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!!!

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 ;)

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!

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!

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!

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....

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...

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....

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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....

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!

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!

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?

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!

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)!