Progress as a repat...

I now have a cook added to my employees along with the maid and I must say it is a funny experience. My cook wanted to know all about my life in America and one of the first things she asks me is about the availability of household help. When I told her, it was difficult and expensive, so we did it all ourselves, she commiserated with me about how hard it must have been; and then said don't go back to America, life is much better here, you get lots of help...! I did not have the heart to explain the demographics and economics surrounding the availability of household help but she was geniuinely concerned and that was touching.

My maid continues to be as impertinent as ever asking me why we use all three bathrooms rather than sticking to one when it's just the two of us ( Maybe, I should have told her that's because she does the cleaning and not me!!) exclaiming over the number of undergaments used by my husband, telling me not to dirty the kitchen if I do something in there soon after she cleans up...she's a trip but she's funny and keeps the place clean and more importantly takes care of my plants when I go out of town, so I hope she doesn't leave in a fit of capriciousness!

So, my new life's making progress...what with a cook and a maid, I have so much more time to focus on my repat miseries...haha!

Holy Cow Sarah! Really???

Today my mood is thoughtful…pensive. Did Sarah McDonald really need to publish her memoir about her time in India? She undoubtedly has a right to do it, nevertheless is it necessary to dispense with cultural and emotional sensitivity as completely as she has done?

Her writing is good, many times, I found myself laughing uncontrollably and even empathizing with her on some of her experiences. By dint of transforming contradictions to caricatures, she has managed to keep the humor going throughout the book. Her basic attitude can be simply termed as “poking fun” at all and sundry. The truly heartbreaking thing about it is most of her wit is a result of her lack of discernment and acuity into the culture and conditions of this society.

I know that India can be an overwhelming experience, especially for people born and raised in less populated, better-organized, simple monocultural societies. I am Indian, I cannot even pretend to begin to understand this diverse, tangled country of mine, and she has disposed of every aspect of this country in a shallow, flippant manner. If she aimed at caustic wit, she did not reach there, as there is no depth of perspicacity, just a superficial satire.

The key concepts of her plot like the airport beggar foretelling her future, her wish for bigger breasts being granted her albeit as a disease, the astrologer in Rishikesh coming up with correct predictions; all sound like blatant falsehoods created to give her “memoir” some significance. As otherwise, it would read like a tiresome travelogue of a bored foreigner unable to engage with the country where she happens to be a reluctant visitor.

The Indian government does not interfere with people’s religious beliefs in the name of bureaucracy, city governance or urban planning which is as it should be and the author terms it “inefficiency”. (Ref to Parsi Dakhmas)

There is no beautiful piece of land in India, every single square foot is dirty, dusty, dry, hot, stinky, muddy…the negatives are endless. She professes to understand the concept of multiple paths to God endorsed by Hinduism and persists in giving frivolous descriptions of different Hindu Gods.

I could analyze her book to bits and continue to ramble some, so I will stop here. This is not the first book about India written by a western visitor that paints such a starkly depressing picture of the country. Most of them invariably begin with extreme reactions and end up making peace with it under the “India is a land of contradictions with exotic eastern spirituality” theory. “Holy Cow” is no different.

The problem as I see it is developed nations function based on a “mainstream society” which also happens to be the majority population. There is a clear demarcation between the center and the periphery and it is obvious who is who and what is what and where you stand in relation to society the moment you land there. India has no such clearly defined mainstream. If you like, you can define Hindus as the majority population based on statistics but that does not translate to mainstream. Here everyone is mainstream. External visitors are fond of searching for the real India and gravitate towards urban slums and poor villages, which makes no sense. Why on earth are Modern India and Rich India considered illusory siblings of the poor and ancient?

India is not contradictory; she is all-inclusive. Every person, every thing, every culture and every attitude has a place up front and center thus creating a rich textured, multi layered social fabric that defies any attempts at mainstreaming and classification. No wonder, the wandering stranger ends up confused and bewildered at the gazillion seeming contradictions that attack his startled gaze. It’s like being locked up with Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and the rest of the Renaissance gang and their art with perspective and proportion since you were born and one fine day being kicked out on your ass and asked to appreciate and enjoy 21st century abstraction art with its pluralistic “whatever” attitude!

Of Thunderstorms and gay peacocks...

The mayor of Ahmedabad prayed for rains, he, along with temple priests performed a Yajna sitting in huge copper cauldrons of water around the fire...hmmm...not sure if the cauldron was part of the ritual or just an ingenious way of coping with having to sit around a burning fire on a burning hot day. However, that's beside the point. A couple days after invoking the Rain God, the heavens opened up and drenched these dry lands in torrents. Monsoon has arrived in earnest. Now the days are blessedly cloudy and the temperature hovers in the balmy F80s...what bliss! I can't get enough of staring at the rains and standing in the balcony to soak in the spray. If I were younger or less self-conscious, I would have gone out to the courtyard, unfurled my non-existent feathers and danced like a peacock...but I am neither younger nor un-self-conscious, so that's a moot point.
Speaking of peacocks, heard something quirky the other day. There's a peacock around here somewhere that apparently loves men and hates women. He is very friendly towards the men who visit him but God forbid a woman tries to get close to him! He chases them down and tries to peck them to death...yes...these pecks are no little birdie kisses but serious attempts to draw flesh. I wonder, is this a case of a "gay peacock" who doesn't want the human being to be in anyway confused about his sexuality or a simple misogynist? What is being done about this? Nothing. The peacock is free to roam and attack any unsuspecting woman in the vicinity. Whatever...too bad this isn't the US of A where NOW would have called for stringent action against the peacock and PETA would have strongly objected and requested a psych analyses to check for PTSD and the bird would be clapped up behind bars for sure. But this is India, the land of infinite patience and acceptance...so what if this poor peacock hates women? It is peacock karma...so what if it seriously hurts a woman...it's the woman's fate...Hey Ram! Don't you get it?!

Life feels funny again...

A female school teacher turns out be a bootlegger! This a dry state, an anachronism in these times especially considering this is one of the most industrialized states of India. How can industries flourish and business deals smoothened out without the mellowing influence of alcohol eh? They cannot and they don't have to when you have enterprising school teachers selling IMLF, for the ignornant, that is Indian Made Foreign Liquor - whatever that means! Apparently the woman's husband had no clue about her moonlighting as a liquor baroness. Really?! That is intriguing. Did the woman not store the liquor in the house then? Or was she hiding it in kitchen corners and sneaking it in and out in the voluminious folds of her sari? Now that I think about it, it is a possibility, he probably never enters the kitchen nor...no the sari is best left alone!

But...I am still awestruck....An Indian Woman who can be a school teacher and a Bootlegger at the same time?!

Check this out - They decide to increase the number of buses plying in Ahmedabad city and twenty brand new buses are prayerfully inducted to the existing fleet of buses. Duly decked up and garlanded they are paraded to the general public. And what does the fond public do? In their joy and excitement, in their loving anxiety to take a peek into the beautiful interiors of the bus, they clamber all over it and end up unwittingly destroying the windows. Last I heard seven of the gorgeous new twenty have gone into surgery...

And living here sucks!

I did not think I would say this but there is a lot to be said for a lifestyle where home appliances are cheaper than maid services. It is alarming to be dependant on a maid for the cleanliness of your home, especially when that maid has no sense of time. From what I hear, all maids are supposed to be this way, so it is not even like we have a choice. What is the point in firing someone only to replace them with a similar person?

After having managed myself, my work and my housework by myself for the past year when I lived alone in the US, sitting around here waiting for the maid to come in and finish her chores before I can start my day is extremely aggravating. If I call her because she is late, she may answer the phone or she may not and sometimes after ignoring my call, she actually switches off her phone! And I am not exactly an ogre or a strict task master, I've told her that if she is delayed or can't make it in the mornings all she has to do is let me know. But I guess answering a phone call is too much work for her!

So, I decided I would take a look at the availabilty of appliances like a washer/dryer, dishwasher etc so I can dispense with the maid altogether. After all, I've been doing it all for so long, what's the harm in continuing to do so? But, the prices are ridiculous! Maybe, they are the same as in the US, I wouldn't know as I never had to buy them there as I lived in apartments. Here, most apartments don't even have closets, let alone appliances! But anyways, there is no way I would be able to buy everything I need in one day. Actually, at this point I am not even sure when I will be able to buy them as I have a serpentine list of things I absolutely need to buy before I even dream of appliances. Paying my capricious maid is a hundred times more affordable!

Nevertheless, it is annoying as hell. In hindsight, the smart thing to do if you want to move back to India is set up your India home first, while you are still in the US, fill it up with everything you need under every eventuality and then move during the winter months. Do not move like I did in the middle of a hellish summer to an empty apartment that did not even have air-conditioning and start running around in a state of heat induced insanity to make your home livable!

Do not think that IST has improved...it has not, Indian Standard Time continues to run hours behind any other time zone in the world.
Nothing and no one here is reliable and pretty soon you will also become an unreliable person. So be prepared to accept this before you move. Otherwise you may just break your heart at your own disintegration! And you have to prevent that at any cost, this country sure as hell does not need more broken down stuff...or people...

….And I struggle to go beyond clichéd descriptions…

Something that a friend said to me would not go away. He read one of my previous blog posts titled, America Vs India and stated how things I mentioned about India did not feel strange to him, as that is how he has always known it but he thinks that, having experienced a different system, I thought it was something to remark upon.


On a superficial level, I was aware of this fact. However, it kept bothering me as I went about my day. Was I being too nitpicky about life here? It was hard to say because even when I lived in India before moving to the US, I had plenty of things to complain about India and the direction in which she was headed( like most every Indian I should say). Living in the US, I had plenty of opportunities to listen to Americans lament about the deterioration of the US, which rather made me wonder if citizens of any country are completely satisfied with their country and systems!

Nevertheless, I still wondered about my propensity to compare the two countries, with India somehow coming out sounding weird in my descriptions. I think I had my answer while driving out on one of my numerous shopping trips to fill my apartment with “things”.

I was driving past a huge mall, which has some of my favorite stores that I got addicted to in the US like, Lush and The Body Shop. There are numerous other stores and boutiques where you find the best, the most expensive and most modern of items in there. Right in front of the mall, going past all the fancy cars parked in street side parking spots was a good old-fashioned camel cart, as usual loaded with goods to be transported. If ever there is an instance of the ancient and the modern co-existing together, it was this.

Another time, driving along the Sarkej-Gandhinagar highway, a BMW M6 roared by taking advantage of a two-bit length of traffic free road to come to a full stop near a crowded intersection. The top was down and it was clear the hip kids in the car, in their designer tees and spaghettis were high on hot wheels. Then, a group of sari-clad women demurely covering their heads trying to cross the road surrounded the car. Another instance of old and new marching forth side-by-side?

There are old-fashioned communities in the US too, like the Amish, the Mormons, some Native American communities etc. However, like everything else in the US, organization comes into play here as well and you rarely see them beyond their villages and reservations as part of mainstream life in a direct manner.

India is another story! There are too many people and too many different ways of life for any of it to be tucked away neatly in designated places. The contrasting images provided by this fact are too glaring to be ignored. If you spend a day, viewing a monochromic picture unblinkingly and then move on to a huge canvas splashed with every color under the sun, would not your awareness of these colors and the contrasting images they provide be heightened? Something like this happens when you experience life in a completely modern society in a relatively young country like the US, then move to an ancient land like India that is trying to accommodate the old and the new, the modern and the exotic, and make everybody feel at home within her borders. Also, do not forget “the old” is usually thousands of years old; I would not be surprised if the camel carts are as old as wheels themselves!

If my descriptions of India come out sounding weird and clichéd, it is because I have not yet figured out how to go back to appreciating holistic asymmetry as I am still longing for the coolness of a monochrome picture as opposed to the blast of colors my aching eyes are faced with here!

Flying Thieves...

Our home in Ahmedabad was burgled while we were away visiting family in the south. The burglars also hit our neighbor’s apartment at the same time as they were away holidaying as well. We received some interesting information while we filed a complaint. We assumed this had been a nighttime affair; however, the police stated that there were plenty of daylight robberies going on. Thieves break into locked houses knowing that the owners are away, clean the house out within no time, and flee the city. Check this out…apparently most of these people are from out of state who fly in, commit a robbery and fly out! Moreover, these people are supposedly from states like Bihar, MP and UP.

Despite being bummed out about losing a significant amount of my gold in this robbery, I had to laugh when I heard this. Traditionally, these states have harbored some of the most ruthless burglars, a number of whom were the best you could find in the realm of highway robbery. So now, it sounds like these people decided that there is no reason why only the local population should be granted the privilege of their visits. After all, India is a vast country with a growing number of wealthy people. What is wrong with a little cross-country charity, albeit forced? In addition, India is big on being a land of growing economy and huge opportunities today and nowhere does it say that opportunities are confined to the poor non-criminal elements of society like us!

So, while people like me are stupidly cavalier about their possessions and the security system, both public and private are still waking up to the fact that India is no longer a sleepy, laidback country, our intrepid robbers have outdistanced us by eons.