Marja in India

2011-11-30T10:31:00.001+04:30

In The Hindu of today a headline caught my eye: "Dying fish raise fears of river pollution".
T and I could not help but laugh out loud in amazement....does this REALLY come as a surprise?
The article reports that a large number of fish in the Karola river in Jalpaiguri district have died, and are disposed of. Meaning that they are fished out of the river in order not pollute the water any further...a feasability is that the water has been polluted by pesticides, causing the oxygen level to drop. The police will investigate who or what caused the waters to turn toxic.

All this brings back memories of the trip to Varanasi that I took recently with my friend Paulien.
Obviously we went on a boat trip along the Ghats (=stairs) that border the river Ganges, one of the most holy rivers in India.

Varanasi is the holy city where many Hindu's come to die, as they believe dying in Varanasi will take them straight to the Nirwana, instead of being reborn in another life and having to cope with it all over again. Those still sound of body (not necessarily mind) go to Varanasi on a pilgrimage, so they can bathe in the holy waters and ritually purify themselves. The Ghats are used for bathing, washing clothes, praying and cremating. Only children, virgins, leprosy sufferers and cows are thrown into the river uncremated, as they are already considered pure.

When rowing along the Ghats at sunrise one can witness a spectacle that gives a true insight into the Hindu culture and devotion; thousands of people are already bathing, swimming, praying, washing and brushing their teeth in the waters of the Ganges. Monks can be seen in their river temples, bells are ringing, cows are peacefully chewing on plastic bags and one is frequently overtaken by boats full of clicking Asian tourists...what a sight! Defenitely not to be missed when in India!

But all this attention has a downside.
Garbage is thrown into the river (see picture above), along with ashes of the cremated and their coverings and ritual constructions, washing detergents, the content of sewers....and what cannot be seen in Varanasi but what I once saw in a documentary on pollution of the Ganges: pesticides and chemicals which are dumped upstream.
In other words, this is one of the most polluted rivers in the world!
We witnessed something living just below the surface, but with all this pollution I am seriously wondering what that something is.....no normal fish will survive a river like that!

But what really made us realise that we will NEVER understand the true Hindu devotion was the fact that we saw a dead calf floating by, bloated and rotting in the waters, a crow picking the last bits of flesh off the bones, and a man downstream (!) washing himself and happily gargling with water of the Ganges. Our boatsman must have seen the horror on our faces, because he started to explain that under normal circumstances this would not be a very hygienic thing to do, but in THIS case we are dealing with Holy water, so no harm will come to the man! Or to anyone bathing in the river, for that matter.
And he REALLY believed it!

So to me, dying fish are not a surprise at all. And frankly, neither should it be to the many bright minds of India... believers or not.

2011-10-14T10:35:00.000+04:30

The problem with being in a place for a long time is that at a certain point you become "blind" to your surroundings.

I remember when I started my internship at GK Industrial Designers in Tokyo, Japan (longer ago than I care to remember...). My "big boss", Kenji Ekuan San, met with me the first day of my training and told me to go into the city and LOOK at it. Just look....suck in the impressions, nothing more. And then come back to him and report what I had seen. This was only possible in the beginning, he said, because only in the beginning my eyes would be fresh and my mind would be empty. A wise thought; but then, he is a Zen Buddhist.
So I went and I looked and I think I did not stop looking for the rest of my time there. It has been the most impressive time of my life and it has shaped me forever.

T and I have now been in India for 5 years, 2 months and 15 days....and I realise I have gone blind. I am seeing India through eyes that have seen it all before and with a mind that is prejudiced and not really open any longer. Understandable, after this time, but a pity nonetheless.
One should NEVER think one knows it all, because life will play a trick and suddenly things change and you find yourself in unfamiliar territory!

So I am pushing myself to start looking again.
And the first thing I noticed when I could look past the irritation of the constant honking around me (which I regard to be very uncivilised, impatient, and downright stupid) was this sign.... teaching road users what those coloured lights -that one can find occasionally on streetcorners- ACTUALLY MEAN!

And then I realised: 80% of the current road users do NOT have a driving license. Half of them probably can only barely read. In many cases the car or scooter they are driving is a step up from a bycicle or just plain walking, and they may very well be the first in the family who can afford a car or bike. So...can I blaim them for thinking that honking is part of normal driving? Or of the fact that if they don't honk they may very well be pushed off the road because the guy next to them never learned to look aside or use his mirrors before changing lanes? Is the fact that the Indians drive as they live -going with the flow and taking things as they come when they come- a bad thing or just a thing I cannot cope with, coming from an over-organised country and being a rather organised person myself?

I hate the traffic here, because it is chaotic, dangerous, and noisy. But looking at it the other way, it is also tolerant, seems to work somehow, and the Indians definitely manage to squeeze many more cars onto the square meter than we Dutch do. So it is not bad, it is just how Things Are in India.

For my remaing time here, I plan to keep my eyes open and my camera ready.....

2011-02-17T09:48:00.003+04:30

We are counting nights....6 more to go, and then we will move to an area which hopefully is quieter than here.

Here we have been living in the middle of contstruction sites for the past 6 months, and the noise is driving us crazy.
As with any emerging economy, in India the economy is growing and there is money...money to be invested in the construction of new buildings and money to be made of the gigantic rents the landlords are charging.

3 lakh rupees per month (app 5000 € or 6700 $) is not an exception, and for that one can get a three bedroom apartment in an old building; obviously with old fashioned bathrooms (and, as in our case, clogged waterpipes so half the bathrooms are not functioning), sockets that crackle and kitchencupboards that won't open (or close) because the hinges are rusting....and not to forget the annual monsoon-related wet spots on the walls. In other words, crap.

But there are brand-new apartments to be had as well for that kind of money. They have new kitchens and bathrooms, build in airconditioning, and fancy lamps. But the sockets still crackle because the wiring that is being used is too thin, drains of airco's stop in mid-wall so leaking does not only occur during the monsson season and I have even heard the story of someone's pipes melting because they could not withstand the hot water coming through!

And this all because the landlords smell money and the rents are mafia-controlled, so it is said.

In our area there is an agreement that construction work can be done from monday to saturday, 8 am to 8 pm. That would at least insure quiet nights and one day a week without constant hammering, grinding and polishing of marble, pouring of concrete, throwing with metal pipes, wood, and stones, and shouting of workmen who all work without ear protection and are totally deaf. Obviously, half the work is carried out during the night because the city of Delhi has this totally rediculous rule that trucks can only enter the city after 10.30 pm!

It will not come as a surprise that no one stick to that agreement.
The workers don't care because they work 19 hours a day for 80 rupees.... 1,80 $ or 1,30 €. Uninsured, of course. The owners don't care because they live in their fancy houses, FAR away from the noise, and their tenants have had to pay a whole year's rent in advance so they can't move out...and the supervisors don't care because they have the task of finishing the work on time, and planning is not their strongest asset.

One could argue that at least these workers HAVE jobs, instead of roaming the streets as beggars. But for that amount per day they can barely survive, with food inflation declining (!!!) to 13% in february. And for that they flock from Rajasthan, are sleeping in tents alongside the roads or in the construction sites, and keep their children out of school. And for that they will ruin their health and die around the age of, what....40?

T and I try to block the noise out of our minds, but every once in a while we have reached our limit (usually after an entire day of marble grinding which has that high irritating pitch one remembers from the dentist's office), and then T goes out to shout at the supervisors, after which they usually stop. I hardly ever go...I do not make an impression because I am a woman....unless I threaten to kill people, which lately I have started doing (threaten, not kill...I would not stoop that low).

But what REALLY pisses us off is the fact that at the huge plot right across our street, they really don't give a shit, no matter what we do. For nothing and noone, not even for the chairman of the neighbourhood association, an influential Indian lawyer. Why?
Simple...because the plot, rumour has it, belongs to a minister from Uttar Pradesh. Left wing, defending the poor and powerless.....and in the meantime, employing boys that look like they are barely 16 (below that age it is considered childlabour) for probably not even 80 rupees per day. Boys that should be in school instead of breaking their backs so they won't make it past 40.
And this minister is untouchable. Not in caste, but in power...the police don't even bother coming.
I guess the will to defend poor and powerless is not interesting if it means adapting one's own standards. These are only rumours, of course.....but where there is smoke, there is fire.

So we have called it quits.
No point in continuing a battle that is already lost. If you can't beat them... move out and move on. Luckily our lease was ending and we ARE able to move out....6 more nights!

2011-02-06T12:26:00.002+04:30

What catches my eye in the daily paper....
Apparantly the train passed under a bridge, sweeping off a couple of roofriders. One wonders why....

2011-01-18T12:16:00.001+04:30

traffic in Old Delhi

Ok, I finally understand why the Indian roads are so chaotic.

The bottom picture is an ad in the Hindu Times by the Delhi Police. They give instructions to 3 & 4 wheeled passenger & goods vehicles (yes....in India there ARE 3-wheeled vehicles carrying goods...); vehicles are told to drive on the left (in 4 lane roads) and in the middle (on 6 lane roads). They are allowed to change lane 50 meters before an intersection, but ONLY for the purpose of turning.

So where does it go wrong?

1: Most drivers seem to have little or no education, judging by the way they drive. They may very well not be able to read (and subsequently will not read the paper)....and many of them may not even have a driver's licence. No point in trying to tell them what to do via an ad.

2: What about all the other road users, like riksha's, normal bycicles, horses and camels, elephants, pedestrians, dogs, cows, and the occasional monkey? Right! They'll go whereever pleases them, which is usually in front of you.

3: In India it is perfectly normal to use the "pavement" or whatever passes for it at the side of the road for driving. Does that count as "left"? And if that is "left", the what is "middle"?

4: When speaking of a 4 lane road whilst showing 2 lanes (or 6 lane road when showing 3 lanes of which one does not seem to be part of the regular road), one confuses the average Indian driver (see point one). Apparantly 4 rows of cars have to be able to fit onto those two lanes.....well, it must be said, the Indian drivers are very succesfull in their attempts to do so!

5: Except for the posh areas in Delhi (and India, for that matter) there are no lines on the road indicating the lanes. Very often it is not even clear which side of the road is which, and traffic drives where ever it pleases...left, right, middle, and both ways. The one thing nobody seems to have trouble with is changing lanes....for turning, for stopping, for a u-turn.....

And finally.....in the 4,5 years that I have been in India I have NEVER seen a road as empty as this! It is therefore very likely that the Indian drivers will not recognize this as a road and have no clue what to do with the instructions given.

As a conclusion I would say that the money spent on this brave but rather useless attempt to educate the average driver had better be put into traffic safety lessons to educate their children....and then maybe, in one or two generations or so, these ads will not be necessary anymore...

2011-01-02T17:57:00.000+04:30

It is said that when you first come to Delhi, you cannot stop talking about your experiences....and when you have been here a while, you cannot find the words to describe your experiences anymore.

I have experienced some sort of writers' block the past months... I had no words to describe the problems arising (literally) because of the heavy monsoon, or the frenzy that swept the city when it was preparing for the Commonwealth games, nor what happened during the Games...collapsing footbridges, dogs shitting in the athlete's quarters, and the likes. I tried to upload pictures showing people painting the pavement the day before the grand opening of the Games, or headlines I found in the newspapers about beggars that were being moved to areas that were less crowded with tourists....I made pictures of slums hidden behind huge posters advertising the games, with ironic slogans as "come out and play" and wanted to talk about the fact that suddenly it WAS possible to clean the city....but the words failed me.

My new year's resolution is to write more often about the many noteworthy things in India. Headlines, things that happen on the streets, or even the interesting battle that T has now taken up with the neighbours who ALL seem to have chosen this particular time to knock down their houses and build three story appartment buildings, no doubt with the purpose to rent them out to foreigners against ludecrous prices. The work is being carried out by workmen and -women who earn 100 rupees per day...or less. For this they officially work six days a week from 8 to 8.....unofficially (which is why T started his battle) they work 7 days a week from 6 to 11, and even sometimes pour concrete at 4 at night....next to our bedroom.

So today a few of the noteworthy things that I found in the newspaper yesterday: a Sadhu blowing for good luck in the new year, a headline about how "no honking day" was going to be celebrated on january the 1st (never noticed anything....honking as usual) and -very noteworthy for a Dutch person like myself- a picture of our traditional new year's fare, the "oliebol" (literally meaning oil-ball).
Only a few weird things in the wonderful world called India......more to come!

2010-09-30T15:40:00.000+04:30

I had planned to write an extensive blog about our last stop in Cambodia, Siem Riep. This is where the temples of Ankor are, and where we spent almost a week visiting them.
However, the monsoon hit Delhi when we came back, and it has rained non-stop...and this while preparations for the Commonwealth games were going on. The papers were full of events and I have been too absorbed to think about Cambodia.

So...this is Roos in the Ankor Wat. The Ankor Wat, like the other temples of Ankor, are fantastic.
We visited all the highlights (Ankor Wat, Ankor Thom, The Roulos Group and -not to be missed!- the Banteay Srey in the north. We visited a silk farm where they make Ankor Silk, the Landmine museum and the Floating Villages on the Tonle Sap lake. We ate, we drank and we concluded our visit to Cambodia in The Foreign Correspondent's Club in Phnom Penh, right on the shore of the Mekong river. It was great, it was something I would not have wanted to miss!

2010-08-30T12:16:00.000+04:30

This is the most exiting thing to see in Kep...the statue of the naked wife of a fisherman.

They covered her with curtains (slightly transparant, to keep the tourists interested) and she stares out over the sea, waiting for her husband to return.
His boat shouldn't be hard to miss (if he even comes close to her size)...T seems to be fascinated.

And that is actually all there is to see in Kep.
The famous crab market of Kep turned out to be a crap market...T got up early to check out the market but saw only little food stalls promising to cook the crab...but no crab in sight!And even with his imagination, empty food stalls weren't quite "it".
So we happily stayed in our hotel (the only worthwhile thing around...lovely rooms, gorgious swimming pool, private bakery and free wifi) and enjoyed sleeping late, much to the demise of Roos and Niek who were bored stiff. But then it was on to Siem Riep and the Ankor.....

...to be continued.....

2010-08-28T08:03:00.000+04:30

This is Niek with a Tarantula in Cambodia.
We spent our summer holiday there...what a fantastic place to go!

Cambodia is truly a revelation; the country has been devastated by civil war and of course the atrocities of the Red Khmer, but it seems everyone is making an effort to overcome history and rebuild te country. We think that in 10 years time Cambodia will not be a third world country anymore.

We started in Phnom Penh, after a stopover in Bangkok (always good for some shopping). Phnom Penh in not a very exciting city compared to buzzling Bangkok, but it has a very nice relaxed "french" feel to it, and the streets are clean, the air is fresh en there is good food to be found. We visited the National Museum which has a small but beautiful collection of mainly old sculptures, and gives a good overview of Khmer history. We went to the Royal Palace to visit the Silver Pagoda. And we went to the Tuol Sleng Museum, the old school that was used for interrogations during Pol Pot's terror bend. Chilling, but not to be missed.

Another thing not to be missed in Phnom Penh is a visit to Romdeng, a Khmer restaurant run by the Friends Organisation. In this restaurant, housed in a lovely old villa, young people are trained for the hospitality service. They all are wearing t-shirts saying "student" or "teacher"...the restaurant itself serves traditional delicious Khmer food like fried Tarantula and soup with Morning Glory. The restaurant now has its own award-winning cook-book called "from Spiders to Water-lilies"...I have cooked several recepies from it so far, and they all are delicious.
Been there, bought the book!

...to be continued....

2010-06-15T14:27:00.002+04:30

Does "fate" really exist?
Also called "destiny", or "karma", or "joss".....does it exist?

Is it true, as the Hindu's believe, that we have several lives and how we deal with this particular one (and our "fate") determines the level of our next life?

Is it true that we choose what "lesson" we will try to learn in this particular life (showing itself to us as our "fate"), just before we reïncarnate?

Is it true that we choose the life to learn that lesson in, even if it means being born in a slum like this? Meaning there is a good chance that we will die of malnutrition or disease before we are ten? Or that we will end up picking trough other people's trash for a living? Or that we are beaten up and electrocuted because it was our "fate" to fall in love with someone from another caste?

And is it true that MY "fate" was to come here and sit in my car, and then being approached by a lady with a kid on her shoulder, tapping my window and waving what looked like a prescription at me and no doubt telling me that the kid is sick and needs medicines and I should pay for it? And that the only thing I can think at that moment is that it was probably given to her when she was unloaded from the truck that delivers her every morning to the crossing where she begs? And that the kid maybe isn't hers to begin with?

Is it my karma to witness all this misery and to know I am powerless to change it? That I could start somewhere and never stop and as soon as I turn my back things will go back to what they have always been because the one thing I was not able to change was the mentality of the people? And that because I know this I have chosen NOT to start charity work but I try to take care of those that work for me, so that at least they, and their children, have a chance?

And despite this I always feel my stomach turning upside-down when I have to waive someone off, because deep down I have the feeling that no-none should be forced to live like this? And that I cannot imagine that the people here accept their situation as their "fate" because I would not? Because I was raised by parents who made me believe that it is your right to try to improve your situation?

And in the end.....what if the kid was really hers and it was really ill and I could have made the difference between life and death.....and I didn't?

2010-06-07T16:21:00.003+04:30

Dust is in the air
Everywhere I look around
Dust is in the air
Every sight and every sound

And I don't know if I'm being foolish
Don't know if I'm being wise
But it's something that I must believe in
Cause it's there when I feel the itch in my eyes

Dust is in the air
In the whisper of the trees
Dust is in the air
In the thunder of the sea

And I don't know if I'm just dreaming
Don't know if I feel sane
But it's something that I must believe in
Cause it's there when I sneeze out my name

(Chorus)
Dust is in the air
Dust is in the air
Oh oh oh
cough cough cough

Dust is in the air
Can't see the rising of the sun
Dust is in the air
Until the the day is nearly done

And I don't know if it's an illusion
Don't know if I see it true
But it's something that I must believe in
Because my nose is now itching too

Dust is in the air
Every sight and every sound
And I don't know if I'm being foolish
Don't know if I'm being wise
But it's something that I must believe in
Because it's causing an itch in my eyes
(Repeat Chorus 4X)

free interpretation of "LOVE IS IN THE AIR" by John Paul Young

2010-05-30T16:35:00.001+04:30

Recepy for Goan Mud-crab:
• buy a mud crab of app 1,2 kilo at the local fish market
• break it's claws off and chop them into pieces while the crab is still alive, and then slice it (still alive!) horizontally in two...
• then, if you haven't thrown up all over the kitchen, fry chopped onions, garlic and tomato in some coconut oil, add garam masala, chopped green chili and fresh curry leaves, end then add the chopped crab
• simmer for app 2 minutes and add a cup of coconut milk
• simmer a few minutes more, add fresh coriander and serve in a bowl with naan. Make sure you do NOT serve any cutlery as the crab definitely tastes better when eaten with your hands....according to local customs, that is. Do serve extra napkins. (And for those who wonder....that's me in the infinity pool, not the mud-crab).

Ok, so we are back from Goa....
We had a surprisingly good trip with Indigo Airlines, who claim to be "the punctual airline"...and indeed they were both ways! Which in India is a miracle in itself!

The hotel, the Alila Diwa Goa, was not as sereen as the Alila Manggis in Bali where we spent T's last birthday, but we had great a room with a fantastic bed and an even better bath-for-two....and after having a drink or two at the Edge bar (on the edge of the infinity pool, hence the name) during happy hour, we would come back to a room with the curtains drawn and the scented candles near the bathtub lit, the bath-salt invitingly placed on the little wooden tray that was placed strategically over the bath....well, what can one do but take a bath?

For the rest we did almost nothing. We spent our mornings swimming in the gorgious infinity pool, gazing at the palmtrees beyond, until at app. 11 a.m. the Indian families would show up, lazily strolling around, usually with dad in front, followed by mother and one or two kids, with grandmother clad in Sari at the end....all on slippers and all not raising their feet as they would walk. One wonders how they manage to keep their balance at that speed...

Some would actually take a swim and then would choose the corner right in front of our chairs (RIGHT in front!) to hold their social morning talks, preferrably with some screaming kids joining them (always with balls) and some nearby husband who would be screaming into his telephone....usually the sign for us to disappear to have lunch and then head to our room for an afternoon nap.

In the afternoon, after our naps, we would take a drink or two at the Edge bar during happy hour, then head back to take a bath in our gorgious bath tub, then have a wonderful dinner with slain mud-crab or something similarly delicious (and no doubt tortured equally) and then it would be time to sleep.....

Been there, done nothing, did not get the t-shirt but had a wonderful three lazy days!

2010-05-25T20:23:00.001+04:30

We planned to go to Darjeeling to celebrate T's birthday and as a bonus escape Delhi's heat. We were going to leave on tuesday the 25th....

...but as fate would have it, on friday the 21st Madan Tamang, President of the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League, was killed in Darjeeling. This photograph is typical for Indian media....all the gruesome details are displayed for anyone who takes interest in them.

As a result the shops were kept closed and the government sent extra troups to the area to insure the peace in the hills.....the hills that we were planning to hike in! Not that it would have been much fun anyway, because it apparantly is raining in Darjeeling!

No mountain vieuws of the Himalayas, no trekking in the hills, no shopping, but the risk of being stuck in the hotel for 5 days and another rist of being stuck in Darjeeling alltogether because in India tempers are explosive....and once they expload a primitive force is released that you really do NOT want to get stuck in!

We could have gone, the hotel assured us things were peaceful and quiet...but in India, one never knows. Because in India life seems to be worth very little to so many.... you live, you die. It is as if death, or the fact that you will die one day, is so much part of every day life that it is not even given a second thought!

The son of the neighbour of our masseuse (yes...this is how in India relations go) was very ill, he had TB in his bones (!?!). He was on the verge of dying and his mother, a single mother who is very poor, could not afford a decent doctor. So our masseuse chipped in and in the end, so did we.
Because for us life IS worth something, and if our money helps save someone, even if it is for one more day, then it is money well spent. And at the same time, thank God not everyone in India who is very ill lives, or there would be 1,5 billion people, most of whom below poverty-line, instead of 1,2 billion.
But do I dare think this, or worse...say it? Because I am a lucky one, with fairly good health and money to pay for a decent doctor, instead of having to go to a government hospital where grossly underpaid doctord consider their lunch more important than their patients. After all, what's another life, if tehre are 1,2 billion others to care for?

Incredible India. Beautiful, crazy, cruel India. Full of spitting, honking and peeing people. Full of injustice and corruption. And yet it grabs you.....

So for now, we are going to Goa. We will forget about life and death for a while. No hills there and no Gorkha's....though, knowing T, the monsoon will probably start once we land. (Money could be made off this man! I am sure that in the Sahara they will pay a fortune for him!)
But for now we are looking forward to fish and coctails and an infinity pool.....and we will worry about injustice tomorrow....or will we?

2010-05-23T09:49:00.001+04:30

We are in the middle of summer now, and the usual problems occur....powercuts, electricity fluctuations (causing half the house to shut down) and water shortages.

Watertankers like these can be seen everywhere, either pumping liters of sort of drinkable water into the roof-tanks of hotels, expats and affluent Indians, or dripping and leaking on the streets while street-dwellers fill their buckets and bottles and whatever else they have managed to obtain.

The "government" water that is delivered into underground tanks of the various houses (and then pumped up into the roof tanks, that is, if there is electricity) is not very dependable these days....our staff complain frequently that "no water came" or that water is trickling in veeeeery slowly...not sufficient obviously for the increased needs. Because Delhi is HOT. Today the weather forecast predicts 49 degrees Celcius, and we have not yet reached the hottest point of summer!
Apparantly it is the hottest summer in a hundred years....

We had planned to go a few days to Darjeeling, to celebrate T's birthday, but yesterday a Gorkha leader was stabbed to death in Darjeeling, and the shops have closed, there are roadblocks, and uproar is feared....so I think we will have to cancel our trip and face more of Delhi's sweltering heat.

The heat is making me slow and grouchy. I have to resist slamming a dent in the roof of a car everytime they feel the need to honk when driving right beside me....a favourite pasttime at Khan Market! I suspect that the nouveau riche in their big cars do not do this out of concern for us pedestrians but merely to draw attention to themselves and their big cars.....
I also cannot stand the slow wobbling fat ladies that take up all the space on the pavement, chatting away on their mobile phones while deciding in which establishment to gobble down the next cake, pie or chocolate....and most of all I cannot stand the spitting and peeing which is going on everywhere!
Even the indians start to notice that India is being used but not cared for, as our masseuse puts it. She does not "have a lot of english" but she certainly has a sharp ability for observation!

Now we are hoping for the monsoon. It is predicted for the 30th of May and apparantly has already started in the south...we cross our fingers because last year the monsoon was 1,5 month late and very little, and the normal febuary rains also did not come, so we are facing drought and failing crops....may the Gods be with us!

2010-03-28T14:21:00.003+04:30

Not the "Mrs." for a change!
This time, I was invited to dinner & drinks, and T was invited as my partner....

In India, one of the things hardest for independent women like us is that we seem to become "the Mrs." the instant we set foot on Indian soil. We disappear!
Doors are slammed in our faces, we are pushed aside in waiting lines, the many "little men" that come to repair whatever is broken in our houses ingore what we say (after all, what could a WOMAN know about these things?) and if we want something done we have to ask our husbands to give the order!

Even if we are not married we pretend we are, because we become preys the minute we turn out to be "not married"...which for Indian men is the same as available. Never mind if there is a boyfriend somewhere...not married is single and single is prey!

In the more positive situations the mali (gardener) greets us with "hello Sir" (should I start paying attention to my chin?) but usually the most positive attention we can hope to get is that young men want us in their picture, never mind that we could have been their mother. I would really like to hear the comments when they show that picture to their friends....what the hell are they going to say? (I can think of many things!)

But resistence is growing!
The other day I bought a great t-shirt which is the brainchild of the "fading ladies" (www.fadingladies.blogspot.com). This is a group of ladies in Delhi who refuse to fade into oblivion, and they have started producing t-shirts with texts that tell that story...mine has a print in Hindi saying "I am not a tourist, I live here!" on it.
I think they are now planning a t-shirt that says "I am not the mister"! Way to go, ladies!

But for now, this is my own little triumph....

2010-02-27T08:47:00.002+04:30

Recently a police officer was murdered by a rikshaw puller.
In "The Hindu" of saturday, feb 27, the following comments could be read on the subject:
"The recent murder of a traffic police constable allegedly at the hands of a rikshaw puller in the Capital's trans-Yamuna area has raised serious questions about the measures taken by a section of the police force to "discipline" rickshaw pullers on Delhi's roads".
" The incident has left many people wondering what transpired between the two that the rickshaw puller took the extreme step".
"They live under police terror. The police puncture rickshaw tires with ice-picks. This is common in places like Fatehpuri and the Red Fort. For a person who earns his daily bread by pulling a rickshaw, it is sheer torture. he has to get the punctures repaired from his [meager! M] earnings".
"It is just like beating up a man for not walking on the pavement of a road that does not have one".

The Delhi traffic police (yes, the one that is very concerned with the welfare of all these careless pedestrians crossing the road illegally and climbing fences) apparantly is less concerned with the welfare of rickshaw pullers....

2010-02-21T20:08:00.002+04:30

This is an ad by the Delhi Police in the Hindu Times... the Delhi Police is very concerned with the health of Delhi's pedestrians and therefor urges them to cross the roads of Delhi carefully. Very noble thought....

The people in the picture are climbing over a fence at the side of the road. This is something one can observe in many places of Delhi and even on the highway which connects Delhi to Gurgaon and ultimately Jaipur. It is a newly constructed highway (still not finished) with many modern features as flyovers, tollgates and signs saying tuctuc and bicycles (three wheelers) cannot use the highway. The one thing that is not there are pedestrian crossings.

But no problem. The careless pedestrians, who run for their lives when crossing the roads of Delhi, could also use subways and zebra crossings, according to the Delhi Police.
Well, subways are going to be rather difficult to find in the middle of a highway, and so are zebra crossings, as a matter of fact.

The careless pedestrians are also urged not to read newspapers when crossing the roads....should no be too hard to achieve in a country where half the population is illiterate. Besides, who has the time to read the newspaper when running for their lives? That is the one downside...the careless pedestrians are in fact running on the road (a thing they should not do, according to the Delhi Police). Anyone who has ever tried to cross a road in Delhi understands why!

But the best is yet to come.....

2010-01-14T11:07:00.003+04:30

Happy 2010!!!

We have just returned from a very cold Christmas vacation in Europe... it was minus 10 degrees Celcius when we left and the cargo doors of our plane were frozen, resulting in a delay of three hours. Finally we changed planes and ended up in a plane that probably had been pulled out of maintenace, because many things were not working; still, it didn't drop out of the sky and we got home in one piece...with our 3 kg of cheese and chocolate!

Delhi also turned out to be chilly, but of a different kind: "watercold", as we say in the Netherlands. And as our houses do not have heating and the electricity supply is barely enough for all the little heaters that are shattered around the house, it feels, well....cold. December and January are the two months in Delhi that one actually wears socks and sweaters, and T and I are currently very grateful for our fireplace.

We are now slowly getting back to normal life, after beating a terrible jet-lag, and decided to start planning our vacations right away. T is always busy as hell so if we don't reserve dates, his agenda will be full by the time we decide to take a vacation. So no spontaneous actions this year when it comes to getting away from it all!

But for the rest we hope the year will be exciting, interesting and most of all, fun and filled with nice dinners. And we hope yours will be too!

2009-12-08T15:49:00.003+04:30

My friend Paulien and I also went to Udaipur, a first for me. We stayed in Jagat Niwas palace, a small heritage hotel at the side of the lake...I loved it! The rooms were small but charming, and as we booked "lakeview" we overlooked the lake (which luckily had water in it) and the very famous Lake Palace Hotel. The latter is, in case one doesn't know, the highlight in the James Bond movie Octopussy...and the Udaipuri will never let you forget that! There is an overkill in Octopussy restaurants and Bond bars, where things are shaken, not stirred!

Anyway, we really enjoyed our late lazy lunches in the little Jharokas (balconies) looming over the lake (tongue twister!); The Lake Palace Hotel being lit from the water, sounds of Mullahs calling the worshippers in the distance, and us ordering yet another bottle of Sula sauvignon blanc. Sula is the local wine brand and though it is by no means bad, it also definitely does not live up to its reputation. Not a very good value for money yet, I'm afraid. But if that is the only wine there is and wine is the thing for you, what can you do? So Sula it was, and we drank it merrily into the romantic Udaipur nights, to the extend that every time one of us would show up in the restaurant they would ask us: "wine?".

The next morning (yes, that was only the first night) T joined us, only to crash immediately in our private Jharoka. As T slept the afternoon away Paulien and I took a tuctuc to do some serious sighseeing around Udaipur. We had told the driver we didn't want to go shopping, and he obliged, but after a while told us he wanted to show us his school. As it turned out, during the months of May and June, when temperatures are soaring and tourists stay away, there is not a whole lot to do for tuctuc drivers, and as he said, "the days are long". So, he turned to the local art, miniature painting.

Miniatures are the Indian translation of photographs, I think. You find them in palaces and museums, large and small, depicting domestic (royal) scenes, battles, tiger hunts and devine interference. I never paid a lot of attention to them (I mean, they ARE awfully small) but now we agreed to be taken to the school, and what a surprise that turned out to be!
In the school, the "Real Art School" on Monsoon Palace road, mr. Rashid is teaching all those who are willing to be patient the art of miniature painting...for free.
It is his duty, he said, to teach people for free, as he had been taught for free himself. The first year a student can only make tea, clean the floors and grind the stones used to make paint - they still use an ancient technique to make paint. That will teach the student patience, and one needs patience to become a miniature-painter. If they last the first year, they are in.

Mr. Rashid showed us the various levels of painting: the students (scattered about on the floor, copying masterpieces), the second level painters, the first level painters to which he counted himself (10 years of training) and the masters, who would hav from there, because after one's fifties the hands begin to tremble and the eyesight goes. A master, we were told, earns about 300 INR per hour.....paintings sold at the school (there was a shop after all) were calculated according to the amount of hours spent on the painting and the level of the artist, and the money earned went back into the school.

Mr. Rasjid gave us a magnifying glass so we could judge the different qualities. He told us the true masters would sit for 10 hours consquetively on the floor, not blinking when painting a difficult thing like a horses' tail, not taking the brush off the silk they were painting on, making single strokes for a hundred times, side by side, never varying their width, never crossing the other lines....
And I must admit, ever since I do not look at miniature paintings the same way. I bought one, made by a master: 10 x 15 cm, for 1850 rupees. It means it must have taken him 6 hours to make it. They equal the quality of the icons in Russia and I have decide to go back to Udaipur and empty the school's shop....because one day, when my tuctuc driver becomes a master, this skill will have died out because no-one had the patience to learn, and the paintings will have become rare and precious.

2009-12-06T15:08:00.002+04:30

This is my friend Paulien.
Paulien came to visit me in India, and took with her -apart from an embarrassing amount of old Dutch cheese- an open mind and a great sense of humour...and thank God for that!

Here we are on our way back from Agra to Delhi. Even though I do not think the Taj Mahal is the most interesting thing to see when in India, Paulien really wanted to go, so I booked traintickets...Shatabti, executive class from Delhi to Agra and Shamti Express, second class (no first class available) from Agra to Delhi.

So we arrived at Agra train station; our friendly Tuctuc driver had told us the train would arrive on platform 3, and there we went. Obviously we did not understand what was being announced (not necessarily because they didn't announce in english, but because the sounds from the loudspeaker might as well have been chinese, too distorted for me to tell the difference). Luckily for us there was a friendly man in a little booth who supposedly was there to give information. I showed him my ticket. One-fourty, he said. Yes, I could see that on my ticket. But what platform? One-fourty departure! Yes....but what platform? Here or there? Yes...here or there! Platform two or platform three? Yes...one-fourty, platform two or three. I gave up.
Paulien by then was already on the floor laughing, being stared at by a group of older ladies squatting on a bench. They seemed to miss what was so funny, but we went on for about 10 minutes wondering about where the train would stop...at one-fourty!

At one-fourty a train arrived on platform two....it looked like a train for cattle, open windows with horizontal metal bars, so I went back to the gentleman in the booth and showed him my ticket again, pointing at the train that had just arrived. No, he gestured...this is a local train. Ours would arrive at platform three! Ok, we had that one narrowed down!

At two-thirty another train arrived, on platform three. This is it, we thought, and started running to find wagon E1, along with some confused Koreans and Americans...but no sign of a number anywhere, at least not one that matched.I asked a couple of people but they didn't speak english....and finally I found a smart-looking Sikh who did speak english very well and told us this was not our train...our train was delayed (wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't told me!).

Finally, at two-fifty, our train pulled into the station, and our friendly Sikh told us the numbers would be displayed on the little electronic boards on the ceiling. And Lord and behold! The wagon numbers WERE actually displayed on the little electronic boards next to where the wagon would stop! So we ran to E1 and waited....and saw more cattle-wagons pulling up....Paulien got worried but I spotted some wagons with actual windows in them, so I reassured her that our "normal" wagon was coming....

And then we finally got in. Our wagon turned out to be a sleeper, with a narrow lane in the middle and closed curtains on both sides. Obviously people were sleeping and obviously they were also sleeping on our seats! In India it is normal procedure to pick a seat you like, and then you wait until the rightful owner turns up....usually they'll leave you be and pick a seat of their own. But to give up my bed....then we took a good look at the sheets and decided we were NOT going to fight over it, so we let them be and looked for a place to sit.
Above one of our designated seats (half of the bench downstairs was taken) was a free bed....and finally, after not finding any other place to sit, we climbed up. This is when the picture was taken.....Paulien aLmost fell off laughing!

Once I climbed up I could see her point: we were facing a blind wall with a VERY dirty dusty fan (one could imagine what would happen once it was turned on), a pile of equally dirty sheets and a tl-lamp hanging from its wires....no window.
Our neighbour (who was in one of our beds) had opened his curtain just far enough so he could spie on us and our downstairs neighbour across the hall (who was in our seat that goes with the bed) had done the same. So here we were, sitting on a bed with our legs hanging down, our shoes no doubt in front of our downstairs neigbour's face, facing a dirty little fan and a blind wall....I don't think I have laughed so much in my entire life!

We finally decided that sitting upstairs HAD to be more expensive than sitting downstairs, where you would have a couple of hairy legs and dirty shoes dangling in front of your face...we scared him, I'm sure, our downstairs neighbour, because every time when we would stop (and of course it was not announced where that was) we looked down and asked him if this was Delhi. He moved further back in his corner every time we leaned over, sinking deeper into his laptop with Bollywood movies.

Our staring neighbour across the hall, in the meantime, was still looking. He must have had some great stories to tell at home that evening: two crazy foreign women, one with blond hair and the other with red hair so undoubtedly sisters, who just blabbered and laughed non-stop from Agra to Delhi! Once in Delhi it turned out he was actually an attendent who worked on the train! (Don't know what his job is...checking if the beds will hold?)

But it was very interesting. Chai-wala's coming by at train stations, chanting chai chai chai tea (once they spotted us) chai chai....a very nice lady who came over for a chat and told me her life story....in Hindi so I think it must have been her life story, but I will never know for sure....all these gentlemen that were not fortunate enough to sleep across from us so who had to go to the toilet in order to take a peak as well....and our downstairs neighbour with his movies and Hindi-music, who had to dive under our legs when leaving his seat, not sure whether it would be appropriate to do so....

Paulien, thank you for your great great humour! I have had the trainride of my life!

2009-10-06T11:43:00.004+04:30

We have been to Jodhpur, the "Blue" city.
Apart from the fact that it was still very hot -5 degrees Celcius above the normal temperature- we have had a fantastic time and I have become totally fascinated by the time of the Maharadja's who actually build these beautiful cities, palaces and forts!

Jodhpur is fairly well kept, so the usual dirt and chaos in the streets is tempered by the still beautiful facades, little streets and shops and the ever present Mehrangarh fort that towers over the city. Thanks to the excellent audio-guide in the fort we know also know why Jodhpur was painted blue: the blue -apart from being cooling in summer- acts as a shield against mosquitos!

From our hotel, Pal Haveli, we could see the fort when sitting on the roof terrace; its majestic dark presence (apparantly it is not lit during off-season) provided the perfect backdrop for a romantic evening dinner. Unfortunately our waiters proved to be very interested in our whereabouts and very eager to share their opinions in what must have been a Rajasthani dialect of english (quite impossible to understand), so I spend a considerable time mumbling polite "ok's" and then looking at T hoping he understood...but my Hinglish seems to be better than his, so no, he didn't.

Our hotel was only a few minutes walk from the famous bell-tower (sometimes called the little Big Ben) which is the centre of the bazaars with numerous sellers of colourful bangles, sweets, vegetables, pots and pans and spices, with the occasional cow loitering in between. The only disturbing thing, I found, was that here too they seem to drive with their thumb on the horn...the noise was overwhelming! So after a nice afternoon stroll we were glad to find an espresso-cafe where one could sit en enjoy the sights noisefree over a good cup of coffee.

We also found a beautiful little shop with perfume oils and incence, JMC Perfumers, only 3 minutes from our hotel. Prathiba, the enthousiastic granddaughter of the founder, picked the most perfect oil for us: "Opium" for T and "White Musk" for me. The oils are totally natural and blend in with the scent of one's skin, so they smell different on everbody. We were amazed at how accurate Prathiba's picks were, but she told us that growing up with smells makes one sensitive...well, obviously!

I wear it every day now and love the way I smell, so I soon will have to order more....how can I ever leave India, now I get perfume oil from Jodhpur, Coconut oil from Kerala, silks from all over the country and the most amazing assortiments of spices from Delhi's INA market?

2009-09-09T20:14:00.004+04:30

7 things I love about my house....

It may seem strange to name things you love about your house, but here in India your house is not only your castle, it is also your refuge from the noisy dirty crazy world outside! Finding a good house is worry number one on your list once you have arrived, and as our first house was not the refuge we hoped it would be, here is a salute to the house we have now. So here we go:

1. The windows in the living room.
They spread across the width of the room, making it quite light (not very common in India) and very tropical; our view is of a little park in front, and the only thing we see is trees...and more importantly, the only thing that can see US is trees!

2. The kitchen door.
This is one of those fabulous doors that opens BOTH ways! No matter how you push it, with arms or legs or butts....it opens smoothly and swiftly! Not so great for those that happen to be so unlucky to stand behind it....which is why the door is also equipped with a beautiful little window (almost like peeking into a forbidden world!). Not that it does you any good if you open the door with your butt, but that's just too bad.

3. The floors.
Oooh...our floors! Multi-coloured, ranging from a soft off-white to deep brick-red, shades of orange in between, and the soft geen not to be forgotten! And we are talking original (VERY original!) granito floors here! I love them...they have so much more character than the shiny white marble that can be found in most "restored" houses...give me my tacky floors anytime!

4. The tiles in the bathrooms.
Downstairs these tiles are also of the off-white granito that can be found on the floors...apart from giving a beautiful soft shine to the room, they are also very practical, I found. Stains? Sandpaper! Holes? Fill them up and...sandpaper! Paint that was splashed on by mistake?...that's right! Sandpaper!
Upstairs part of the tiles have a beautiful moorish design to them, blueish-black on white...and the other ones that were a yukky grey I simply covered with a printed picture of the nice ones...long live digital printing! Long live Bison-tix! And long live the pimped tiles! (I don't think the Bison-tix will ever come off again)

5. The fireplace.
We have put our African "trophy" above it (a wooden mask of an antilope...almost like we shot it ourselves!) and the wood on our terrace is waiting to be torched...because yes, it works! And believe me, in winter that is a thing to be grateful about, because winters here are cold and damp and uncomfortable, and there is nothing like a nice fire and a good glass of wine beside it to ward off winter in Delhi!

6. The location.
We are close to everything...the embassy, the shopping malls (yes...we DO have shopping malls, that is, they are being build as we speak), the airport, the market where I do the majority of my shopping, the slums that are being torn down so Delhi can make a good impression on the Commonwealth Games next year, and a couple of nice restaurants. And of course the forest where our friend the Monkeys live....

7. The monkeys.
No, I don't REALLY like them...but they make a great story!

2009-08-17T13:48:00.003+04:30

The last sweltering days of Delhi... and we went on a bicycle tour with the kids.
After three years, we finally thought they were ready to face the frenzy of Old Delhi.
There is a Dutch guy, Jack Leenders, who just started doing guided bicycle tours (you would have to be Dutch for that) and we decided to join one. Our two fellow-riders were British, visiting India for a week and wanting to experience it to the fullest. Well, no better start than a bicycle tour through the busiest, filthiest, oldest part of town!

We started at New Delhi station and immediately got stuck in traffic; there is a busstop there and buses push their way in and out, with pedestrians, riksha's, tuctucs, cars and obviously us trying to sort of wiggle in between. It took us 15 minutes before we could hit the roads, immediately being surrounded by honking cars and scooters and all sorts of vehicles passing us by left and right! What excitement!

The bicycles are of Indian manufacturing which makes them so basic that nothing can break, but also fairly uncomfortable...thank got they have good breaks and bells! Especially the bells...you NEED them!

We did not stay on the big roads and soon were zigzagging in the small streets of the bazaars, trying not to hit any cows, goats, dogs, garbage heaps, and people...what a mess! What smells! What intensity! There Delhi was, in all its long-gone beauty, leaving on big chaos behind that was right in our faces! I have lived here for three years now but I never experienced India so close as I did this time on the seat of a bike!

Roos, with her lushy 16 years, was obviously the attraction of the day. Even though she (sort of) covered up, the men she encountered all changed into drooling fools, mouth wide open, staring after her as if they had just seen one of the wonders of the world pass by. It was really funny! Roos decided that next time, she'll wear a Burka.

We stopped for Chai while riding through the quiet lanes of the Civil Lines district (where the expats used to live at the end of the 19th century), stopped for breakfast at Karim's, "the" Moghul restaurant near the Jama Mashid, and finally were able to safely yet stiff get off our bicycles at New Delhi station. It has been by far the most exciting trip I ever took in Old Delhi!

(for those interested: www.delhibycycle.com)

2009-08-12T07:28:00.002+04:30

Been to Bali again...
The kids visited us for their summer holidays, and as in India the temperatures are still soaring (and India is not REALLY a country to relax) we decided to go to Bali with them.
After all, us living here is the perfect opportunity for us, and them, to see parts of the world where you would otherwise not go so easily!

We had our usual stopover in Bangkok, this time with healthy kids, and did what one does in Bangkok: took a trip down the river, visited Wat Arun and Wat Pho, had sushi, and went shopping. Especially the shopping part appeals very much to the kids who are in the shop-until-you-drop phase...and with a clothing size that let them fit it all!!!!

Then onto Bali, where we had rented a car and toured the island. Bali is very different from north to south; the south has white beaches, lots of hotels and upscale restaurants, and surf-dude beaches. The north is rugged, volcanic, dry and quiet. No fancy restaurants here, but clear water, corals, endless amounts of fishes and dolphins. We got up before sunrise, squeezed into a little narrow boat, and went out to sea to watch the sun come up and the dolphins surface...and it was fantastic! So quiet and peaceful, I could have watched forever.
Finally the middle of Bali is covered with rice paddies, friendly and tranquil and green. The heart of the middle is Ubud, a small friendly town where the local intellectuals, artists and yoga-practicioners reside....and the occasional full-moon worshipper...but the real attraction of Ubud -at least for the kids- was of course the extensive shopping area which is filled with little nice shops. Had a great time!

2009-07-14T10:24:00.004+04:30

"New Delhi, 14 july 2009. The second consecutive mishap at the same site on the under-construction Central Secratariat-Badarpur line of the Delhi Metro at jamrudpur here on monday came as little surprise to many of the residents, who said the area was jinxed.
The area residents said well before the work started on the stretch, an old banyan tree located near a temple was pulled down to widen the road and some portion of the temple was dismantled.
"The entire village used to worship the old tree. On several occasions, we requested the authorities not to touch the tree or the temple. But they did not listen to us", said Ravi Kumar, an area resident." (source: The Hindu Times)

India, 2009.
Deities and djinns are part of everyday life, as are superstition, belief in witchcraft and sjamanism, rituals, numerology and astrology, and reîncarnation.
Cows block the road and eat the fruits and vegetables of local vendors who do not dare to scare them away, as they are holy. Monkeys are an absolute nuisance to residents but instead of chasing them off (or finishing them off) they are fed, especially on thursdays, as that is Hanuman's day (Hanuman is the monkey god) and it brings good luck to feed them on that day. Every shop has it's little altar from where Ganesha figures watch over business...usually incense is burning from these altars, and the occasional picture of a deceased relative puts in some extra weight. The paper runs articles on embracing trees amidst economic news, and people fast on certain days to honour their god(s). Giving a party becomes a challenge when cooking, as there is always someone not eating something because it is monday/tuesday/wednesday etc. And of course the first customer of the day brings luck, one needs to consult an astrologer before entering into any important undertaking and going to the temple is part of any good housewife's practice (men seem to be less eager to pray, fast and do offerings).

India is often said to be a spiritual country...in my definition spirituality means a development of the self to a point where "self" looses its importance. In India, spiritual seems to mean that the "self" (which judging by the behaviour of many Indians is in their centre of the world) utilizes all means to shape that world in such a way that the self gets its maximum benefit from it. If that means feeding monkeys and fasting on tuesdays, so be it.

Incredible India 2009...the longer you live here, the more you see that puzzles you!
In the meantime I however have decided that I'll stick to my car for the time being....you see, I don't fast on tuesdays, I don't feed monkeys and I don't worship Banyan trees, and that is bound to be bad luck when riding the metro!

2009-07-06T16:46:00.004+04:30

Today is a very special day...today I met the Dalai Lama!

Well, not in person really, but he stood so close I could actually see the twinkle in his eyes, the watch he was wearing and the look he gave us three when he saw we could not follow what he was saying, nor the Hindi his interpreter was producing...after which he gave a speech in english as well (and we like to think that was especially for us!).

Today it is the 6th of july, and the 74th birthday of His Holiness, and the 50th year that he is in India. To mark this auspicious occasion, the People of the Himalayan Region held a tribute of gratitude, and three people of our embassy were invited: The Ambassador, the political advisor and ms Danielle Brown, devotee and visa officer. So "us", that would be ms Brown, the Ambassador (who could not come as he is in Bhutan, so he sent me ;-), and the political advisor who could not come as he is also in Bhutan so he sent Tanja, the assistant of the Agricultural Councellor ;-)....Bob's Angels, as it were. (Bob being the Ambassador...)

We were not allowed to use Bob's car but the rest of the event was perfect... after the Dalai Lama adressed us (and the rest of the audience), Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former president of India and an equally charismatic man, also adressed us (and the rest of audience). And then there were performances by different cultural groups from the Himalayan region...

I am turned, that's for sure. What a fabulous man! What a fabulous message! He has calm and peace and love radiating from every pore of his body, and it reaches everyone around him.
"I have been in India for 50 years...I'm here!" That simple. No judgement, no anger, no political statements...he is just there. But boy....is he there! I'm hooked!

2009-07-02T13:38:00.005+04:30

The Monsoon has officially started, and thank God for that!!!!

It was SOOO hot in Delhi, unbearable! This was the hottest summer I have experienced here so far...especially the month of june was terrible. It seemed the air contained no oxygen anymore, breathing got difficult, sleeping got difficult...doing anything except hanging in front of the airco got difficult! But this the power and water demands soaring powercuts and watershortages got more frequent by the day, leaving millions of people without water and electricity for hours every day!
Obviously people got angry and started protesting...we expats keep wondering how a government can not foresee that powerdemands will grow as more and more people can afford to buy an airconditioning and how water supplies cannot be fed during the many rains that India does have...India does not have water shortages, but it has shortages of drinking water and it has no even water supply. When it rains India floods, contaminating drinking water and sweeping away fertile soils, villages, roads, electricity cables etc. When it doesn't rain, and the water has flown away instead of being stored in -for example- underground storage systems, there are water shortages. Simply said, of course. But in fact, it is this simple.

Water shortages do not only affect people, it also affects animals. Monkeys, to be precise. Monkeys that live in the forest across our street, and that come into the city to find food and water. can't blame them really, but unfortunately they found a source of water allright: OUR watertank! They also found out it is relatively easy to break the plastic pipes that come out of the tank, so we have had several downpours of 600 liter at the time and now left that one tank empty because repairing will only result in more damage. They didn't like that their watersource was not properly refilled and so they distroyed my palmtrees as revenge! They "visited" our terrace several times and the result was the above mutilated tree (and all the others look like that as well).

Needless to say that pissed ME off..but then there was T to protect us!!!

In an heroic attempt to stop the beasts from ravaging our surroundings T climbed up the roof with a big bamboo stick and whacked the alpha male of the monkey troop one across the ears...and then he stood up, waved his arms and stick in the air and made a lot of noise...the monkeys must have understood his body language and figured this ape was too big for them, because we haven't seen them since!

T the Monkey Man! There is money to be made of this in Delhi....!

2009-04-08T15:43:00.005+04:30

Time in India is going faster than anywhere else in the world, I am pretty sure of that!

Already the heat of summer has started (currently being relieved by the occasional thunderstorm) and our bodies have not yet tuned in, so T and I are suffering from a Bug....headaches, diarrea, nausea and the perpetual feeling of being not quite there. Lucklily we have a very good doctor to go to, dr. Gupta, who feels our tummies and prescribes yet another round of antibiotics. It is the only thing to do in India; either you kill the Bugs or they will slowly kill you.

It raises the question: how does one GET a Bug?
The common believe is that in India, everyone gets sick. This is not true; we have had many guests who did not get sick (most of them actually) and we ourselves got very sick when we were still staying in the Hyatt, where food is flown in and they even have filtered water in the shower! So even common sense and consequent not eating of pre-cut fruits, not using icecubes and not licking your fingers after you have touched money will not necessarily protect you from the feared "Delhi Belly"...

Bugs in India are simply everywhere: in the air, in the water, in the food, on animals, people, things...simply everywhere! But there are places that are Buggier than others, this is true. INA market, the place where I do my shopping, is one of them. I try to go as early as possible ( in India that means around 9.30 am) because the later I get the Buggier the place is. The smell of dead chickens being thrown in lukewarm water is everywhere and the fishmarket slowly turns into a pool of melted ice mixed with fish-guts. I am sure the place is rigged with bacteria...10.000 flies can't be wrong!

I do buy fish there, but only in winter and only when I am very early. In winter I buy a lot of fish and I freeze most of it, so we can enjoy the occasional shrimp in summer. But what really struck me recently is the fact that the shopkeeper of my fish stall has also ventured into poultry! On the little blue sign it actually says "fresh chicken available here"!
Incredible India, land of endless possibilities and Bugs.....

2009-02-26T13:50:00.002+04:30

We have just been to Amritsar, the Mekka of the Sikh: the city is home to the Golden Temple, where the Holy Book lies.

The Golden Temple is absolutely magnificent, both in the evening when the Book is put to rest, as well as during the day when one can visit the endless kitchens that prepare 40.000 meals a day....every day of the year. Anyone can visit and eat...the Temple is open to any nationality, religion or gender. It is truly remarkable and it was the first place in India where we felt the sense of spirituality that we had expected before we came here.
the complex itself is buzzing with people, both during the day as well as the evening. They are wandering about, sitting on the waterfront watching the temple, taking a dip in the Holy water (men out in the open, women in special little buildings where they can bathe undisturbed by curious eyes), or having a meal or a tea in one of the enormous dining halls.
We were invited to join in making chapati's, of which 100.000 are produced every day; the whole thing seems to be a social gathering where one catches up on the latest gossips. The atmosphere was wonderful.

And one wonders...if such a thing of beauty and peace and spirituality originated in India, could it then be that the we hoped to see India is hidden but still out there? What lies beneath the surface?

2009-02-02T10:14:00.003+04:30

Back in Delhi, and life turns back to normal.
Normal means that I go shopping for our weekly meals, and on the way there are at least 5 locations where I will hear that familiar sound of nails tapping on my window...."chapati mama, rupees, khana...". Sometimes they are women with babies (possibly not their own), sometimes crippled people, sometimes children...and everytime it makes me feel horrible because I have to shake "no".

No, I should not give them money. They are poor, no doubt about that, but my money will not make a difference because many of them have fallen into the claws of organised crime and will have to give the money they "earned" to their "boss" at the end of the day...we cannot distinguish the ones that are exploited from the ones that are not, and giving money will only keep the system going, so we give nothing.

And so, every week, I sit and say "no" and then ignore the wailing and pleading...with shoppings in the back of my car, feeling horrible and guilty and hating India for making me feel this way.

T and I have also been wondering what will happen to all the beggars around the time of the Commonwealth games, in 2010. Everywhere there is construction going on, to the metro, to roads, hotels, busstands etc., so the city will look polished and modern and developed by the time the world attention turns on it. Our guess is that all beggars will be swept off the street just before the games and will be put on a train to the desert in Rajasthan. The slums are being torn down as we speak, so the people are now literally living on the street...not a very nice sight when you drive up to your five-star hotel.

But it doesn't solve the problem. As long as there is no social security system to fall back upon, education for the kids or a law that they must go to school (and enforcement of that law!), shelter, medical care, and most of all the WILL to help them instead of pretending they are not there, nothing will change.

Movies like Slumdog Millionaire are actually based upon the truth, be it that the truth is even a lot uglier than the movie. And here in India there is no escape from the truth, which is why it is probably such a hard country to deal with mentally, at least for me.

I could choose to escape from the truth by letting my housekeeper do the shopping (like many expats do) and limit my days to playing tennis, reading books and go for a coffee at a friend's house, but it doesn't feel right. I would be placing myself out of reality and that is not why we moved to another country. The challenge is to learn to deal with it and to realise that it does not make me a bad person if I shake "no"....and so I go shopping, ignoring the tapping on my window - just another normal day in India.

2008-12-19T10:15:00.002+04:30

It's the end of the season, and we are all tired...too many receptions, party's, presentations, dinners...and too much booze, I guess. The season concluded with the Christmas dinner at the Ambassador's house, which was wonderful. Finally T got to wear his smoking (he had one made in India) and I got to wear my Hanbok, the Korean traditional dress that I bought there just before we left.

Now, T and I are packing as we will spend the holidays in The Netherlands with our loved ones. I am also looking forward to some typical dutch "treats"... een frietje met een kroket, haring, oude kaas en appeltaart van Dudok! (impossible to translate...) We are leaving behind India, the cats and Ganesha (in the picture...the god who removes obstacles, quite a thing one needs in India) for three weeks!!

So we wish you a very Merry Christmas and an obstacle-free 2009!

2008-12-11T13:13:00.004+04:30

Even in grim times one has to celebrate! The bombs and terrorist attacks have not stopped us Dutch from celebrating "Sinterklaas"! The tradition of Sinterklaas (who is a bishop, lives in Spain, rides a white horse and comes to visit little Dutch children on the 5th of december with presents) is even upheld in India, with a slight Indian twist of course!

We had "pepernoten", lots of very sweet candy and a group of firm believers awaiting the Holy Man eagerly...so eagerly that they didn't even notice the Ambassador saying that he was glad to see so many children who still believed in Sinterklaas (if you were wondering, no, of course this is not the real one! This is a science teacher dressed up in a Sinterklaas costume...the real one lives in Spain and he'll be damned to climb on his horse and ride all around the world...the guy is 400 years old!).

Anyway, we had fun. T and I (not so very keen on anxious screaming children, we have outgrown that) volonteered to sell entry tickets and sat, very conveniently, near the entrance. At the moment it is app 24ºC in the daytime, which is wonderful, so we sat and enjoyed a relatively quiet afternoon. India at its best....thank god we have days like this one as well!!!

2008-11-27T15:34:00.005+04:30

27/11... the day Mumbai was attacked by terrorists with guns and granades. At least 101 people killed and more than 300 wouded. Attacks on the Oberoi- and Taj Hotels, a railway station, a popular restaurant and a hospital (how sick can you get?). This time foreigners, particularly American and British, were also specifically targeted. The city has been paralized.

Interesting enough a new way of media coverage also surfaces, as most of the reports of what is happening are delivered by bloggers, or via Skype. Only in India...one's dead is another one's bread, as we say in my country.

I met an Indian gentleman today in the lamp-shop that I had to go to, and he told me he is living really close to where it happened. When I said how horrified I was, and how devastating this probably will be for India's development, he told me he believes the terrorists are trying to drive the foreigners out...well, this is the way to go then! Tourists will think twice about booking a trip to a country where major tourist attractions and hotels are bombed, and foreign companies -especially after the Tata incident (which was an Indian company!)- surely can find more stable countries to invest in. Is this the Talibanisation people have been talking about? Or is it just plain stupidity and total disrespect for a human life?

I don't know. I do now that something has changed for me, India has changed for me. I have my ups and downs here, but I never felt really scared...until now. There is a primitive energy here, lurking under the surface, waiting for the wrong person pushing the right button, saying the right words....and it will expload. Too many uneducated people, too much poverty, a gap between have's and have's not which is far too big, too much discrimination of minority groups...and so easy to start blaming it on those who are easy to spot and who "don't belong"...the Jews, the Americans, and ultimately all foreigners.

I recall an incident that happened to me a year ago: I had to take my cat to the vet and the parking lot which we had to enter was partially blocked so only one car at the time could pass the gate. We were entering when a car with an old lady behind the wheel came from the other side...and being Indian, she obviously thought she was entitled to drive out first, so she stopped, blocking everything, and started honking like mad. Finally I got out, told my driver to back up, and decided to walk (which meant I had to climb over heaps of stones and sand, with my cat carrier in my hand...very unconvenient). When I passed the car, she rolled down the window and screeched in the nastiest voice I ever heard "why don't you go back to your own country!"....I was too flabberghasted to say anything and I must have thought of a million equally nasty responses since then, but the bottom line is that I wish I could have.
And now, for the first time since that moment, I wish it again.

I hope it will pass because despite the hardship we experience living here India also has an amazing beauty and a lot of interesting things and places to offer, and I want to leave here with good memories. And terrorist attacks and bombings don't contribute to that...

2008-10-13T09:39:00.002+04:30

But let's talk "old money"...the hotel that we stayed in, Chapslee, was bought in 1938 by Maharadja Raja Charanjit Singh of Kapurthala from an English Lady (Hermione M.), and it hasn't changed since. This means the wallpaper shows signs of wear and tear, but also that the rooms are filled with antiques (some of fitted with a paper that says "not for use") and the butlers still wear uniforms and white gloves. They serve you "bed-tea" in the morning, and in the afternoon you can have your tea where you want it: in the garden, in the morning room, or in the salon!
In the evening the giant antique table in the dining room is laid with the silver cutlery, and after your gin-tonic you (and the other guests) are served a lavish dinner, after which you have your coffee in the salon...then the lady of the house might join you for a chat and a coffee, and you talk about how India has changed and how rude and selfish everyone has become. They obviously have seen better -and more elegant- times.

In our bedroom there was a painting of all the princes of Rajasthan, and we found not only the Maharadja of Kapurthala (the grandfather of the present owner) but also what must have been the grandfather of our landlord in Delhi (they are also of royal descend). We also had a fireplace in the bedroom, but no airco and fan, which suggests that Shimla gets cold but never hot. We had old carpets, and a dressing room with an old drawer...and T is sure he heard squeeking of floors all night while the room above us was empty, which means the house may have a ghost as well (I never heard anything).

As we have understood by now, the Old Money has good education and a good and respectful upbringing; they regard their servants as part of the family and treat them well and they try to to good for society. The wife of the Maharadja of Kapurthala for example started a school for the middle and lower class in one of the adjacent buildings of the house; it is still run by the current lady of the house (and can be overheard in the morning when the students are drilled into line on the sound of drums), and it has grown so much that the tennis court and the croquest lawn are now the school's playfield. Mrs. Singh told us that even the streetvendor who sells his sweets on The Mall sends his kids to this school, which is fantastic. This is where India's future lies, education and eradication of corruption.

The glamour of the Old Money may have faded somewhat, like their wallpaper, but I'll prefer it any time to what it was replaced with: the rich, spoiled, arrogant youngsters that you can see in all the stylish shops and restaurants (and the Oberoi in Shimla, with their little spoiled kids) and who treat everybody like shit...clearly, money can't buy everything!

2008-10-07T08:04:00.002+04:30

It was Ghandi's birthday and a long weekend, so T and I decided to go to Shimla, the summer capital of the Raj. They would pack up in march (packing EVERTHING, files and all) and move the entire government from Delhi and Kolkata to Shimla, where they would stay until october. Naturally, their families would follow, taking the little railway which was constructed in 1903.
Not surprisingly, Shimla (at least the old part of it) is predominantly British in style, with lovely old houses, small streets and little shops.

The center (called The Mall) seems to be build on a hilltop, stretching for about 7 km and ending on one side with the Viceregal Lodge which looks like a combination of Harry Potter's castle and an old cathedral. In Shimla's old center one can still find old english mansions that display the grandeur of old times...on the sides of the (very steep!) hill 4 story houses are scattered, having (according to the Lonely Planet) "a chaotic appearance of a temporarily arrested landslide of buildings cascading down the hills". Indeed, one does not want to imagine what will happen if an earthquake should occur...the houses are built with the thinnnest floors possible, on tiny concrete pillars, no cross connections at all...according to the lady of the House that we stayed in it will be the effect of giant domino: one house falling on top of the other, and so on...and no access for rescue parties as there is only one main road which undoubtly will be covered in debris...let's hope it doesn't happen.

Anyway, T and I had a lovely time. The people in Shimla are defenitely more relaxed than in Delhi, with the typical appearance of mountain-people....suntanned, weather-worn faces, lighter skincolour, many with the strange amber coloured eyes that one can see in the north. They wear sleeveless jackets made of sheepwool, and little round hats; winter is very cold and it shows, as all the houses have fireplaces (but no fans or airco's!). Shimla is a tourist destination for the Indians as well, and there were many of them, strolling about on the mall, snacking on sweets and letting their children ride horses or buy balloons. No beggars, relatively little dirt and apart from the honking not so much noise...and most of all, crisp clean fresh mountain air! What a treat!

We had a lavish lunch at the Cecil Oberoi hotel, The uptown hotel, with a view over the valley...and were amazed by some rich Indian parents who shamelessly let their kids dance ON the table...with personnel standing around helplessly as it is not their place to say anything. Apparantly these nouveau riche also wipe their shoes with the curtains in their rooms -they are paying for it after all- and extinguish cigarettes onto the carpets...?! Welcome to the new money in India!

2008-09-30T09:27:00.003+04:30

Bombings in Delhi!

No, not inside this refill-station (and yes, this IS actually how someone has set up shop).
But it could have been....on september 13, 5 bombs went off on busy marketplaces and near a cinema. Three more bombs were found that didn't go off...all planted with the intention of causing "the maximum damage". They were hidden in garbage bins and trees. The "damage" was 40 killed, 100 wounded....

Another bomb went off two days ago, killing two people and wounding 10...this time, it seems more like a personal vendetta. This bomb was thrown into a shop by two men on a motercycle...and this is just Delhi, because bombs are found on trains, on garbageheaps, in taxis...everywhere in india blasts seem to be more and more commongood.

Not surprisingly the big bombings were organised by the Indian Muhajedeen, who have close links to Indian Islamic organisations and universities. The majority of the Muslims in India condemn the bombings, as does the government, but no-one seems to be able to stop it. I heard someone say on tv last night that airline companies are now planning to install anti-terrorist measures on commercial planes because of the increasing terrorism and risk of attacks on civilian targets; as he put it: "terrorism is here to stay and without these measurements we are lost".
Who said that in 2012 the world as we know it will come to an end? Will we last that long?

Life here in India is increasingly getting restless. The papers are full of murders, rapes, bombings, attacks, robberies and protests. It seems as if there is a primitive energy released, getting the worst out of people. The masses here (and unfortunately they are the uneducated masses who never learned to judge for themselves) are easy to arouse and there are many who use that for their own gain. This is a thing one does not change easily; T and I often say that the only way to change India is to ruthlessly fire everyone who is corrupt (especially governmental figures like ministers and policemen) and send every kid to school (and fine the parents if the keep their kid at home because begging or working makes more money than school does!).
But this is a thing one cannot say openly, although more and more higher educated Indians seem to agree.

There is nothing I can change about this except notice it and stay alert. The only thing I can do is hope that I, and my beloved ones, will not be in the right place at the wrong time...and choose a different path, should the situation arise.

2008-09-26T14:51:00.003+04:30

The rains are over and the temperature is going down; soon, it will be nice to sit outside and enjoy fall before it gets cold again. It is hard to imagine for the people who have newly arrived (to still 34 ºC) that winter really can be cold, but there you are.

I have now taken to pimping my terrace...when we moved from our house in Pushpanjali I took plants with me (mostly from the vegetable garden) but they haven't survived the summer and the heat at the terrace, so finally I went and bought palmtrees, shrubs, and my favorite, a Frangipane (guaranteed to bloom within two weeks...but this being India, I think that is a bit optimistic).
I painted my weather-beaten wooden shoes (we ARE dutch...), the stands for the sunshades and a very ugly little sidetable in Algarve blue - a sunny happy blue that goes really well with the plants and the once-white of the walls.
Everything looks crisp again (the ugly sidetable is still ugly but at least in a happy blue)...I am starting to adhere to the Indian tradition of painting everything fresh just in time for Diwali!

Inside the house also walls need to be painted; we have had serious leakages due to the heavy rains, and the whole hallway, part of the study and the guest-bathroom look rundown with big fungus patches on the wall. According to the landlady it has never happened before and she therefor blames the Noisy Neighbours who have been knocking at walls ever since we moved here (and a year before that). Personally, I am wondering, because the quality of Indian construction leaves somewhat to be desired. Still, it will need to be fixed at some point. Then, next monsoon, we will probably start all over again. But that is then...

Now, as soon as the pain in my back from trying to lift too heavy plants and pots has gone, I can enjoy our sunny Algarvian terrace with the sound of a stone quarry in the background!

2008-08-09T15:12:00.005+04:30

Just been to Thailand with Roos and Niek...boy, what a holiday!

We went for dinner on the evening we left with our friend Yvonne who unfortunately had to leave India...a kind of pre-vacation farewell. Then, on the way back, T stepped into a hole and ended up bloody and scratched...he was lucky not break his toe!!! And this was an hour before we had to leave for the airport!

But things got worse...in the plane, Niek got sick...some bug that he caught which made him throw up...in the plane...in the taxi to the hotel...in the hotel (well, it was more diarrea in the hotel)...and then Roos also started... in the top picture they are waiting in the lobby until the room is ready. Poor kids.

Niek was ill during our whole stay in Bangkok, running from table to toilet - still, he seems to have had a good time anyway as the hotel had lots of illegal DVD's that could be watched free of charge..quite a good deal and very amusing as most DVD's have been filmed illegally in the cinema, and subtitles have been deducted from what can be understood, which allows for very unusual translations!

Roos got better after a day and went sightseeing with me the first day. We did Wat Po, we did MBK and we wanted to do Wat Arun but needed to cross the river for that and nearly were ripped off at the ferry where the boatman wanted 300 bath for a return ticket to the other side (the ferry actually costs 3,5 bath for one way, so it is not hard to see why a return would cost a hundred times more). We had a good time anyway and managed to NOT get ripped off!

The second day Roos went sight-seeing with T, as I also caught Niek's bug and stayed in bed. Then,at the Grand Palace, T's wallet got stolen, with everything in it...credit cards, drivers licence and diplomatic identity card. One credit card was abused almost immediately; 20.000 Bath were withdrawn WITHOUT pin code! According to the Postbank this is not possible but there we are! (we have not written the last word about this!)

So the last evening in Bangkok T spent at the police station trying to find an english speaking police officer in order to file the case; I spent the evening in bed being sick and Roos and Niek spent it in front of the tv watching dvd's with funny translations....not quite what we had in mind for our final night in Bangkok!

But then on saturday we flew on to Krabi, where we were met by our good friend Marcus, and all changed for the better. Apart from the occasional shit-experiences (which we started sharing at breakfast) nothing desastrous happened and we went kayakking, elephant riding and snorkelling. Especially the latter was great; one day we rented a longtail boat which picked us up from the hotel and took us to Poda and Chicken islands, with their clear waters, big reefs and many tropical fish. Apart from a sunburn on our backs we came out fine from that and really really enjoyed the hours we drifted face down! In the evening we would hop on our rented scooters and drive to Marcus' restaurant to enjoy fish, fish, fish and for the kids, schnitzel...the only remaining incident was T getting caught in a tropical shower which ruined his shoes and his telephone...oh well. Somehow it was to be expected.

Thailand 2008...shit, fish and schitzel...what more could you want?

2008-07-21T14:41:00.002+04:30

The advantage of having guests is that you go and do things you normally do not do...we went to the Nigamboth Ghat with our friend Peter, and as our new driver dropped us in a different spot than normally we had to walk through an unknown area. But what a discovery! The area itself was filthy, wet and lined with people sleeping on riksha's, but we also found little shops selling flower beads to honour the deceased (the Nigamboth ghat is where the Hindu's cremate their dead).

And what beautiful people can one find in such a little remote place! they all wanted us to take their pictures and then showed our camera's around to everyone (leaving us to wonder if that was the last we saw of our camera's, but luckily it was not).

Now that we have moved to a more livable house (although the neighbours are still extremely noisy) India is actually starting to become fun!

2008-06-30T17:40:00.003+04:30

All good things must come to an end!

Now is a strange time in Delhi; apart from the fact that everybody (everybody!) seems to have left the city for their summer holidays, the people that are being transferred are packing up and leaving one by one... a lot of saying "auf wiedersehen" as many of the people leaving are the ones that welcomed us here, took us around and helped us adjust to India.
I will miss many of them very much...especially my friend Tanja who was the first to show me around, who has been my shoulder to cry on over all those personnel problems that we have had, who always knew all the good places and adresses and with whom I spent many shopping experiences (she is, like me, not a shop-until-you-drop-person).

In this picture she is showing me the secret stairways to the rooftop amidst the spice market, from where you can look over the city, the chaos below, the people drying rose leaves on the roofs and the spiceboys turning over...yes, what? We have tried to distinguish whatever they were turning but it could vary from beans to camel-dung....?!
Anyway...my future guests will thank her, because the stairs are hard to find and quite exciting to walk on...but what a lovely view! The "guru" in the other picture is Tanja's friend. He has a little shop, somewhere in the middle of the Stairs to Spiceheaven, and he likes to be photographed...and no, I don't think he actually is a guru, but who cares. He has this pair of glasses that look as if he saved them from the 70ies (probably did) and he wears traditional clothes, and sitting on the floor the way he does he might as well be a guru...Spiceguru in Spiceheaven.

I have decided that now that my friends are leaving I should get busy doing other things (as I said, I am not such a shopper) so I will be trying Yoga! After all, I AM in the land of yoga! Still, I am not sure if yoga is the thing for me, but I have been recommended a teacher who actually does private classes in your home, so I'll give it a try.

Unfortunately, in my home, some things have NOT changed....the noisy neighbours are STILL hammering the walls down (you would think there is nothing left to hammer by now, after they have been hammering non-stop for 4 months, but they seem quite capable of finding that last piece of wall still standing). I am waiting for the moment when I open my closet and stare into a face of a Rajasthani with a hammer!

2008-05-02T16:09:00.002+04:30

And suddenly we are out of personnel!!!

Mr. Gill, our driver (here taking his shoes off after I dragged him on a walking tour...but unfortunately he was wearing new tight shoes...), has stopped working for us on april 30th. He will start a guesthouse because he, as he puts it, cannot leave his service with us to his son.

I have spent many hours with him talking about India and its problems, the things that bewilder me, the differences between India and the Netherlands, arranged marriages, bargaining, Hindoe customs and what have you...he taught me a lot about India and its customs, saved us from cheaters, helped us arrange the necessities of life (like getting a gasconnection, water delivered or broken electricity wires repaired) and pulled our leg at april 1st...we will miss him and we hope to stay in touch!

And then Bishnu, our cook, who came with us after we left the old house and moved back to the city...she also left, but not in the dignified way we said "auf wiedersehen" to mr. Gill. Unfortunately, Bishnu had to be removed from our house after we fired her because we caught her stealing. As it turns out, she had been taking money from my purse for quite a while, thinking I would not notice. Stupid of course if you are the only other person in the house.

Obviously I DID find out, and as she broke the one rule T and I have (don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal) it was bye bye Bishnu...except that she wouldn't go, once she found out I was serious, and clung weeping and pleading to the bannister of the stairs, kissing my feet and telling I was like a mother to her and could we please give her another chance, she would return all the money and never do it again....horrible. I felt guilty, I felt betrayed, I felt misused...because I liked her and I wanted her to have a chance at a good life, which she could have had, because she is a great cook and -if she doesn't do things like this- a wonderful cheerful person. Strange as it may sound, i will miss her too, even if I never want to see her again. I just hope that she learns the lesson and if ever she is given a chance again -and I hope that will happen- she will not screw it up like she did with us.

So here we are, no personnel, new house, fresh start.
T's contract will be prolonged with another three years and I really hope it will be a period of less stress and more fun...we are working on it! And for the meantime I self-cook, I self-clean, I self-drive...and I'm lovin' it!!!

2008-04-04T09:46:00.002+04:30

And then T won the embassy's annual tennistournament!
So now we are stuck with this wonderful trophy, which obviously has a prominent place in our interior! It's a good conversation piece....people eye around our appartment and then carefully suggest that this thing is a little bit inconsistent when it comes to what seems to be our taste...thank god we get to keep it just one year! Our ambassador suggested that if you win the tournament for three years in a row, you MUST keep the trophy so I am now planning a mysterious mishap to T around the time of the tournament ;)

2008-04-03T19:28:00.002+04:30

One morning, just after waking up but still in bed, I heard a thump in front of my bedroom window and when i opened it I saw...a monkey! Or actually, a bunch of monkeys sitting on the fence below eating whatever they managed to scavenge from our garbage bin, and a few of their young swinging from what seams to be the cable of the cabletv of our downstairs neighbours.

They actually behave like lttle kids playing, but my camara apparantly scared them because they started screaching when they saw me...and mommy (a big ugly mama with a very red ass) came checking what scared her kid! Mommy didn't like me for she bared her teath, and for a moment there I was scared whe would smash the window...she didn't, but had I given her a hammer she might have. The kid in the meantime, needless to say, continued swinging on the tv cable. No wonder our internet is out all the time.

The monkeys visit our roof almost every other day. I have been warned not to provoke the males as they will not be scared of me (being a female...that seems to be a particular Indian thing anyway). To be honest, looking at their red asses, red balls and scruffy furs, I feel no need whatsoever to provoke them or even notice them. Better to ignore them.
I have also been told that scaring them away will only result in broken pots, shit on the terrace and turned over garbage bins, neither of which I fancy. So the monkeys do their thing and I do mine and als long as they don't slam through my bedroomwindow that is that!

2008-03-22T15:02:00.002+04:30

Happy Holi!

The Indians generally do not celebrate Eastern (except for the Christians, of whom many are converted people from the South and from lower castes...) but they found an alternative to the painting of eggs...they paint themselves!

Holi is the festival which marks the end of winter; on the night before Holi bonfires are lit and the pictures of the demon Holika are burnt to symbolise the victory of bad over evil. On Holi itself the streets are full of people throwing water and coloured powder (gulal) at each other....shocking pink seems to be the favourite, we noticed when coming back from a game of tennis. Our guard Harka had been caught off guard ;) and looked like a shocking pink eastern egg!
Holi is next to Diwali the most important Hindu festival. Now that we are living in the city, we have actually seen people roaming the streets with paint, and there is screaming everywhere... we escaped with some foam on the car (but we DID keep the windows closed, because once the paint gets into your hair you will look coloured for weeks!). My drycleaner told me they do good business after Holi...I believe them!

2008-03-17T11:38:00.003+04:30

And in we go!
On this picture, the fridge is being towed inside the house, the Indian way...5 people on the roof pulling what seems to be fabric "ropes", 2 people inside the house pulling the fridge in and the other 10 standing in the street yelling instructions. Obviously, there was a dent in the side of the fridge... another thing we'll sell before we leave (we have decided to sell all our electrical equipment...whatever is left of it after 5 years powercuts and voltage-fluctuations anyway).
They have towed our very big bookshelve in like that as well, and the wine-fridge (yes...we have an official fridge for the wine only)...the rest was wiggled in via the stairways, which now of course will need repainting.

Somehow the movers, all 17 of them, managed to stuff everything in the house; the heap that was supposed to fit into the kitchen was larger than the kitchen itself...at a certain point I couldn't stop laughing when yet another box labelled "kitchen" was stacked onto the heap, and you could see them wondering how the hell I was going to stuff everything into that tiny kitchen! The kitchen is not so tiny after all (or I am a genius at stowing) because it DOES all fit quite neatly, but it was quite funny.

The cats seem to be allright now, although Vriendje has -literally- stayed in bed for a week, safely underneath the covers (bottom picture). We were joking that he was depressed and for all we know he was, but now he seems to feel fine and quite happy with watching the guard from behind the window. Olly has a harder time, he wants to go out. Every morning he greets us with his "ok, now show me the door"-miauw...poor thing. But no can do, for in India they hate cats and if they don't try to kill him they'll throw stones at him or scare him away...so he'll just have to wait until our roof-terrace has been made cat-proof.

Almost all boxes are unpacked now, most of our paintings are hanging and the washing machine is working, so life is almost normal. Not that it went like this without the typical Indian complications though. The washing machine, for one thing, turned out to be connected to the hot water pipe tapping into the same boiler as the kichen tap (so we couldn't simply turn the boiler off, as the technician suggested). T now has several baby-size socks... still, the house is in a much better shape than our old house was, despite the fact that it is probably older. Personally, I love the style..terazzo floors, real wood and a "greek" terrace. And what we love most is the absolute privacy! No one can look inside or onto the terrace so if we want to be left alone and see no-one, finally we can. Here in India, that is a must, for life is so demanding and intens that a place to rest and not be disturbed is vital.

We are not completely undisturbed though, as our neighbours are have their house redone and that means that there is a group of workers who knock down walls and make all other sorts of noise 12 hours per day, 7 days per week. T went over to complain and to tell them to not work on sunday please, and found out that the poor guys are actually LIVING in the house as well! They sleep on top of the bags of concrete, cook in between the chalck dust and drink (we think) from our watertank on the roof...their families are in Rajasthan and they have nothing else to do but work so that's what they are doing. Can't blame them really. So we have decided to give them some money and tell them to go drinking so at least we'll have an undisturbed easter sunday!

All in all moving to this house was a good decision. No more traffic jams, no more sleepless nights due to the noise of various weddings held around us, no more stealing personnel so no more having to lock everything away, no more airpollution from the airport (here, the dust is dry...in our last house it was sticky! We can only imagine how our lungs have suffered) and no more getting up at 5.30! No more swimming pool either, but we gladly gave up that one (it was leaking anyway).
Hopefully we will now have a little more time and energy to start seeing something of India!

2008-02-06T07:57:00.000+04:30

The move to the house with the 1000 doors!

It's final...we found an appartment in Malcha Marg, app. 3 minutes from the embassy, and the plan is that we will move in the first week of march! It doesn't really have 1000 doors (that's only T's perception) but is is a weird house with many (yes...) doors, windows, little rooms, corners, niches, hallways and stairs. But it also has a fireplace, lovely private roofterrace, tiny kitchen with a door that opens 2 ways (and a little window so you don't slam into someone's nose when you push it open) and a very good feel wich is after all the most important thing!

For the cats it will be difficult that they cannot go outdoors anymore (although currently Friend is glued to the heater, so maybe he'll adjust quite easily...as long as his heater and little pillow come along), the chickens can live with new collegues who will soon move into a farmhouse, and Bishnu is coming with us. She will have to find her own place to live though because apart from the fact that our servant quarters will be way too small for them (especially for Bishnu's daughter Bumeka who is now a lively two-year old), they are also next to our future bedroom...and as we move to get some peace, quiet and privacy at last having our cook and her two year old living literally on top of us does not seem like a very good idea. In fact we have decided that this time, we want NO disturbance of personnel whatsoever...the past 1,5 years were a nightmare in that respect and frankly I have really had it with staff...the fewer the better!
(The Jewish curse IS true!!!)

Yesterday the movers brought 100 boxes so the coming weeks I'll be packing, sorting and driving back and forth to measure curtains (luckily I still have some extra 100 meters of curtain or so...), move fragile stuff and paintings and clean the place. And then...it will be bye bye to Pushpanjali, its noisy partyhouses, increasing traffic, noisy train and nightly honkikg, stealing personnel and greedy landlord! To name but a few reasons for us wanting to live somewhere else....

2008-02-04T14:46:00.000+04:30

Holiday in Thailand!
We have just been to Klong Muang Beach in Krabi, Thailand, to visit our good friend Marcus Häberli and his lovely wife Supranee, who run a little restaurant called Balini. Marcus entertains the guests while Su cooks the most fantastic meals...needless to say that we didn't loose any weight over the holidays!
Klong Muang is still unspoilt territory; no highrise buildings full of tourists but little resorts and guesthouses, little local restaurants and for the rest beaches, peace and quiet and the occasional Mullah calling for prayer (and I must admit, it sounded quite nice actually). We stayed in Krabi Sands, another one of those treasures...little bungalows, fantastic pool and breakfast on the beach! We rented a scooter and spent many hours on it trying to find the Tiger cave, which is apparantly on top of a hill. Hiking up will take you across 1200 stairs...we didn't find it and I am suspecting T did that on purpose! We found waterfalls instead, and rubbertrees, strange hillsides and lovely little eateries. The Thai are wonderful gentle people whith great food and terrible english...and in Thailand there is, as we both wrote (independently of one another) on our postcards...no honking, no begging, no dirt. What a difference with India! We spent the first four days sleeping, sleeping and sleeping, as if all the energy we ever had was completely drained. I guess to a certain extent it was; India is terribly intens and very intruding, wether you want it or not.
The last days we spent in Bangkok, riding the skytrain to the river, taking a longtail boat from there and for the rest we did a LOT of walking. It took us past the amulet market, the flower market, the river, the Wat Pho (the temple with the golden recling Buddha) and the Palace, which we couldn't enter as mourners were praying for the deceased sister of the King. The King is God for the Thai and his picture is everywhere (I mean everywhere...even in our hotelroom!); one is not allowed to lick a stamp for the protrait of the King is on it and one doesn't lick a king...I think I missed a golden opportunity to find out what a king tastes like!
Anyway, it was lovely and far too short! And we have taken the decision to not take vacations longer than 3-4 days in India anymore as in india one never finds any rest. There are things I want to see but I'll do it in short trips; holidays we will plan from now on in the neighbourhood countries...

2008-01-07T07:17:00.000+04:30

New year, new directions!

T and I have finally decided that we will start looking for another house.
Our current house - beautiful as it may seem - actually has so many disadvantages that the balance no longer tips the right way, and as we are due for another 3,5 years we think it is worth looking for something else for the remaining time.

The biggest problem we are facing strangely enough has nothing to do with the house itself, but with a situation that we have been manouvred into: the fact that our garderners (who live on our premises) are actually not employed by us but by our landlord. This means that in case of situations where repercussions are needed, we are powerless. We cannot fire them or withhold their salaries, which in India unfortunately enough seems to be necessary. Their loyalty lies not with us but with their landlord (who doesn't give a shit about them, us or anybody else, as long as he makes money) and so they feel free to cheat us, lie to us and steal from us, our friends and our other personnel. The "incidents" have been going on for more than a year now and are starting to occur more frequently...Bas! (=Hindi for Stop). Enough!

I do not want to live in a house where I have to keep my handbag with me always because money otherwise disappears from it, where I have to warn my friends to put their valuables in our safe, where I have to lock my washingpowder away and where I have to buy something for my cook which she can lock her money and other belongings into....no more!
As we cannot fire them we have no choice but to either put up a fight with the landlord to change the contract (with the risk he will terminate the contract as he will probably be able to get 30-50% more rent for the house now) or to move.

As other factors are also starting to make living "in the country" less attractive (partyhouses that mushroom around us, a new landingstrip 500 m from our garden and the fact that 1000 new cars enter the roads every day, making our trip to "the city" longer and longer) we thought that moving back into the City would be a better option, despite the higher levels of pollution, noise, and the fact that I may not be able to take the chickens.
New year, new house, new chances....

2008-01-01T15:52:00.000+04:30

From a sunny New Delhi, happy new year!

We are actually having lunch in our garden as during the day we hit the 20ºC...during the night Delhi is very chilly though, going as low as a watery 3ºC...we have one room that we can keep relatively comfortable, and that is where our lives evolve at the moment. Still, being in India makes me realise every day how lucky I am that I was born on the "right" side of the world...as new year is the time to give things a deeper thought, below is an exerpt from an article published in The Hindu, written by Harsh Mander, called Whose land is this?.
It left me silent...this too is India. Having lived here for more than a year now I have seen this on the streets, unable to describe it, unable to understand, unable to close my eyes to it, unable to accept it but understanding that change has to come from within:

" It was a remote village in Bolangir in Orissa that we met an ancient grizzled couple, Champo and minzi. They have for many years cut down to eating one meal a day. It is usually baasi, a small quantity of rice left overnight to ferment, with wild leaves from the forest. At night they drink black tea to kill their hunger, if there are no leftovers given to Champo when he begs. [...] Today, they can both barely walk but still, if on any day they are too sick to set out to labour, they just do not have food to eat. Yet when we met them, they often laughed and Minzi, while parting, tried hard to press into my hand a precious pumpkin, which she had grown on the roof of her thatch hut, as a gift to a guest from a faraway land."

" One night when we met deepak, he was engrossed in his mathematics textbook under a street light. He sleeps on the grimy unkempt pavements of Patna next to his father Ganesh, a rickshaw puller. His father's fondest dream is that one day his son Deepak would become a "sahib". He brought Deepak with him from their village to share with him the rigours of the city only so that he could sent him to a local school. He ensures that his son gets a cup of milk each day, and nutricious food, even if Ganesh himself sleeps half fed."

"education is the dream for their children of most people who are exiled to India's margins, even if it is in government schools that run without the sunlight of joyful learning, creativity and freedom. [...] But millions of parents are too poor to afford even free government schools: legions of children work, hundreds of thousands of others escape poverty and abuse and make the streets of cities their homes, still others are compelled to migrate with their parents each year to construction sites and mines. [...] There are reports from many corners of the country of Dalit (=the lowest caste) children who cannot sit with their classmates when the government statutory mid-day meal is served or other who boycott school meals if these are prepared by dalit cooks. An estimated one million children, women and men still carry human excreta on their heads as the onely livelyhood that society opens up to them."

"For all of these, there seems no light even in the far distant end of the tunnel in which they find themselves trapped. A day must come when this light is lit, when this land truly belongs to all who are born to it and nurtured its soil".

....!

We wish you a thoughtful and grateful new year.

2007-10-22T07:13:00.000+04:30

YES!!!
After 5 months of building chicken-pens, feeding, chasing chickens out of the vergetable garden, more feeding, building more chicken-pens, feeding, etc...one of the little black hens actually started laying eggs!
She managed to lay these four just in time for our sunday-morning and they tasted absolutely lovely. As it turns out the eggs taste of the food the chicken gets, which in our case would bee a subtle leeky rucola bolognese flavour...with the wine of course. So here's to our laying lady and her two sisters who hopefully follow her example soon!

2007-10-08T07:07:00.000+04:30

Finally!!! After one year in India I finally went to see the Taj Mahal!

It took a friends visit to take the time and go there, and it was worth every minute of it!
My friend Rian came to visit me and as it was her first time in India we tried to experience all sides of India within the week she was here. Luckily she has a very open mind and thinks everything is exciting and intreguing, and that quality is immediately grasped and understood by the Indians...I have never seen so many people that wanted to take a picture with her!

The weekend we took it easy...shopping in Hauz Khas in my favorite shop (Country Collection, always good for something beautiful) and then a South Indian thali for lunch on saturday, and on sunday a walk and lunch in Lodi Garden. Monday we had booked the "Nigel Tour" - Nigel is a 86 year old English gentleman who came to India whilst in the Army and never left. As he puts it he "wanted someone to bring him tea and a newspaper at 7 in the morning", and in India he could have that. Nigel knows everything about Delhi and its (British) history, and took us on a very comprehensive tour through a Sikh temple, a step well in the washerman-quarter, the ghats at the banks of the Yamuna River where bodies of deceased are burned, the old expat neighbourhoods (this is where the Europeans lived around 1900) and the place where Delhi began...King George the 4th announced here in 1911 that Delhi would be the new capital of India, only to have his architect decide one year later that the spot wasn't good because it flooded during the monsoon...there you are. After lunch we visited Old Delhi, with its bazaars and narrow streets, its crowded alleys, its (literally) breathtaking spice market and glittering wedding street. At the end of the day we were exhausted, only to find that Nigel would happily have continued!

Tuesday was Ghandi's birthday and this year we spend it by the pool...the weather was perfect, the water still bearable (winter has started and it is now rapidly cooling down) and everywhere it was quiet...perfect!

And finally wednesday we went to Agra. We took the Shatabti express at 6 in the morning and arrived in Agra at 8...the train ride itself was an experience, with all the food and tea being handed out and Rian eyeing every package with curiosity...and the gentlemen sitting in front of us eyeing her with curiosity....
We were met by a Bollywood star (not really, he works for the travel agent, but he COULD have been a Bollywood star) and taken to our car with our driver for the day, Yugesh. Yugesh (we named him You Guess because we couldn't remember his name otherwise) took us to the Taj...and there we were, at 9 in the morning, with glorious views on the biggest monument for love.
The Taj Mahal is obviously a tourist destination and often these attractions are overpriced and overrated, but in this case it was worth every Rupee...in one word, perfect!
By the time we left the crowds were coming and we became a tourist attraction ourselves (mainly Rian, I must admit)...many people wanted to take our picture (or basically, their picture with us in it posing as their longtime friends from Australia) and this time I let go of my "here we go again" and followed Rian's enthousiasm, and laughed my head of!

Then we went to the Fort, which actually was as beautiful as the Taj. From the Fort you can see the Taj, lying in the distance at the bank of the Yamuna river, like a painting from long lost days. It was in this Fort that Shah Jahan was emprisoned, looking at the grave of his beloved Mumtaz Mahal for 8 years, until he died. Serves him right...rumour has it that he chopped off the hands of the craftsmen who build the Taj so they would never again build something so perfect (and looking at India as it is now, it seems he succeeded...).
Still, the Fort is the most beautiful Fort I have seen since I arrived in India, with the Amber Fort in jaipur coming second.

After lunch we drove to Fatehpur Sigri, the ghost town build by Shah Akbar. The town was deserted soon after his death due to water shortages, and the buildings remain as a testimony of the time...beautiful, quiet, hot...and unfortunately full of "guides" who attach themselves like flies in the desert, pestering tourists with scary stories that they will never be able to understand the town and all it's monument without their help and guidance. fortunately the Lonely Planet had warned us for these guides and the fact that most of what they tell is made up anyway. Still, we didn't see the Jama Masjid and probably part of the buildings due to the guides following us...suddenly, I was fed up completely with the harassing and the constant whining for money, money, money...in India, everybody wants money. From us, that is, because we have "many Rupees". keep on dreaming.

We ended the day with beer and snacks in the Taj palace hotel, end then were taken back to the station by our Bollywood guy, who literally put us on the train, to be met by T and mr. Gill two hours later at Delhi Station. Wow! What a day!

2007-08-27T07:01:00.000+04:30

Busy weeks!
After the initial heavy rains we have had the occasional drips but nothing substantial anymore; I have sown the first seeds -following a new method I have read about, "Square Foot Gardening"- and now I am eagerly awaiting the moment when I can actually transplant the little plants into the garden...
However, the chickens have grown to the point where we dare to let them out in the open (no fear of cats anymore) and as it turns out chickens LOVE everything small and green. They have eaten all the flowers from the pots, all the new little leaves on bushes and have grazed their way through half the spinach in the vegetable garden before we managed to stop them. That means another busy couple of weekends for T, as now we'll need a fence...

But the highlight of the past weeks was the visit of T's children who came over for part of their holidays. It was the first time they came to India, and we were excited to have them! We visited Jaipur which is really beautiful, and worth another visit. They especialy liked the Monkey Temple, which is on a hill overlooking Jaipur, where monkeys gather at sunset. We went with a bag of peanuts and obviously were favourite with the monkeys and an occasional child.
We also loved the Amber fort, which lies at the bottom of a mountain. It is 600 years old and still in a wonderful condition, made of sandstone and marble, featuring beautiful details like rooms with mirror-inlays on the ceiling and beautiful fresco's at the entrance gate. We didn't take a ride on Elephant back though, as the elephants seem to suffer a lot from marching up and down the hill in the hot Rajasthan sun. (We found Rajasthan to be cooler than Delhi though...it is higher and seems to cool considerbaly at night).

Agra, and the Taj Mahal, we unfortunately had to skip as the whole family caught Delhi Belly at some point...we have decided to keep that one in store for a next visit. Instead we went sightseeing in Delhi - the picture was taken at Humayun's Tomb, one of Delhi's most beautiful buildings (and very similar to the Taj Mahal; same layput but different stone).

Now, the kids are back to Holland where school will soon start, and we are back to normal life....trying to shed the xtra accumulated kilo's, building fences for the chickens and looking forward to cooler weather!

2007-06-18T06:54:00.000+04:30

The monsoon has started!

It was predicted to hit Delhi on the 28th of june but it came early, and as the scorching 48ºC has now turned into a delightfully 26ºC, it's a relief!
We have thunderstorms every day now - the sky turns into a very dark grey and when the rumbling starts the winds start as well...then the rain comes, as if the gods are turning buckets full of water upside down. The roads and sewer systems cannot cope and streets (especially the ones downhill) turn into rivers, with stranted tuctuc's standing deserted left and right, the occasional car ploughing through. Thank god we bought a jeep-type car!

Our garden turned into a pool, parts of it at least. There is suddenly so much water that the grounds are satiated...I am sure the vegetables will drown (we still have rucola, fennel, leek and sellery in the garden). Oh well, part of the How-To-Grow-Vegetables-In-India experience. I'm learning every day. It surprises T and me that the Indians haven't build large underground reservoirs for the excess rains, as a reserve for the hot summer when there are water shortages. With the enormous amounts of people, and cheap labour costs, achieving that should not be a big problem.

For now we are busy checking the house for the inevitable leakages, making sure the cats and the chickens are dry and safe, and keeping the generator running as frequently trees will fall onto electricity wires, cutting us off. By the time we are ready for a boat to roam our garden, we'll post another blog!

2007-06-12T13:03:00.000+04:30

So much for the digital highway... I cannot upload pictures from our home as the system -despite claims that it is broadband- will not even upload a 100k file...and now I cannot upload from the embassy either as their system changed and T has his own internet connection now, to which I have no access. So...no more pictures from now on!

2007-06-11T08:41:00.000+04:30

India is HOT!!!

No, not in the sense of booming...India is literally Hot...very very Hot...I don't think I have ever been so Hot in my life! And given the fact that we lived in Sudan on the edge of the Sahara when I was a child, that says something!

Yesterday it was 40ºC in the shade and 48ºC in the sun...even the wind feels hot, scorching, like you are sitting in an oven. Inside we have a permanent temperature of 36ºC and the airco's (of which we can only run two at the time since the wiring of the house will not allow for more) cannot keep up...the coolest we manage to get our bedroom is 22ºC (with the airco set on 17!).

Our clothes feel as if they have just been ironed, the marble -which is everywhere in the house- feels warm and the floor feels as if we have a permanent underfloor heating on, set on "Korean temperature in the winter" (app 34ºC). The water from the coldwater tap is so hot that we cannot use it (my thermometer stops at 42º and it was way beyond that), the water from the boilers -which have now been switched off- have a bearable 36ºC, the outside temperature. My brain has switched off...overheated. I can only sit very quietly, walking to the fridge for a cool drink once in a while, and then returning to my seat in front of the airco. I feel deeply for all those people who live in the streets, with no access to cooling, powercuts of hours in a row and no generator, and sometimes even without access to water! India still has a long way to go before it is truly booming on all levels of society!

Mr. Gill tells me that we can expect this temparature for 40 days, and then the monsoon will come - I am starting to understand why everybody takes their annual leave around this time if they can be missed. Next year, I am planning a vacation to Antartica in June....

2007-05-01T10:23:00.000+04:30

Ok, this is one of those "Indian weeks"....

Bishnu is off with mr. Gill to a hospital because she was bitten by something and is now starting to have a stiff neck, and the stiffness and swollenness are moving up to her head... could be nothing, could be blood poisening. I don't want any of my personnel to drop dead on the job, so off they went.
Jubeda then came telling me that she burned a finger making chapatti's, so I put some rescue cream on the finger and a band-aid...it is like having a big kindergarten at the end of the garden, and if one of them is all, suddenly they all are.

We have had water problems in the weekend (always the weekend), as the floater in the watertank turns out to be broken, so the 2000l tank was empty...and dirty...and it took us 5 trips to the roof to find out what the problem was. Now it is sort of solved (T repaired the floater) and we can shower. A necessity, as it is already 40º C in the shade.

Our second vacuumcleaner starts to break down; to be honest, if I see the amounts of fine dust that clings to its exterior, it is no surprise it cannot handle a house of this size. And it also becomes painfully clear that we too are breathing in this fine dust...I don't even want to think about the health consequences, because that will make me want to move out of here asap.

And the airconditioning in tour bedroom is also starting to shut down in the middle of the night, for no apparant reason. You then have to get up, unplug it (which resets it, I think), plug it in again and switch it on, after which it will work again for a certain period of time. It is the only airco with this problem (and it would HAVE to be in the only room where we really DO want the airco to work), and I don't think the technical guys understand what is happening, as they keep coming up with excuses...a sensor gone crazy, cold nights (in India....haha), electricity fluctuations (and could we get up at 04.00 to check), a printboard gone astray....who knows. Maybe there is a curse on the house, caste by a crazy tenant who could not take the breaking down anymore.

In India, the question is not IF something will break down. The question is WHEN it will breakdown (the weekend, obviously). Also, once it starts breaking down, it will continue to do so. One is forced to get creative and work around the problem until it is solved...I flushed my toilets this weekend with water taken from the pool. As long as we have water there we will at least be able to wash ourselves and flush the toilets...but I must admit that trips to the Netherlands are a badly needed relief once in a while!

2007-04-27T14:05:00.000+04:30

Old Mac Marja had a farm.....

It started with an Easter Brunch at our place for all embassy people that had not left for holidays... about half the people came, with spouses and kids, carrying decorated eggs for our big "Eitje-tik" (=slam-the-egg) contest... we took pictures of everyone carrying their egg (as shown above... need we say more?). Guests came bearing gifts such as chocolate eggs, easter bunnies, bottles of wine, a book called "A sahibs guide to the mali" and.... 6 chicks!
T's collegue of the agricultural department and her husband figuered that on a farm, one needs chickens...so here we were, with six fluffy yellow squeeking balls!
Unfortunately we were about to leave for the netherlands, so T had to devise a cage at the very last minute, and in India, good material is hard ro find, so the maze in the wire used was too big and actually allowed a chick's head to stick out...when we came back from our trip two of the six had been beheaded by passing cat. Bishnu reported that she only found one leg and a lot of feathers....poor things!

By then however, the Chicken-fever had gotten me, in the sense that I was looking forward to fresh eggs, chickens who would eat kitchen leftovers and free manure...I had anticipated starting with app 3 hens (4-5 seemed like the perfect size but that seemed to be out of reach with 6 chicks), but now the chances were that maybe only one of the survivers would be a female, so we needed more chicks!
In India, when one needs chicks one orders them. They are then beeing bred in a big machine and as soon as they hatch you can have them, so there we went, mr. Gill, Bishnu, Chunky, an illy box and I....off to get the new offspring. They sell per 10 (150 rupees for 10) and mr. Gill negotiated two extra for free, so there we were, with a dozen yellow, red and black fluffballs in an illy box. T's challenge is to make a new cage for them this weekend, my challenge is to keep them out of Friend's paws until they can defend themselves (Olly doesn't try to catch them, he just lies there and watches).

Obviously, all but one rooster will have to go eventually (so I hope the cute little black chick that I rescued out of the box -30 grs, I weighed it- is a hen). T thinks they will be ready just in time for Christmas... the grim but realistic downside of being a farmer. Until then however, I will happily put them in and out of their box, for the sheer pleasure of scooping up a little fluffball and brushing it against my face, just to feel how small and soft it is. Beats every stresstherapy I know!

2007-03-16T08:09:00.000+04:30

Beautiful India..Bert and Anita (T's brother and his wife) just toured Rajasthan, taking a 1000 pictures in the process (which we all had to see when they came back...and actually that was a pleasure). They were not very rested, driving 3500 km, but I think they had a great time. I must say the "colourful India" msut have been derived from Rajasthan....the landscape is rather bland with its deserts but the people compensate with their colours.
Amongst other things we now have a great amount of tips on cities, hotels and places to see!
It was great having them over...great guests!

We are now preparing for a little vacation of our own, to Kerala. We wanted to go to a beach where they would have rest and good food, and we were looking at Bali, Thailand or the Maledives, but apart from the prices of tickets (quite high!) also travelling times were not very attractive...to bali we would have to travel for almost 2 days to reach our destination (not very practical when you can only leave for a week). So we finally decided to stay within India - after all we ARE living here - and go down south. We found a hotel in our little book ("Special places to stay") - it is on the beach, fresh seafood prepared in front of your table, ayurvedic massages available and our own little private cottage...what more could we possibly want?

2007-03-09T07:16:00.000+04:30

Jahanpanah, Delhi's fourth city!
(kids in front of the Bijay Mandal, the Begumpur mosque, The Satpula Dam, inside the Kirkhi mosque)

On the 28th of february our group did its tour, starting at the Satpula dam (which used to be part of the Jahanpanah wall). It is quite an intreguing building - what can be seen from the streetside looks like the wall of a bastion, and the seven arches (Satpula = 7 arches) can only be seen from the other side. Behind the dam is a little wildlife sanctuary, unfortunately with a sewer opening up into it...fortunately our tour was not in summer for it would have smelled really bad then. From Satpula dam we walked to Khirki mosque, another hidden treasure. Khirki mosque is one of the two mosques in India that is covered, presumably to shield the faithful from the sun, but in fact dividing the prayer hall in little segments, which is probably why they didn't repeat this way of building.

After Khirki Mosque we went to the Bijay mandal, which is likely to have been the palace of Muhammad bin Tughluq, the sultan who build Jahanpanah. Muhammad was quite a charackter - brilliant, cruel, crazy...he moved Delhi's entire population to what is now Adilabad (three months on foot), only to have most of them die on the way. Those that didn't die perished once arrived as food and water were scarce. Those that refused to go were beheaded...and there are stories that the crippled people, for whom the trip would have been too far, were put in catapults and flung in the direction of Adilabad...Mohammad is said to have died of food poisening in 1351, but we suspect it was poison.

We concluded our tour at the Begumpur mosque, which lies in Begumpuri village (and actually hosted part of the village in the 19th century). Most of the monuments are being restored, and in India that means that you walk amidst the working peopleover rooftops that may crumble beneath you...but it does give you a sense of authenticity.

Kids are everywhere at those places, and the first thing they scream when the see you is "hello, money!". Glad that is clear then...I told them in my best Hindi that my name is not Money but Marja, but I doubt wether they cared...mr. Gill had to walk with us every time we went to study our monuments, to keep the kids away (not in the last place because they all look like they are full of lice, and Kate, my 7cities buddy, had just explained that she got lice from one of those begging kids when she had just arrived in India and it took her MONTHS to get rid of them...just the thought makes my head start itching).
Still, studying the monuments, their history, and the time they were build in (app 1325 - 1351) gives me a sense of how the city developed - all 7 cities tours are chronological so the city literally unfold before your eyes...fascinating! Worth all the work! I am meeting nice people as well, as the total 7 cities group consists of about every nationalit possible. One of my fellow-adventurers is from Korea and made me Kimchi...another is setting up an acupressure class which I am dying to attend and with Kate I go shopping...finaly my social life here starts to take shape!

2007-03-02T15:43:00.000+04:30

Busy week...wednesday we had our 7cities presentation, and that involved a lot of work.

7cities is a program which was initiated by two american ladies, and it deals with the architectural highlights in Delhi's "7 cities" (Delhi was built in 7 stages in 7 different persiods of time, hence the 7 cities of Delhi). The larger group of app. 30 people is devided into smaller groups of 3-4 people, and each group is assigned a city of Delhi and a list of its monuments. The group is then meant to prepare a guided tour, a report and arrange a lunch. It is a great way to learn about the city and to get to know people and places. My group, consisting of Kate, Sue and me, had the fourth city of Delhi, Jahanpanah. More about that in a next blog.

Then I took Friend to the vet; Friend is Olly Kumar's friend, a tiny tabby stray cat, who now and then enters the house to eat Olly's food. About a month ago he started limping, and as he increasingly started to look scruffy and got thinner and thinner, we decided to catch him and take him to the vet. Well, it turned out that Friend lost a toe during battle and had an ulcer underneath his second toe, which caused the limping. As the ulcer wouldn't heal the vet suggested to take the toe off...so Friend was operated (and fixed) and is now living in our poolhouse until he is fully recovered. Mr. Gill likes Friend better than Oly, because he doesn't scream in the car, but I do think they all think it is strange that I would go through so much trouble for a stray cat. Well...if I cannot help the people of India, then I might as well try to help a cat.

Coming weekend it is Holi (the festival when they throw paint) and we are hoping that our personnel will not share the festivities with us by coming round to "decorate" us...we have been advised not to hit the streets as we are likely to become targets of paint-throwing drunken Indians, so we'll have a dinner party in the garden instead. No paint, just booze (that part of Holi we like)!

2007-02-27T07:59:00.000+04:30

New guests have arrived: T's brother and his wife, Bert and Anita.

It is wonderful to have them over; we have had long evenings at the poolside (drinking a LOT of wine!) and wonderful breakfasts, finally enjoying our garden which looks beautiful now. The temperature is great at the moment: cool during the night and app 20-24 degrees Celcius during the day...but soon we will have Holi which apparantly is the start of summer (so we might as well enjoy as long as it lasts).
We went to Old Delhi with Bert and Nita, strolling the little streets where no car can go...which does not stop the honking, by the way, as scooters, motorcycles and riksha's can go into these little streets and they'll squeeze by you (or brush against you if you are unlucky). B & N just bought a new camera and spent most their time taking pictures and then reviewing them, and subsequently T and I spent most our time waiting and making fun of them...but we had a great time nonetheless! Lunch then at Karim's, a very famous and longtime establishment where they serve Mughal food (=Moslim food) and then we walked back to mr. Gill who was waiting at the Red Fort, wondering why the hell we didn't take a riksha as normal tourists do.

B & N are now touring somewhere in Rajastan (with a car and driver arranged by mr. Gill) and will be back in two weeks with more pictures and lots of stories - we couldn't go with them, unfortunately, but they promised to take notes so if we DO have time to take a trip, we'll have their experiences to guide us.

2007-02-20T13:52:00.000+04:30

Did my first bit of driving today and I think I scared the wits out of mr. Gill....obviously they drive on the left side of the road here and that means that the shiftstick and indicator are on the wrong side of the car, and so is the bit sticking out...according to mr. Gill (who was constantly screaming "slower") I went very close past other cars. He does the same thing all the time but apparantly he feels that he does know the width of the car, and I don't (which is probably correct).
The fact that no-one stays in the lane they are supposed to does not help, but still I had fun (and I didn't hit anyone).

I found that the two things that make India difficult are the loss of independence and control - I cannot drive when I want where I want, there is someone in my kitchen putting things back where I can't find them, there is someone cleaning my bedroom at the time I feel like having a nap, there is always someone somewhere in the garden, watching closely what I do...and even if I just sit and read, I feel watched and not very much at ease.
They pick flowers in combinations I don't like and then stuff them in vases that don't match, they pick vegetables I didn't ask for that then rot away in my fridge and they move dust from one place to another with their broom, despite the fact that I must have told them a hundred times to use the vacuumcleaner... this is how old people in a retirement home must feel, when they are wheeled away, wearing what they don't want to wear, meeting whom they don't want to meet, just because the person pushing them thinks it is a good idea to park them at a table. I think I will not want to get old.

So...I go shopping. If there is one thing you can do really well in India, it's shopping - if you like home decorations, clothes and pashminas, that is. So we "ladies" decorate our homes and when we are done we start all over again, just to keep busy...and when we are done shopping we go for lunch, tennis or tea. What a life! (I DO do other things though, but I hope to be able to upload pictures again when I start blogging about those things...more to come!).

2007-02-08T06:48:00.000+04:30

What happened to our internet connections?
Suddenly it is impossible to upload images to the blog, which is a pity as I shot some really beautiful pictures recently. Welcome to IT country India!

Having lived here for half a year now, with a house that is STILL breaking down (now a huge wet spot has developed on the kitchen wall and I don't even want to begin thinking about the consequences....), roads that were supposed to be finished two years ago but will take another two years at least (which is a pain because it would cut our travelling time to the city in half), telephone connections that spontaniously disconnect you at the most inconvenient times and wedding parties being held every evening now (complete with loud music and fireworks...lucky us!) I would have to conclude that despite general belief India is still a developing country with all the problems that go with it.

T and I have given ourselves until summer - if the house is still breaking down then, making it impossible for us to enjoy the garden (the one thing that made us choose a farmhouse over the city) we will move.

On top of it all we have had our first case of theft...money was stolen by one of our personnel. We were warned that it would happen but once it does, it IS a disappointment as I thought we did everything to make people happy and take good care of them. Well, apparantly in India that doesn't work. Probably there is a reason everyone fires personnel for the tiniest mistake and generally treats them like shit...welcome to Incredible India!

2007-01-12T07:50:00.000+04:30

Happy 2007!

We just returned from a wonderful though busy three weeks in Europe...Christmas we spent with our family and for New Years Eve we went to Switzerland to enjoy a week of snow, fresh air, mountainview and "Gipfeli" (croissants...but since our good friend Michael explained what they are made of, I think I just ate my last...).
Obviously the wonderful Christmas dinners took their toll when we tried to squeeze into our ski pants - mine kept popping open whenever I exhaled - so yes, we WILL start dieting now! No more of Bishnu's wonderful chappatti's and curries... salad it is! (Which incidentally happens to grow in our vegetable garden; nothing beats freshly picked salad, so I am hopeful the dieting will not be too much of an ordeal!).

Returning home was a better experience than last time...Bishnu and Jubeda had methiculously cleaned the whole house, put flowers everywhere (EVERYWHERE...every vase I own was used) and turned the heaters on in the living room and the bedroom. Also, no extra people living at the farm, no bills for stuff that was bought (and that I was expected to pay for), and they even took Olly Kumar to the vet when he was ill. So far so good.

Currently it is very cold in Delhi; during the day we have a wonderful 18 degrees celcius, but the nights are freezing cold with a moist and foggy 2-3 degrees. Houses generally do not have a heating system so we can barely manage to reach 14-15 degrees inside when turning on the airco's. T remembers similar conditions from when he was a child...I on the other hand have childhood memories of tropical temperatures so today I will go to Khan market and buy radiators so we can keep at least one room at a comfortable temperature!

Next week our first guests will arrive, Hilde and Ingo + 3 kids, whom we met in Korea. They are being posted back to Germany and decided to hold a stopover of a week in Delhi. As Murphy's law dictates, now is the moment for things to start breaking down...in this case the bathrooms. At the moment, three of the four showers are not working and the fourth barely has enough hot water for one adult...and four out of the five toilets we have will not flush down toilet paper as the sewage system was not installed properly...if this continues, we'll have to take a bath in the (freezing cold!) swimming pool and find some bushes to do the rest in.
Or we could all cuddle up, simply skip washing and do justice to the dutch saying "waar het stinkt is het warm" (where it is smelly it is warm)... It will be a memorable stay for them, that's for sure! I'll ask them to write a blog about their experiences!

For now, we both wish you a happy, healthy, exciting and warm 2007! We'll keep you posted about our exciting life in New Delhi!

2006-12-27T15:08:00.000+04:30

Merry Christmas!
The beautiful image was not made by me but by my Portugese friend, Margarida Oliveira (of Forma Design, Lisbon), but I am borrowing it because it is so beautiful - I hope she doesn't mind!

We have celebrated Christmas in the Netherlands with our family, and are now off to the not-so-snowy mountains of Switzerland, where we will indulge in fresh air, swiss cheese, lots of wine of course and hopefully some snow to go skiing. And yes, we will meet more friends there!

We wish you a fantastic, fascinating, colourful, healthy and happy 2007!
Do join us again in the new year for more adventures in Incredible India!

2006-12-15T10:59:00.000+04:30

Partytime!

Not for us, mind you...but in India, the months of november and december (and february, I am told) are months of weddings and celebrations! A wedding in India is not something to be taken lightly; astrologers are consulted to determine the perfect day for the wedding, bestowing the maximum amount of happyness, luck and good fortune for the couple - and in february there seems to be a day on which the moon and stars are so perfectly aligned that 40.000 weddings are planned for that day!
The average amount of guests attending an Indian wedding (of wealthy Indians, that is) is app. 1000 -1500 people - elephants are involved, as are white horses, a live band or dj, fireworks and the occasional helicopter. In order to fit so many people in an open space, the so called "Partyhouses" were established, where huge gardens accomodate all those that wish to celebrate the occasion.

So a partyhouse is a house with a big garden where party's can be held....like the one we are living in...or the one our neighbours are living in...needless to say that there are a couple of these -illegal, but that need not be a problem- in our proximity! So at the time we are enduring loud music, fireworks and yes, the occasional helicopter. Sometimes we hear Indian music, which is quite nice, but at other times the dj is playing house-music (of which we only hear the drums) or -even worse- the occasional guest takes to singing a hymn, and unfortunately these seem to be the people that really need to take advantage of the situation as normally no-one would let the near a microphone!

We have taken to sleeping with earplugs but especially the singing seems to be unstoppable. We were explained that in India, in order to be convincing, things have to be exaggerated...loud music, loud colours, loud everything. We are now planning a party of our own and as soon as we have found a band that is willing to play Dutch folksongs (smartlappen), on a day where all stars are misaligned and everyone is resting, at a volume enough to cover the Scala, we'll hold it!

2006-12-07T07:21:00.000+04:30

What a week!
Coming back to India after three wonderful weeks in the Netherlands (for me that is, T had a LOT of work) I felt ready for a Christmassy, cuddly time...only to find that the temperature had dropped considerably and our house was cold, big and not cuddly at all! Now I understand why everyone kept saying I would need carpets!
Then the next day the trouble with the personnel started (as everyone predicted it would, but we had hoped in our case things would be different). The father-in-law of our cook turns out to be living in our garden, the kitchen has been used for cooking (and not for us!) and the gardener presented a bill for a blanket and the story that "he is a poor man" so could we please pay it. O yes, and could we also buy a buffalo....and suddenly, 5 years India seemed like a Very Long Time!

Luckily there is a large group of veterans whose shoulder is available for moments like these - they laugh, they tell horror stories of their own and they assure you that after a year all is settled and by then you don't mind about many things any more. Or, as one veteran put it, you pick what to get upset about and you leave the rest. In eight months' time, we'll see.

In order to get over my "what the hell am I doing here" feeling I decided to emerse myself in social engagements, and -amongst other things- joined a "spiritual walking tour" through Old Delhi. The pictures show the shrine of the Sadhus of Bankhandi; here is where the orange and yellow robed holy man meet and can stay as long as they wish. The sadhus walk to Haridwar to collect Ganges water, barefeet with a colourful decorated bamboo stick across one shoulder. They walk from tempel to tempel; some do it only for a year, other leave their families for good. We had to take our shoes off (this is customary at temples and shrines) and walked on our socks trying to avoid the pigeon shit, sadhu spit and wet patches where the floor had just been cleaned (at least we think that is why it was wet)...still, very interesting (I did wash my feet though when coming home).

Old Delhi itself is one bustling, full, colourful, smelly, intreguing and tiring bit. I have not explored it fully yet, but I visited Chandni Chowk, the main street. More to do in the coming months!

2006-11-13T20:48:00.000+04:30

Long time no write...not because there was nothing to tell -never a dull moment in India- but because our Very Fast home internet connection turns out to be Not So Very Fast after all. It is different in business cities like Mumbai or Bangalore, but out here in Pushpanjali the Indian Digital Highway is very much like the regular one: full of obstacles (like pedestrians, ox-drawn carts, riksha's, three wheeled trucks, scooters, cows, monkeys and what have you) so you can move with an average speed of 40 km/h. In short Not So Very Fast.

But I have been busy! In the past month that we now live in our house, there have been two (2!) days on which nothing broke down, was finished, or needed to be taken care of NOW! My personnel is great but their downside is that if they have decided that something needs to be taken care of, it does not seem to occur to them that NOW is maybe not the very best time for me because I am, perhaps, on the phone talking to someone, eating, or even sitting on the toilet...

And in between repairs we have had celebrations for Diwali (the Hindu festival of light for which I had to dig up all Christmas lights and decorate the house in order to keep the bad spirits away) and Eid (the Muslim festival for which my hand was decorated with henna ...no christmas lights involved) and T's first business trip to Dera Dunn which took him and mr. Gill 17 hours (back and forth) over the regular highway.

Now, we are in The Netherlands. T is having lots of meetings and I am having a great time going to stores with real shopping carts, well organised shelves and the opportunity to look at the same thing for as long as I like without someone asking me how many kg or pieces I want! And as it is 10 degrees celcius (as opposed to 30 in Delhi) it is a great opportunity to cool down for a bit! And...no mosquitoes!

2006-10-17T09:39:00.000+04:30

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!

2006-10-11T14:12:00.000+04:30

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?

2006-10-10T15:56:00.000+04:30

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!

2006-09-30T08:50:00.000+04:30

Busy days!
We have been very busy organising everything for the house... waterdispensers, waterbottles (we are using these big 20 liter bottles with filtered and ozonised water), a gasconnection, diesel for the generator (powercuts are still very frequent) etc.
We have also had the washingmachine delivered, in what the Indians call a "tempo" - a little three-wheel truck. That is already quite sophisticated, because the waterdispensers were delivered on a riksha...all the way from delhi to our house, over roads full of potholes, stones, cows, cars, people, bicycles etc. Poor guy.

And then, much sooner than expected, our container arrived! The huge 40 ft container turned out to be half empty, but still we felt very embarrassed when everything was unloaded and carried into outr enormous house...two days ago our cook, Bishnu, also moved in and her belongings wouldn't even fill one of our many bathrooms. Suddenly the big gap between "us" and "them" becomes so obvious again...but India does that to you. Here, so many people have absolutely nothing - but it will take another 50 years before that is changed, I am afraid.

For now we will return to our many many boxes and start unpacking (and in the process we will have to stop our personnel from helping us, because once they start unpacking I fear I will never be able to find my things again!).

2006-09-16T12:03:00.000+04:30

There is a Jewish curse that says: "I wish you a lot of personnel!".
After hiring a driver, a cook, a cleaning lady and three gardeners, I am beginning to understand why personnel is the favourite topic of conversation at expat-gatherings... and yet, I am also experiencing the sense of responsability one has for these people, and the fact that we cannot change the fate of everyone in India, but we can contribute to those families in our care.

The picture above is of the Mali family (Mali = gardener); I do not know their last name, and I am suspecting neither do they, as it turns out they are illiterate and do not know their own age or what the birthdate of their children is.
The Mali's have four children, and one helper mali (far right) who probably is a relative of some kind. They live in the servant quarters behind our house, and have tended the garden for 18 years (!) already. We suspect that their son, Raj, is the only one who has had some education. Currently he is not going to school but learning how to be a mali from his father. Needless to say that we think all kids should go to school and that we will try to achieve that once we moved in.
The Mali's are Muslim's, except for helper mali who is Hindu. This immediately confronts us with the general belief that one's servants should all be either muslim or hindu, but never mixed; christians go with either.

The cook we just hired, Bishnu, will move in soon with her husband and 10 months old kid. Bishnu is from Bhutan, and her husband is from Nepal; they married for love, which is quite an exception in this part of the world. They are now living in two tiny rooms in the city for which they pay 2000 rupees per month (and he makes 4000 rupees, i.e. app. 65 euro's, per month with his job as guard at the embassy). For them, moving with us is an enormous step forward, not only because they will save the rent, but also because she will be trained as a cook.
My criteria for hiring a cook were simple: I needed someone who can speak english and who knows how to cook Indian; I could teach her the rest. Bishnu has never worked as cook before but she knows how to cook Bhutanese, Nepalese, Chinese and Indian - more than enough for me! She is adorable, and so is her husband. Training Bishnu to cook Italian, English, French, Japanese and Korean (which I can do), and training her to speak better english, will increase her value tremendously and will give her a shot at working for other expats once we leave. Bishnu and Harka were raised as Buddhists but converted to Hinduism when thwy came to India.

And there T and I were, picturing our own little soap opera :
The muslims cleaning the toilets and getting the beef as that is something the Hindu's do not do, the Hindu's getting the pork as obviously the Muslim's will not, the (former) Buddhists acting as mediators if the Muslim's and the Hindu's start fighting and us (being of Christian background) getting drunk besides the pool as we cannot cope with all that anymore!
But until the contrary is proved we are going to assume that all will go well and that our little enclave will proof that it IS possible to all live together happily ever after...and it will be nice to celebrate Eid (the Muslim Christmas), Diwali (the Hindu Christmas), and our own good old Christmas. All we need now is a Jewish guard.....

2006-09-07T12:53:00.000+04:30

Life is slowly starting to become normal again.

Construction in the house is still going on; we are not sure what they are still doing there but as our container has not arrived yet it doesn't really matter. In my mind I am figuring out what to put where. The house is much bigger than we originally thought so we'll probably have enough furniture to furnish two rooms... what a wonderful space left to fill with all these beautiful things that can be found around here!
In anticipation of all this space we bought a "Naga table", which is an old indian massage table carved out of one piece of wood. We bought it in a very nice shop in Haus Khaz called Country Collection; they have beautiful things from all around India, old as well as new (made to look old - they are very good at that!). The nice thing is that they can tell you a story about all their items and that they do not try to sell you something new as antique.

We also have a car now, which makes life a lot easier, and a brand new driver to go with it - mr. Gill.
Mr. Gill used to be a taxidriver, and a truck driver before that, so he made a considerable promotion becoming our private driver. He was in fact still a taxi driver when we asked him - the first taxi driver who did not try to cheat us or lure us into doing extra business with him. In India, everything is about money and doing business, and as foreigner you know you will be cheated. This is something you have to get used to, because even if the amounts are small the principle is annoying. Mr. Gill is however watching over us, constantly making sure that we do not pay more than we should. We are lucky to have him.

Our car also has a CD numberplate, which is convenient for it "allows" us to park everywhere - something mr. Gill happily takes advantage of. He is also very happy that we are now allowed to enter the premises of the Hyatt without being checked. All taxi's and regular cars are checked for bombs, but apparantly we diplomats are not the types that blow up things...not literally anyway.

For me, it is still an unmeasurable luxury to have a driver who is waiting for you while you are shopping or having lunch.
I realise that the fact that we are hiring personnel insures them of an income, a place to live and an opportunity to send their kids to school, but the idea of all these people around to serve us...it will take a while before I am used to that, if ever. In the house, we will have three gardeners, a cook, a housekeeper, a guard, and of course mr. Gill...our own little private enterprise! It is not surprising that personnel (and the problems one has with them) is the favourite topic at parties. Well, we'll find out soon enough.....

2006-09-02T11:38:00.000+04:30

Ok, the house is ours! The owner finally agreed to sign - as soon as our stuff arrives we can move in! That is, if repairs are finished by then, because there is still a lot of fixing to do. And in India, so we are told by the other expats, whenever something is repaired something else is broken...we have seen evidence of it already so the question remains how much of the house will still be standing once we are ready to move in.

The garden has partially turned into a swamp, now that heavy reains have been falling on Delhi. We will need to fix that because there have been warnings that Dengue will be heavy in october...no water should be allowed standing for more than 3 days. As T is a mosquito magnet this is defenitely something we will have to watch out for...let's hope that our terrific smelling all-natural mosquito repellent (Al Fresco, bought it online from a very nice lady who developed it in the UK - www.alfresco.uk.com) actually will do what it promises: to repel most insects most of the time. We'll be testing it real soon!

Our car should also arrive any minute now, and then we can take the brandnew car and the brandnew driver to collect the brandnew licence plates at Khan Market, the fancy shopping center where all the expats shop. Khan Market is actually quite interesting and despite appearances almost everything thinkable is sold there. Foreign cheeses, good bread, meat, vegetables, shoes and handbags, clothes, books, interior stuff, freezers, licence plates...you name it, Khan Market has it.
Even the occasional monkey goes 'shopping' there; Khan Market also has several peanut-vendors and the monkeys patiently wait for the vendors to avert their eyes, so they can feast on the peanuts. I think it's funny, but I don't think the vendors will agree with me...

2006-08-20T14:38:00.000+04:30

Still waiting for news about "our" house. Negotiations apparantly are not over yet, but we are not very positive. We shall see...in India, one needs time.

In the meantime I have been busy checking out the shopping areas in Delhi. The city is divided into "Colonies" and each colony has it's own shopping center. Every center has its own specialties, ranging from textiles to computers, antiques, silver, fabrics, or food. Khan market is of course very famous and frequented by diplomats, expats and rich Indians, but my favorite so far is Greater Kailash 1 with its friendly appearance and colourful Fabindia shops. I actually bought an Indian outfit there, consisting of a Salwaar (pants), a Kurta (tunic) and a Dupatta (shawl).

Shopping is quite an experience and I am glad that I am being shown where to go, because the best stuff is in places where no man has gone before, it seems. In India, one has to climb stairs, delve in basements, wiggle through backdoors or enter little seedy streets that look as if there is a mugger around every corner...but then a world of beautiful (though sometimes moldy, as I recently discovered) things opens up. The nicest fabrics, pieces of furniture, books, jewelry and coffeshops can be found in these places, like hidden treasures waiting to be discovered. Actually, it is part of their charm.

In the midst of it all one can find cows lying side by side with motorbikes, monkeys eyeing peanut sellers and birds picking at the remains of...yes, of what? (Do I WANT to know?)
But no shopping for us this weekend because T is down with the flue (we think). Let's hope it will pass quickly...it's the second weekend in a row he is ill and I am starting to become anxious to do so sightseeing, because there is SO much to see here!

2006-08-14T13:25:00.000+04:30

Delhi is on red alert!
There have been threats of terrorist attacks on (or preceeding) Independence Day - the day on which India gained Independence in 1947 - which is on august the 15th.
All government institutions, major markets, airports, trainstations and major hotels are possible targets, and security has increased dramatically.

As we are staying in a hotel that belongs to an American chain, our hotel is taking serious precautions as well. No cars are allowed to stop or park in front of the entrance, all cars are inspected inside out to check for bombs, and guests have to enter via a metal detector. Every time there is a power cut (which happens app. 10 times a day, if not more) it now makes one wonder if this is perhaps more serious than a temporary blackout. I think we will spend our Independence at at the poolside, far away from the building.
This is the first time I have experienced the terrorist threat this close. It is a comfort to see that here everything is treated very seriously, and the staff comes prepared. Still, against a whacko with a bomb hidden underneath his/her cloth, there is not much one can do. All we can do now is cross our fingers and sit it out....

2006-08-14T13:04:00.000+04:30

Our "Indian farmhouse" is a no-go...we just heard that despite our strict wish to ONLY view houses within our budget this one exceeds it by far, and the owner is not willing to go down in price. Right now I could kill the real estate agent, because it means we lost a precious week of house-hunting as we were waiting for the negotiations.
It also became very clear that in India they simply try, no matter what you say.

But that had become clear to me anyway, over the past 2 weeks. Here, everything is about negotiating and doing business. If you don't try, you will most certainly NOT get what you want...if you DO try, who knows.
Taxidrivers do that by asking way too much for the ride. Shopkeepers try to lure you inside to show their merchandise. Waiters can't wait to wait on you and snatch your glass away from you as soon as you finished the last drop...and sometimes even before that, so they can sell you another glass. And even the manager of the beautyshop (where I went on The First Monday T went To Work) actually managed to sell me lots of treatments I didn't ask for...but it did teach me how they do it!

I went for a manicure and pedicure, and sitting there (with someone at my hands and another one at my feet) was inspected by the manager. "Mhhh...you have very dry hair. Shall I give you a scalp massage with oil?" Granted, my hair DID suffer from sun and chlorine and seeing the beautiful shiney Indian hair made me wonder if I could look like that after a scalp massage, so I agreed. But it didn't stop there. "Oh...your muscles are so tight. Maybe I should massage your shoulders as well!". Ok...yes, we had some stressy times and yes, my neck does feel stiff. So ok, a little shouldermassage couldn't hurt. But it didn't stop there either! "Oh, I see now that you have a lot of dead skincells on your face. That makes you look old. You know what, I will give you a facial, ok?" Well, who wants to look old?
In the end I spend 3 hours in a chair, had approximately 20 different things smeared on, rubbed on, peeled off en massaged onto my face, was dying to go to the ladies' room and spent the monthly salary of an Indian waiter on the treatment (at least, that is what I am estimating). It was an experience, but I do not go anywhere near the salon again!

Still, I can't help but like the Indian people. After all, who can blame them for trying? And as soon as I have found the proper response to ward off any business I don't want, I'll try a manicure again. ONLY a manicure....!

2006-08-06T12:57:00.000+04:30

Just went househunting for three days...how frustrating!
Houses in the city are expensive and hard to find, and many of them have been "improved" to meet foreigner's expectations...or so the owners seem to think, because T and I have never seen so many ugly lamps, kichens, bathrooms, ceilings and doors in our lives!
Unfortunately this also means that the authentic character of most houses is lost and what remains leaves us depressed and with an utter disgust for marble...marble! Marble is everywhere!

After looking at "townhouses" - freestanding houses in the city- and appartments we decided to also take a look at the so called "farmhouses", located app. 30 minutes driving outside of the city. These houses are called farmhouses because they are build on what used to be agricultural land. Their name suggests a rural type of dwelling, but nothing could be farther from the truth - the farmhouses we have seen look like little (marble) palaces with huge gardens and a swimming pool.
Still, we have spotted one we like. It is build "Indian style" and was left intact - no bad interior architects here!
We do hope it will fall within our allowed budget (still haven't been able to figure out how much that exactly is) and that it will be approved, because many new families are starting to arrive, and they will all go househunting beginning next week! If we don't find something now or real soon we'll be staying in the hotel for a loooong time...so we are holding our breath...

2006-08-01T21:38:00.000+04:30

On Saturday the 29th of July 2006 my husband T and I moved to New Delhi, India.
T has accepted a job at the Netherlands Royal Embassy, after being professor of Industrial Design in Daejeon, South Korea, where we lived for the past 16 months.

Tagging along with him, out of fear of getting eternally bored if I don't do something useful, I have decided to combine two of my secret wishes (to write and to be more active in the wonderful world of online adventures) and start a blog...for friends and family left behind elsewhere in the world (of course dying to know how we are doing here) and obviously for everyone else who might be interested in whatever it is that I am writing.

As I have never blogged I have no idea what I am doing, but that will simply add to the adventure this whole move is anyway.
India has always been on my list of "countries I definitely will want to visit before I die" and I can only count myself lucky that we are here now - hopefully years before my death so I actually get to enjoy being here.

So...India, here we go!