Meet Olly Kumar, the longest (and most active) cat in India!

I wanted a cat and had told a collegue of T who also wanted a cat and was going call her vet to check if he knew of a litter - in India there are many wild cats (and they are being sold as house cats) and one has to be careful where one's pet comes from. Then one day, I received a phonecall from her saying the vet had called about a little cat that had been brought back because the family that owned him had two hyperactive kids - and two hyperactive kids do not combine well with a hyperactive cat.
So I went to have a look -and to decide wether he would fit us- but when I arrived at the vet's office Olly Kumar was already in his basket and the vet was waiting with a form to fill in (here...where it says "owner"...) and that was it. I recall him asking if I wanted the cat while he was pushing me out the door, but I think he shut it before I could answer. So...I took Olly home.
He wasn't amused about the bumpy car ride and screamed the whole hour, driving mr. Gill crazy...at one point mr. Gill started to imitate Olly, saying "I don't know you I don't know you I don't know you where you take me where you take me where you take me..." and he started driving faster and faster. He also felt extremely sorry for "Sir" who would now have to deal with barking dogs on one side and a screaming cat on the other...Sir was not going to sleep another night, that was for sure!

But Olly turns out to be a very sweet, active and funny cat, who is already sttled in quite nicely and now attacks Jubeda's broom when she is sweeping the house....and Bishnu's legs when she walks by....and anything else that moves, including imaginary things. But we are happy with him and all we hope for now is that he will start catching mosquitos!

Jubeda and Bishnu, my two house elfs...

Jubeda is the wife of Chunky, the gardener, and Bishnu is married to a guard of the Netherlands Embassy. Jubeda is cleaning the house (and yes...the stories about dust everywhere ARE true so I am very happy that she does) and Bishnu does the cooking and the ironing.
The first day they started they were on my doorstep at 7.30 a.m., ready to start unpacking boxes. Of course that was not entirely what I had in mind, still dressed in my again-found bathrobe and still completely overwhelmed by the size of my house...and obviously, control-freak that I am, I had wanted to unpack my boxes myself so I could really think quietly about what to put where. But this is India, and in India the best thing to do is simply letting things happen because trying to control things simply does not work. So there they were again at 8.30, unpacking things and demanding that I immediately tell them where to put them. True, I have never unpacked anything so fast...no idea where the stuff went, though. It will be somewhere in this huge house but as walking from one end to the other takes 5 minutes, I gave up looking. One fine day I will have located everything - until then, we'll make do.

Currently we have a better rithm - they come at 10 a.m. (which gives me time to dress properly and quickly do whatever I want to do alone, very pathetic I admit) and then I have to discuss the day, their work, my schedule and -still am not used to it- what I want to eat for dinner. Bishnu can cook Indian, Chinese, Nepalese and Bhutanese. She doesn't know how to cook western food yet, but we agreed I will teach her. She is a very good cook so I am hopeful Italian etc. should be no problem, though we will have to write the Hindi translations on all my herbs...the other day we spend half a day figuring out what the english name of Bunyapata was...cilantro, as it turns out.

With Jubeda I speak Hinglish (Hindi + English) which makes her laugh all the time, so I can only guess what I must be saying (?!). She swipes and mops and dusts and has switched off the water heater in our shower twice now (and obviously we find out in the morning when we have shampoo in our hair). She is very sweet though, and tries very hard to understand what I am asking her to do. Every once in a while she shows up with a beautiful golden stripe in the parting of her hair; apparantly a Muslim way of showing that you are married. Very elegant. Bishnu wears a red dot and sometimes a red stripe in her hair...Hindi way of showing that you are married. I wonder what colour they figure I should wear...orange?

We moved!
It was wonderful to wake up in my own bed again after three months of living out of a suitcase and a big surprise still awaits me every day now that I am unpacking boxes...I didn't know I had all this stuff! Part of it has been in storage for almost two years and I have completely forgotten what was in the boxes...proof again that the posession of things is relative.

The Indians have a different view about "having" than we do anyway; nowadays I am taking Hindi lessons (an absolute must as two thirds of my personnel does not speak english), and our teacher does not only teach us very practical words like "come at 9 o'clock" and "this is not clean", but she explains about the Indian culture as well.
In India, one does not "have" things. In Hindi the literal translation of "I have a car" would be "near me car is"...so near to me that I can consider it mine (which is food for thought...). Whatever I posess is mine in this life, but before me it belonged to someone else and after me it will also belong to someone else....I can only imagine the looks on the face of that someone whenhe/she is trying to lift the bookcase that we just bought! (It is actually and old doorframe with some shelves built behind it...solid wood!)

People one doesn't "have" either - they either exist or don't exist (and then they are dead). "My husband exists" (and therefor is mine) is a normal Indian expression.

Well, our house is very near us, and so is our pool. So near actually that the picture above was taken from inside the pool...what a delight, what luxury, to jump in your private pool whenever you like! T wants to go skinny dipping but as there are 11 people living behind the vegetable garden, he didn't dare until now - we are sure they are watching us because we must be terribly strange in their eyes! Still, swimming in the evening, when it is still 20 degrees outside, does feel awfully decadent!