentioned it was only her second meeting, and really enjoyed chatting with her.  She was also older, but she was from San Salvador. I think.  It was that or Ecuador, I don’t remember now.  But she was very nice.  Her husband was from Pakistan, so she converted from Catholicism to Islam, presumably for her husband.  She even had the headscarf on.  What a life change.  

I drank tea and chatted with all of the women.  Every single person was very friendly; many had Michigan and Bandra connections, which was nice.   The two hours went by very quickly, and too soon I was back in the car on my way home.  The meetings are every two weeks.  I think I’ll go to the next one, too!

Update:  The next one came and went.  I had a hamburger hangover (see a future entry) and skipped it.   But I still plan to go again at some point!