JAMES BROWN, R.I.P.

NITIN SAID:

Today was the first time we have celebrated Christmas in India. This was a new twist, since usually we are the "Indians" doing Christmas in America and not the "Americans" doing Christmas in India. This time around we are spared the super-sized vulgar marketing efforts to stimulate consumption on all mental levels. Instead, It feels like I am more in control of enjoying the holiday at my own discretion, and also without the stigma of being of the wrong faith, etc. Our nanny/maid Felicia is actually Christian, and has the day off. We hit her off with a little something. She left at 8 this morning to go to church and celebrate with her friends. Her absence today makes us appreciate her even more. Naya now is now 2 for 1 - two Christmas' in the U.S. and one in Delhi. I got her a kiddy drum set and an Indian Barbie.



To top off the day, Mitra and I had our first Hindi lesson with my 12 year old niece Ananya's tutor. We asked him to devote 25% of the time to writing and learning the alphabet and 75% to conversation. He mentioned that there's a hybrid slang called Hinglish. I also found out that many of the words I currently use in Hindi are oversimplified Delhi/Punjabi slang that I've absorbed over the years.

On the other hand, although we did not have a tree's worth of sales circulars showing up in our mail each day, we did manage to find a tree that seems to be a tropical-evergeen combo which was well suited to our wish of having the appropriate accoutrement. Santa is really big here, the people who walk in between cars at red lights vending a variety of products such as novels, toys, newspapers, dust cloths, etc. suddenly all seem to have santa hats for sale. Also, In the larger markets there are men walking around dressed in Santa outfits, their faces covered by a plastic mask which looks rather disturbing.



They just seem to be standing around though, not trying to collect money like the Santas in the U.S. who raise funds for The Salvation Army by ringing a bell next to a donation pot or simply trying to direct your attention to a store. As in the cities back in the states however, all this only places more emphasis on the stark contrast of haves and have-nots.

We hosted our first party last night, which doubled as a housewarming/Christmas eve affair. The crowd was about 40% family, 40% Work folks, and 20% who didn't fit either category. We partied with some of the Sesame Street folks the night before, which left me needing to stay in bed a bit late the next morning.



Maybe it's just our fate, but instead of averaging a party every few weeks in DC, we sometimes end up with 3 in a night and at least 2 per weekend here it seems. I think it's just that time of year, I hear things calm down after the winter months. Last week was one of the most auspicious in the year for Hindu marriages, and Delhi allegedly has at least one night in that week where there are over 30,000 weddings happening with the rest of the days not far behind.

AND SHE COUNTERED...

It wasn't terrible and I did NOT miss the onslaught of circulars and commercials and lines at the mall but somehow, Christmas did not feel the same in India. And it shouldn't.

Still, allow me to mush for a few lines about how much I missed my parents and brothers and the weirdly, wacky, tacky gifts under the tree. (A sampling of years past: root beer maker, two rabbits and a waist-high giraffe picked up from a garage sale.) Our opening of gifts was sweetened by Naya's signature: "Ohhh my goooodness. Look at thaaat."

I wonder how Indian emigres to the states survived those first few years without Diwali, Durga Puja, Bihu. At least here, we had the scary Santas patrolling the markets. And nobody says the politically correct "Happy Holidays" here. I got a text message from my cousin wishing me a "Marry Xmas" though and have heard "Happy Christmas" so many times that it almost sounds normal. Oh and I found pumpkin pie and apple pie at the Oberoi. Ken and Carmen's maid also made a wonderful stuffing with walnuts, mushrooms and celery - almost as good as my father's...

ALTOGETHER NOW:

Regardless of where we are, keep in mind how privileged we are to be reading things in this medium, or being able to read for that matter. Have a good one!



by the way, some more pictures are here.

Sadhu Santa

Moving to India was worth it just to give Naya a picture with an Indian Santa today... As I dropped her off at school, he was just applying a white beard over his brown face. Don't worry -- you can still tell he's Indian.

Domestic tranquility

This morning, Nitin asked Felicia to iron some of his shirts. She refused, saying we hadn’t told her that was a part of her responsibilities when we hired her.
Nitin told her to at least find somewhere to get it done. When he told me the story, I got a little peeved – at both of them, to be quite honest. On the one hand, it might be worth keeping Felicia happy since we have quite liked Felicia, her cooking and her general demeanor. On the other, Nitin's request didn't seem terribly unreasonable and we had often asked the same of our nanny in the States.
So when I got home from work and Christmas shopping, I asked Felicia what had happened. She said she feels like she doesn’t have time for such things and that ironing men’s shirts could take up most of her day. “Besides, the dry cleaners does it much better,” she said.
“That’s not the point,” I said in the mixture of Assamese, Hindi and Bengali that has become the secret language Felicia and I share. “You have more than four hours a day when Naya is at school and there are no chores. We have someone else do the floors. And yet another person cleans the toilets. Sometimes, not always, we might need you to iron.”
She looked visibly upset and I felt bad. Way before we landed in India, I had resolved not to bark at the maid, to respect the woman who would perform the household tasks I would not.
“Anyway, how much will they charge the place you found?”
“Two rupees for jeans, 1.5 for shirts, 5 for a sari,” she said. “It’s just down the road. And if I drop it off in the morning, they will deliver it back by afternoon.”
I felt terrible. On an average day, it would be less than a quarter to get our things ironed. And it would make this woman a lot happier. And my husband. And me. Home peace home.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Just make sure you drop it off when Nitin says so.”

Delhi, LA

Who knew there was a town called Delhi in Louisiana?
now you know.

BREAKING NEWS

Naya went/did su-su/shu-shu/urinated/peed in the potty all by herself today. This school thing might just be working! (The potty incidentally is made by Hindware and the perfect size for toddlers.)

Random Thoughts

Here is a new feature I plan to introduce a la Saturday Night Live "Deep Thoughts"

Moving to India is a bit like the first year of marriage. Sometimes you just want to throw your hands up and say: Why the HELL do you do it that way?

Okay I must explain a bit of what I mean. Example: Why do all drivers here send you a "missed call" -- that's to say, let a phone ring once and then hang up -- instead of calling properly to say they have arrived? Why risk losing a Rs. 50 tip over the one rupee that phone call costs you?

Another question: Can some demographer -- preferably Delhi-based -- please explain the system of letters and numbers on houses? Like some houses are in the A1 block, while others are simply A. Some neighborhoods have all the even houses in one area and the odd ones (or the next in a sequence) might be several kilometers away. (Although this is still more progressive than Assam, which seems to lack any system of blocks, numbers and letters. We used to cruise around in auto-rickshaws asking strangers if they knew where {insert pet nicknames for uncles and aunts, from Bubul to Engineer Mama} because my parents never remembered proper names.)

Dance Monkey Dance!

Although we may not see our neighbors back in DC walking by, or the local thug kids who hang out down the block, today I stepped out on the balcony when I heard some percussion, sort of like the ice cream man coming by, only it's the local monkey dance man. He walks through the hood with his trusty monkeys, always happy to stop and give you a show. I must say this topped off Naya's first day of school quite well.

Hair vs. Ketchup

When in Delhi, visit a place called INA Market to get a sense of where things are going and haven't gone yet. Here I can get most of the popular American brands of things I may or may not want, including life size dancing Santa robots and super fake looking Christmas trees. Enter further in, past the shops along the main road and you're in a labyrinth of lanes filled with shops with cloth, shoes, plastic wares, drugstore items, live butchers, flowers, fruit, blankets, cows, you name it they will have it here somewhere. As a reminder of how disproportional the cost ratio is in India of human capital to manufactured goods, I find a place in this maze to get a haircut so I can look a bit more presentable for the family soirees coming over the next few days, while Mitra haggles over an ironing board. A boy who's maybe 16 gives me a haircut entirely with scissors, which takes about 4 times longer and a lot more effort than the guys back home who generally whip out some clippers, shear me, and clean up the stragglers with their scissors. This is followed by a head massage involving the kid interlocking his fingers to make a big fist and wacking me all over my head and the back of my neck creating a loud popping sound of all his knuckles breaking at once which pleasantly echoes in my skull. I pay the 15 rupee fee (approx. 35 cents) and join back with crew where Naya is trying to pry open a soy milk drink box (thinking it's juice no doubt) and we debate about buying a bottle of Heinz ketchup or the Indian brand, Maggi. Oddly, Maggi is a few rupees more, coming in at 53. *Note for people still in DC: the cheapest haircut I could get in DC was in my neighborhood in Brookland at the beauty institute near the metro station. It was 5 dollars (223 rupees) includes no skull massage, but does come with a whole room of barbers in training gathered around you after the instructor calls them over to see an example of cutting caucasian hair.

False Start

Today is Naya's first day of school at a place called Little Pearls. We spent a couple of hours there yesterday, which we thought would be her first day, but this past Monday was a holiday since they had a big sports day event on Sunday.
That was funny, given the drill of getting up early, packing all her stuff, picking out her clothes, generally scrambling. We were video taping in the car all the way there, even as she entered the school - then we walk into a silent lobby where a woman tells us all the student are home today. Hee-larious. Still, Naya got a great personal tour and seemed to love it all- from the bouncy room filled with balls to the live animals, separate rooms for art and music, murals all over the walls, plus lots of things to climb on, over and through. I would have loved to have a pre-school like this, who knows, maybe I did and that's why I became an artist? My parents joined us as well, since we've all been having a sleep over at our place for the last couple of nights between the barrage of parties we've all been attending for about four days straight. It kicked off with a wedding reception for my cousin Madhur at the Indian Air Force grounds (see video clip above) and wrapped up with a housewarming/bar christening at my cousin Gaurav's. No wonder I keep waking up in the middle of the night to drink mineral water.

Playschool daze

Naya starts school tomorrow, which regardless of what country we are in is a pretty big deal. And preschool admissions here makes New York City and Washington yuppy mommas' scrambles look like a breeze. Everyone told me we would have a hard time getting a "seat," as it is called. I had made a few calls and kept being told that applications don't start until January for April or September admissions. That list consisted of all the A-list preschools of New Delhi -- Step by Step in Panscheel, Magic Years in Vasant Vihar and a few others.

On Friday, on my way to work, I decided to stop in at the two near us in Safdarjung Enclave. Green Fields Nursery and La Montessori -- less than five minutes away by car. I wishfully mistook the first -- with its bright slides and neatly uniformed children singing songs -- for the latter. A guard instead directed me to La Montessori, which told me they were still accepting children but wouldn't let me look around. I said I would not enroll my child in a school I could not see. The principal finally relented and drew back the curtain on the pre-nursery. At least forty uniformed children sat in desks with one woman looking over their notebooks. "Just one teacher?" I asked. "The other teacher has gone on chuti," I was told.

I walked back to Green Fields and asked to see the principal. Very kindly she met with me but when I told her Naya's age, she laughed and said I was starting too early. "Come back next year."

All my attempts to call Magic Years had been unsuccessful so I thought an in-person visit might help move things along. Long before we knew we were moving to India, I had been set on a Montessori approach. Both because of its child-initiated focus and focus on cleaning (which I could have definitely used in those formative years). But when we pulled up, I wasn't sure I was at a fortress or a playschool. I won't say much more but after 10 minutes of passing notes through iron bars to the guard to give to the principal, I decided the school might not fit our family's ways.

Remembering our landlords had sent their children to "Little Pearl" or somesuch and equipped with a Reliance card enabling my laptop to be online whenever, wherever, I googled to find the school just a few blocks over. We pulled up to a brightly colored building, although I was skeptical when I saw a few guards. But they simply asked me to sign in and ushered me inside, where an admissions director was more than happy to meet with me. One tour, two rabbits, three birds, two hamsters and countless wooden toys, easels and books later, I put down a deposit for Naya's first school experience. The next morning, Felicia and I went to pick out a tiffin and two flasks to put in Naya's knapsack that dubbed her a "Little Pearl."

1 in 14 million

I drop Mitra off at work the other day with our sadarji taxi driver, Charanjit.
I'm riding shotgun and Naya is still in the back where she was asleep with Mitra until Mitra got out at Kasturba Gandhi Marg. I decide to join Naya in the back since child safety borders on obsolete - most cars don't have a rear seat belt which makes the car seat kind of useless, so we resort to holding her closely as we cruise Delhi. So as I'm getting out at this red light, I hear a voice calling my name from the auto-rickshaw behind me. It's Ken, our friend from DC who we've been trying to get in touch with since we got here 3 weeks ago. The chances of this happening to you in Delhi? 1 in 14 million. Not a small town. He's been in India for over a year. We briefly exchange greetings as the light turns green and the cars honking at me becomes deafening. Our vehicles keep passing each other, and I yell to follow us, but we lose each other eventually. We end up at Ken and his wife Carmen's place for dinner the next night sampling some Indian wine as well. Kindly they lend us plates, cutlery and a gas stove to survive in our new rental flat.

Here's a post, nerd

Consider this Gmail chat transcript:

Rahul: NERD!
me: big nerd
Rahul: what u r doing
good job updating ur blog
me: shut up nerd
Sent at 10:58 PM on Wednesday

So this goes out to Rahul, who - like many of you - has had many questions of what we have been doing, how work is going, where we are living, what it looks like, how our maid is working out, whether Naya is feeling any better.

First, some context: We have spent the last few days discovering what it means to rent an unfurnished apartment in New Delhi: No gas cylinder, no washer, no drier, no curtains, no ACs, no stove, no oven. And we have also fallen victim to what everyone who has moved here or anywhere else overseas warned us of: a delayed shipment of our household goods. Somehow, Dec. 5 has become Dec. 27 has become sometime in '07. So between the former and latter, some serious shopping has been in order.

Perhaps that is all we ever write about here but to move is to shop so here we go...

Prices in India are uneven. I was expecting higher prices on electronics and appliances (hence, our multiple trips to Sam & Raj) but we were pleasantly surprised to bargain the salesman down to Rs. 57,000 -- for a Samsung refrigerator, LG washer, Samsung microwave, Samsung television, Hoover vacuum and a Philips mixer grinder juicer (known by my Assamese aunts as a 'mixie' not to be confused with their nightgowns, which are 'maxies') . That's just over $1,200.

What is not cheap is the unexpected. You know all those dollar stores, where you can rack up little garbage cans for the bathroom and toilet bowl cleaners and bins of cheap, imitation Tupperware? Well, I have just returned from INA market (just five minutes from our house) and spent much more than I wanted to -- like Rs. 75 each for toilet bowl brushes. Toilet paper - four rolls for Rs. 200 -- almost $5 - seems ridiculous. But I guess shopkeepers know their target market. I would guess a very very very slim minority of Indians use toilet paper.

We also bought some secondhand furniture - through this site from a nice family in Noida. Finally, we got a lot of stuff made in Kirti Nagar, a section of Delhi boasting at least 75 furniture shops. We liked the styles of Furniture Cottage, buying a king-size bed for about Rs. 25,000 - around $550 - that looks just like my old one that I got off eBay. (Since this posting is in honor of Rahul, I give props to him, Shaan Akbar, Krishan Patel and Yishen Gu for not just helping me move it from Brooklyn to Queens five years ago but surviving through the one and only time I have ever driven a truck.) We also bought a sofa-cum-bed, which is really like a cool futonwhere the mattress is kept in a sliding box under the cushion, for Rs. 7,000 -- about $150. And finally, we ordered a drawing room (no, not the room where Nitin will do his thang) set for about Rs. 30,000 -- $650 - for two loveseats and a proper three-seat couch. Nitin wanted modern, I wanted ethnic but practical and durable for a child -- so we settled on a contemporary cut with a Thai-looking leather and a maroon-tinted cloth pattern underneath it.

After the shopping in Kirti Nagar, we rushed to an agency in Kotla Mubarakpur -- an area just a stone's throw from tony South Extension, with its galleries, shops and neon lights, but definitely a reminder of how some Delhi-ites are still living pre-India Inc. Naya loved it because there were cows and goats and children everywhere. Our car jammed bylanes many times because it was not clear where the bazaar ended and the road began. When we reached our destination -- a second-floor servant placement office overlooking an alley that smelled of urine, sweat, cow and other mammals' dung -- and met Sylvester, the fast-talking owner, we were skeptical. Then he introduced Felicia, who was quiet but neat and well-dressed and said she had worked for a family that had just moved to Malaysia. Nitin looked and me and said she seemed homely. (That's a good thing here.) I said she seemed honest and hard-working. Only time will tell (she is sleeping in the next room as I type) but when we asked Sylvester what her wage is, it became very apparent what remains cheap, almost too cheap, in India still: human capital. We will pay Felicia $67 per month. Her contract says she is to work from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. and gets off two days per month...

I wanna go home, Mommy.

Every now and then, between the house-hunting, furniture-shopping, relative-visiting, Naya will get into a funk and say such a thing. I assure her that we're on our way, referring to the guest house we have been putting up in for the last week.
But the true answer is a little more complex and I think my baby knows that. She knows something is up and whereas Nitin and I have words and lists and a million to-dos, her pain is purer and confusing. Two days ago, she told me she wanted to go to story hour. On the days Nitin takes her to the park, she talks about it the whole day long and gleefully laughs and screams as she recounts the slide the ladder the swings jula jula. At least that much is familiar across borders.
We've been thinking about homes in the tangible sense quite a bit over the last few days -- and Nitin already wrote about the place we plan to call home for the indefinite future. But how to explain away the puzzlement of innocent Indians who ask: "Why did you come back?"
Generally, gently, we try to explain that this journey has not been a coming "back" for us, that our birthplaces are in the U.S. and that we wanted to see what it was like to live in the land of our parents' birth. That we wanted to see if we could make a home here.
For the last few weeks, Naya has been sleeping tucked between us - just as she did when she was first born. I grew up doing the same (although I was never allowed to tell my teachers because my parents feared social services would deem it abnormal). Inspired by a boyhood tale my father told us, I keep telling Naya the story of a puppy separated from its mother and how it found it way home, how a baby's home is with her mother.
A few nights this week, Naya has woken up at 5 a.m. screaming and crying and is unsoothable - not milk, not songs, not stories, not Mommy, not even Elmo.
I wish I could tell her that the confusion over where home lies will end soon. Maybe when she sees her kitchen set and toy Jeep and books in three (!) weeks when our shipment comes, she will understand that we have moved and that home is a different place now. Or perhaps, as we have in our adult years, she will keep fielding the question of just where home is, and that alone will force her to keep looking for it.