What's in a Name?

Rod's got a personal assistant at work now. He calls her Sweety. I would take umbrage at this, but her parents call her Sweety too, for that is the name on her birth certificate.

Rod, being a skydiver, is no stranger to friends with unusual names. There's Stumpy and Nutty, for example. Stumpy is his formal name, when you want to address him informally you call him Stumps. I don't think you'd call Nutty Nuts though. Despite the fact that these names fit them to a "T", I imagine their parents used the names Ian and Liz (or Elizabeth) when referring to them.

Then there's Rotti and Rhino. I have no idea what their parents called them.

Back to Sweety and her parents. I hope she was an exceptionally well behaved young girl. Imagine trying to tell her off as a child - "Sweety, go to your room!" It doesn't exactly have the gravitas you're aiming for...

The Craters are Coming...but not quickly

There's good news and bad news. The good news - our crates are in India. The bad news - they’re not with us, and we're not exactly sure where they are. At least they’re in the right country. The main shipment (aka The One with our Household Stuff) is somewhere between Mumbai (where the ship arrived) and Delhi, either on a lorry or a train. Rod had a conversation with the import agency and he wasn't exactly more informed after it. Our paperwork said the estimated date of arrival was 20th September - I know, it's the 25th now. Remember time in India is a flexible concept. Considering this, the maid has always been punctual. She's never been five days late.

The second shipment (aka the One with my Quilting Frame - this is starting to sound like episiodes of Friends, is it not?) is even closer, we think. Because I was not willing (and surprisingly neither was Rod) to give up the master bedroom of our apartment for my quilting machine, I needed a new, smaller frame. Nolting made me one and sent it to me in England so it could come with the main shipment. I'd arranged many shipments in the past, and if you allowed three weeks for the machine to get from door to door you were safe. However we hadn’t factored in the economic downturn reducing the number of ships needed to cross the Atlantic. The table got to the US dock in plenty of time, and there it sat. Eventually our ship was full and it set sail. It made it to England at the end of July, before we left, but after our house was crated up. So I arranged for the table to be re-routed to India. The boat it was on berthed on September 4th. It was put on a train on September 12th. It's now in New Delhi, but we're in the process of collecting the 153 pieces of paper we didn't know we needed to get it out of customs. Nothing happens quickly here (that flexible time concept again), and they sure love paperwork. Carbon paper is readily available. I'm really hopeful one of the crates gets here soon. It would be helpful if it was the main shipment, because that contains the tool box we'll need to put the table together!

Food part two

So what have we been eating in these early weeks? Pasta, obviously. Thalia has overcome her misgivings about eggs so we have fried eggs on toast once a week. Maybe the status of eggs was elevated once she worked out what some of the other offerings could be. I'm overcoming my misgivings about deep fat frying (the health ones AND the burning down the house ones) and presenting the family with a selection of chicken nuggets, vegetable fingers and fries. There's a wide selection of frozen chicken and veg products available, some of them even quite spice free, much to the kids' delight. Not many Indian kitchens have ovens so they're all designed to be deep fried. You can't oven bake them. I tried. And there's Papa John's pizza for our traditional Saturday Night Pizza Night. Unfortunately the television doesn't live up to our usual Saturday Night Pizza Night, unless you count Indian Idol, but that's in Hindi, so we don't.

After a couple of weeks of this I was pining for a meal that contained vegetables. When I mentioned this at the dinner table Thalia she said she wasn't. I was very excited to find a jar of Kikkoman sauce in Spencers because I knew that wasn’t going to be hot. So we had sweet and sour chicken and veg stir fry with the veg from the roadside stall. I've also modified the recipe on the side of a jar of pasta sauce (when have I ever followed a recipe exactly!). After bitching to Julie about the lack of houmous to serve with the nice looking pita bread you get here, because the tomatoes don't deserve this pita bread and lettuce is non-existant, she sent me a link to Delia's recipe. Well I found all the ingredients and made it. As I had absolutely no way to measure any of the ingredients other than a teacup that tapers at the bottom, a soup spoon and a teaspoon it didn't turn out too bad. It looks like houmous. It tastes like not particularly good houmous. Once my scales and measuring cup arrives I feel I will be able to do a much better job! And then I'll buy some more pita bread :-)

I need a cookbook...and some scales...

...and some measuring spoons...a grater...and a casserole dish...

Realistically what I really need is for our crates to arrive. Most of that stuff I packed in them and it would be silly to go and buy them again. Some of the stuff (like the measuring spoons and grater) I know I didn't pack, so I've been keeping an eye out for them. So far my eye has wandered, but not very successfully...

I've been cooking fairly simple meals since we arrived because:

1. I’m having a hard time remembering what stuff I need to buy for meals when every one of the ingredients isn’t obvious on the supermarket shelves.

2. Meals I do remember often contain ingredients I haven't been able to find yet, or implements I haven't got (like the casserole dish Julie gave me for Christmas that's in the crates)

3. The vegetables in the supermarket aren't exactly inspiring. There's lots of gourd (whatever that is!), but the vegetables I recognise don't look like I'd pay money for them. I know Tesco and the other supermarkets have indoctrinated us into only accepting perfect, round, unblemished fruit and vegetables, and that farmers say slightly odd shaped produce with small imperfections in their skin are just as good for us. Well, maybe so, but the fruit and veg in Spencers look mank! All the apples have bruises. The carrots are floppy, and are starting to go soft and squidgy at the top. I haven’t seen a lettuce, or a round, red or unblemished tomato. To think I actually would like a tomato that conforms to all three. Okay, it wouldn’t have to be round if it was a plum tomato, but I'm not aiming that high, you know…

The cauliflowers are particularly disappointing, especially as it's the family's favourite vegetable. I can serve cauliflower and NO ONE complains (well, only if I stint on the cheese sauce)... If you think of a not particularly good head of broccoli, florets not tightly packed, not the freshest so it's a bit floppy. I'd say that's what the cauliflower looks like except it's white, but it's not really that white either. It's the colour of the last bit of cauliflower you didn't use because the head was so large, and put in the crisper drawer to use later, but forgot, and now it's got this black speckledy thing going on. It looks like that, except it's still in the shop awaiting to be sold. In the beauty contest of life it's not going to win any prizes...

There are also roadside stalls which sell fruit and veg. They charge more than the supermarkets, but the produce is fresher. Raju and I stopped at the one next to Hamilton Court, the swishest housing estate in Gurgaon, working on the theory that the best housing estate would have the best quality vegetables. There's no prices on the veg here, the theory being that the more you look like you can pay, the more they charge. That's where Raju comes in handy. I was given a plastic basket and allowed to browse. The cauliflowers looked better, but still not good enough. I took four carrots, a green pepper, a head of garlic and two handfuls of beans. The whole lot was poured into a plastic bag and weighed. The guy added a few more beans to balance the scales and I was charged 40 rupees. The next stall did fruit, so I put two oranges and three apples in my basket. The fruit guy decided I looked like I needed more fruit (or I was a rich, western sucker!) and suggested some grapes. I'd bought Indian grapes once before at the supermarket and they were sour, not even Keir would eat them. These grapes were imported from the US, and were gobstopper big. I asked if they were seedless, and he offered me one to taste. Now no way was I going to taste the grape straight from a roadside stall. I was going to take all my produce home and soak it in a solution of Reverse Osmosis filtered water and Milton for at least half an hour! Having been imported from the States I knew at least the water the grapes had been cultivated with was clean (something you can't take for granted with local produce), but I still wasn't going to assume he'd kept the dust off them with Reverse Osmosis filtered water. I'd seen the bucket he was using. So I decided to take some anyway (see, he was right, I was a sucker). My bill here was 260 rupees, I wonder what it would have been for just the apples and oranges. At least the grapes (after the soaking) aren't sour at all, but they're not seedless either.

Don't judge a book by its cover

I know you shouldn't, but sometimes it's so hard!
I was browsing in one of the many bookshops and spotted a book called "Entry from Backside Only". Naturally this piqued my interest so I picked it up and read the spiel on the back.

'Backsides have a frontal position in Indian-English. In cluttered, crowded alleys there can be seen the notice "Entry from backside", a usage not exactly meant as a come-hither line to gays.'

What does this make you think the book will be about? Those amusing signs you see around the place where the English isn't used in the way we're used to, that raise a smile to your face, or a dry history of the introduction of English to the Indian Subcontinent? You thought a dry history on the introduction of English to the Indian Subcontinent? Doing better than me, then...

This is not to say the book didn't teach me something. 29 languages are spoken by more than a million people in India, 122 by more than 10,000. Even India with its love of paperwork has realised that it cannot translate all its documents into each of these languages (there aren't enough trees), so it needed one language to be the "official" language. But which one? Obviously North India was plumping for Hindi, spoken by 41% of the population, but there was no way that Marathi speakers in Maharashtra would settle for that! No Way! Just last week the papers were reporting on a big brou ha ha when an Bollywood actress allegedly said she would hold her press conferences in Hindi. As Bollywood is in Maharashtra, some people felt she should speak Marathi, and were insulted by her refusal. Her husband, Amitabh Bachanan, the Laurence Olivier of Bollywood, had to apologise as the head of the family for any hurt his wife Jaya had inflicted by her actions.

So English was settled upon as not necessarily the best language for the country, but because it was an import, one that wouldn't elevate certain groups or offend others. While this was a useful fact to know, I didn't really want to read 212 pages just to tell me that. My suggestion to publishers: I won't judge a book by its cover, but please make the cover (and the blurb on the back) a little more representative of the contents!
Rant over.

Monsoon allegedly over

The monsoon is over. It must be true, because John Hammond told me so on the weather forecast on BBC World on September 15th. Unfortunately for him, it's rained every day since...

The monsoon has surprised me. What I'd heard about the monsoon was it rained a lot. Basically pretty much all the time. Well, it doesn't. When it does rain, it really rains, really really rains, but then there will be day after day when nothing falls from the sky at all. No rain, no bird droppings, not even any aircraft, thankfully. Well maybe bird droppings, but I've missed them... It seems Delhi normally gets 260 mm in 11 rainy August days, and 130 mm in 6 rainy September days. But those days are supposed to be before September 15th, and I can assure John Hammond that it's pretty damp out there again today. No amount of John Frieda anti-frizz serum would cut the mustard (because Indians do love those old fashioned British sayings).

Yesterday evening it was raining lightly, and Keir decided he wanted to go out and play for a bit before dinner. I pointed out that it was raining, but he was not deterred. Within five minutes, so much rain was falling that when you looked out the window you didn't see rain, you saw a curtain of water. Then the thunder and lightning started. It was good thunder, because after each clap, you could hear a cheer go up across the estate. It's going to be noisy here when the India/Australia cricket matches take place...

The doorbell rang. I opened the door and on the mat there was a puddle with a very drippy thing in it. It must have been Keir, because it was wearing a British School uniform. Drippy thing went straight into a bath, and I laid his uniform out to dry enough so it could be put in the wash basket.

After dinner, when Rod (I got my socks wet just getting into the car!) had made it home, Keir spoke about his drenching. He stayed out playing when the rain got heavier, but decided to come in once the thunder and lightning started. In a very serious tone he said, "So (Keir cannot start a sentence without the word so), so when the thunder and lightning came I knew I had to come back inside because thunder and lightning can kill people". Having concentrated on one thing (saying the sentence) for as long as that took, he succumbed to his short attention span and ran off, leaving Rod and I pondering just how many people had been killed by thunder. We came to the conclusion it was likely to be a somewhat smaller number than those killed by lightning.

Amusing things...

...spotted around Delhi.

Sign in Palika Bazaar - No Spiting, so don't go there on days you're feeling malicious ill will prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate.

The third red wine on the wine list at Punjabi By Nature - Mouton Cadet Vin Rough. Wonder if it gets many takers?

Painted on the side of a Tata lorry - Pubic Carrier. The L in public isn't actually optional, guys.

A Haryana number plate - HR 01 N 372. I know the convention states that after the HR 01 M numbers comes the HR 01 N numbers, but you'd think someone would have noticed what that looks suspiciously like :-)

Indian Standard (Stretchable) Time

We have a maid. She cleans the house, which is a plus, but she's not very good at turning up on time, which is not a plus, because I have to stay at home until she arrives to let her in. We have an arrangement with Farah, the neighbour across the hall, that she will take our key for the maid if we have to leave home before the maid is due. The maid is supposed to be here at 10 am, which on occasion she is. She's often here five minutes late, although sometimes she is even later. Well yesterday I had booked an appointment at the hairdressers in Galleria to have a head massage and shampoo (500 rupees/6 quid/$13.50 AUD and worth every penny). My appointment was for 10.30. Raju was booked to be here at 10, and at 9.58 phoned up to let me know he was here. 10 o'clock came, and no sign of the maid. 10.10 passed, so did 10.15. The salon's 10 minutes away, and I was really going to need this stress reducing head massage shortly! At 10.20 I locked up, gave the key to Farah and went downstairs. I met the maid in the entrance foyer. She smiles at me and says chabi (key)? I glare at her, point to my non-existant wristwatch and declare "LATE! Dus Pachar! Dus Pachar!" (That's probably spelt incorrectly, and I apologise, however maybe not spelt anywhere near as incorrectly as some of the English I've seen around here). Raju had taught us dus pachar (ten o'clock) the last time the maid kept Rod and I waiting for one of our excursions to the Mini Secretariat.

I got into the car and, pleased with myself, boasted to Raju "I used 'dus pachar', Maid is late."

Raju looks worried. "I am late?" Now Raju's only ever been late once, even though he catches three buses and then walks to get to our place. If Raju was late we would excuse it. The maid has the advantage of not needing to catch the three buses, so her tardiness is a little harder to understand.

No, I explain. You are not late. She is late. And now I am late.

Because next time I want to expand on my Hindi rant, as I fear there will be a next time, I ask what the Hindi word for late is. Raju looks perplexed, and repeats "dus pachar". I take this to mean there is no such word in Hindi for late. It would explain the interesting timekeeping...

This morning I see exactly how successful my Hindi rant had been as the maid turns up at a quarter to eleven. I am again restricted to pointing to the clock (this time an actual one) and repeating dus pachar as the only other timekeeping phrase Raju's taught us is minutes past the hour -dus pudgy car (again, that's not going to be the spelling) tees minutes, which is 10 hour past 30 minutes. Obviously all of us underestimated the maid's ability to be punctual. She smiles at me, shake nods her head in the Indian fashion and replies "late". So much for me thinking she didn't understand me.

As she left this afternoon I again pointed to the clock, repeated "dus pachar" and "no late". If she doesn't get the hang of this arriving when she's supposed to soon we'll have to trade her in for a different model, who hopefully won't be worse!!

Footnote: On Saturday the maid turned up at 9 am. She seemed pleased with herself, pointed to the clock and smiled, as if to say I'm not late today. No Sh*t Sherlock. It was Saturday. No one was dressed. I was still eating breakfast. The only thing that prevented Rod from being asleep in bed was that he was in Amsterdam!

Fernando's such a generous guy

Rod is off in Amsterdam at IBC, so I had the kids to entertain by myself. On Saturday I decided we'd go to the Ambience Mall. It's the largest shopping mall in India (one kilometre of shops on each of three levels), so as you can imagine, Thalia is pleased with this choice. Keir, unusually, is also happy. They have a Bungee Buddies at Ambi Mall, a trampoline and harness contraption, that can bounce you up and down really quite high for two whole stomach churning minutes. I chose the Ambi Mall not for the three kms of shops or the Bungee Buddies but because I'd heard the Renault F1 car would be there, and that we could be photographed with it.

We get there early (for India) just after 11am. There's hardly any body there. We stroll up to the F1 car, and find that while there is a decent crowd gathered there, all but a handful are wearing ING shirts, one of Renault's sponsors and the company who have brought the car to the mall. We wander around it, waiting for someone to ask us what we want. Invariably in India, when you go shopping, a shop assistant will come and stand right beside you and ask you what you want. Sometimes this is helpful, because sometimes you need assistance. Often it is not, because:

1. You are perfectly able to choose products off the shelf in front of you by yourself. I had my hand on a toothbrush in one shop when an assistant came up and said "Madam, can I help you?" "No", I answered. "I'm perfectly capable of choosing my own toothbrush".

2. You would be able to pick your preferred product off the shelf if only there wasn't an assistant standing in your way. Rod's trick here is to wait a moment and then walk into them mock accidentally.

3. If you do ask them where to find a product you cannot see, nine times out of ten they will show you something completely random. I'm all for a little bit left field, but if, for example, you were unable to choose your own toothbrush and asked for assistance, you'd expect to be shown a toothbrush. You'd understand if they also showed you some toothpaste, but might fail to grasp the logic in being shown an apple, or a lawn mower.

Anyway, I digress. Back to waiting for one of the many ING shirt wearing people to ask us what we want. No one does. I have to go up to the man behind the red rope to ask him how we could get our photo taken with the car. I have to fill out a form, yes please, send the photo here, and no thank you, I don't want any of your banking, insurance or asset management advice. We eagerly await the postman, but here's a top view, just like a pit stop but without all the fit men in leather (damn!)

I have an interesting conversation with one of the ING guys.

"This isn't the Renault race car", I say.

"Yes it is", he replies.

"No, it's not this year's race car, is it? That's in Monza. I'm going home this afternoon to watch Qualifying on the telly."

He propped Keir on one of the tyres and Thalia on the other. "This is the Renault race car", he said confidently, as if I was expected to believe Fernando Alonso would allow his car to be sat on in Gurgaon, India, on the same day he was supposed to be qualifying in it for the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, Italy. Maybe he sent Nelson Piquet's car...

we are legal, part two

So, Monday morning dawns, and Rod says to me, what shall we do today? Shall we go to a grubby government building again and see if they deport you and the kids? Of course I answer, absolutely, that sounds like a great experience. Hope you're all reading that with more than a soupcon (where is that cedilla when you need it?) of sarcasm!

Lata is confident. The brown envelope is a good sign. She says it will say the Home Office recommends we get our dependents visas, otherwise they would have given us our paperwork back and asked for even more documents. Lata, Rod and I troop off to the Mini Secretariat. There's quite a queue, but experience has shown Lata the Mini Secretariat guy isn't known for his ability to finish one job at a time. He can be easily distracted, a little like a child (Mummy, what's fornication? Would you like a Mars bar, darling?). She artfully holds the brown envelope covered in seals where it will catch his eye. Like a magpie seeing the sun glint off something shiny, the envelope does the trick and he motions for it to be passed to him. He opens the envelope, reads the contents and hands Lata some forms. We will have to photocopy a double sided sheet and fill it in. Four times for the three of us. There's another double sided sheet, but we only need one copy of each. He begins writing a list of documents he wants us to produce: photocopies of our passports and visas; photocopies of Rod's house lease, Foreigner registration document, employment contract; proof of our address in England; our marriage certificate. Lata tells him we don't have our marriage certificate handy, and Rod pulls our framed wedding photo out of his briefcase. The secretariat guy laughs, and doesn't write down marriage certificate. Secretariat guy must be in a good mood today, or maybe he knows how much it would cost to mock up that photo. But not that much of a good mood, because then he declares we must bring the children with us when we lodge the documents. Lata protests we will have to take them out of school, but like Thatcher, he's not for turning.

So we go back to Rod's office and get to work photocopying. I ask whether it would be acceptable to photocopy the first form three times, fill it in for each of us, and then photocopy that form a further three times. Lata is not sure Secretariat guy will be in a good enough mood tomorrow to accept photocopies of the filled form, so I write the same details out four times for each of us. I did Keir's forms last, so they don't look as neat as mine do. I have cramp in my hand by the end, and could really have done with a drink. I would have even paid 15 times the price of a Bacardi Breezer, because then I'd have the whole bottle of wine. I would have shared it with Rod, of course, because he looked fair ready to kill someone by this stage!

We broke the news that they would have to miss school to the kids. Thalia said oh, and Keir said yippee. We told Keir he'd probably prefer to go to school...

So Tuesday Rod, Lata, Thalia, Keir and I go to the Mini Secretariat. The office we need is not huge, three men "work" in it. It has four chairs for people waiting to be seen. Once a chair becomes available, we put a child in it so Mini Secretariat guy can see we have done as he wished. The kids are in their school uniform, because they look smart, and official, and they've brought a book each to read. People are made to wait for so long it's good to sit, but the Secretariat guy really only seems to take documents from people standing, so Lata and I stand in front of his desk. Rod stands in the doorway. There are another three people waiting to be processed inside the room, there's someone waiting behind Rod. The room is really not big. Secretariat guy takes the forms from Lata, glances at them and puts them on his desk. He flicks through our passports and puts them on his desk. He answers his telephone, he picks up someone else's forms. He picks up our forms again, puts them down again, and goes outside to have a jovial conversation which seems unrelated to our impending deportation. He returns, writes something on our forms, and starts reading someone else's forms. Keir, because he was more focussed on his task, has finished reading his book. This is unfortunate, because we are not done yet. Then Secretariat guy picks up my passport and begins writing in it. This is the first definite proof we have that we will not be deported, and Rod, Lata and I cross our fingers that he doesn't get distracted before he's finished writing in all three passports. The passports are then passed to the guy on his left, who writes up our details in big bound books. I sign the books and he gives me the passports back. At the moment although we can legally stay in the country, there's nothing in the passports to show this, and I can't imagine airport immigration officers being happy to take my word for it. So we continue to wait, clogging up this little room. So far, Secretariat guy has failed to look at the kids, maybe we should have dressed them in something shiny. After he has moved some more papers around on his desk, he asks Lata why we are still here. She tells him we want our passports to show our legal status (it's asking for a lot, I know). He says we have to go downstairs with the big bound books I signed and show them to the Commissioner for Police. Lata asks for the books, the guy on the left picks them up and we all troop downstairs, along with a lady from South Korea who'd been in the office almost as long as we had. We go into a nice, large, airconditioned office and are told to sit. The Commissioner for Police puts down his cigarette, glances at the big bound books and we're told to walk up stairs again. Hopefully this means our passports can be endorsed, and we can be on our way. But our passports are still not shiny enough to attract the magpie. Keir becomes tired, after all, the kids have been sitting really quite quietly for a good few hours now. Rod suggests he stand in front of Secretariat guy's desk, and rest his head on the papers there. Keir is such a well behaved child he does as he is told. Lata tries hard to laugh quietly. This seems to help, and our passports are endorsed. The official cost of these visas is 3,660 rupees each. We hand over 12,000 rupees, Secretariat guy puts the money in his drawer, and gets his wallet out to give us change. We are now waiting for the visa details to be written up in a different big bound book by the guy on Secretariat guy's right. Unfortunately this guy seems to have lost his pen. Rather than look for a new one, he's just sitting there. Lata leans over and says pleasantly, please take my pen, I have a spare. It suits no one here waiting if you do not have one. Rod tries hard to laugh quietly.

So our visas are legal, and tied to Rod's employment visa. Unfortunately that visa expires in five months time, so we will have to go through the whole rigmarole again in February!

We are legal! part one

A big sigh of relief! We are legally allowed to stay in India and we're not going to be deported. I haven't said anything so far because I didn't want to freak my Mother, who has a tendency to get freaked about her only daughter getting chucked out of the country, don't we all. But back to the beginning...

Thalia, Keir and I entered India on tourist visas. There are only three types of visa issued at the Indian High Commission in London: Tourist, Business and Employment. Obviously we weren't coming here on business, and we aren't employed by an Indian company, so we got the best tourist visa we could, a multiple entry, six month tourist visa. We used this to visit in April, when we sorted out the schools etc, and it was still valid for our journey back here to start our new life abroad with Rod. Unfortunately, it was only valid until September 17th. We would need to go to the Mini Secretariat in Gurgaon to request our visas be changed into dependants visas, as we were here accompanying Rod while he is gainfully employed.

Rod and his HR lady, Lata, have more experience than they would like of the Mini Secretariat. It does not matter how many suporting documents you have, even if you brought everything they asked you for the last time, there will be something else you need. Guaranteed. Lata now travels to the Mini Secretariat with blank letterhead, so she can write any official letters required on the spot. Lata may be the only person in the building who can do anything on the spot...

Anyway, back at Rod's office Lata draws up the list of documents we would need to get our visas changed into dependants ones. Passports, check. Current visa, check. Photocopies of both, check. Photocopy of Rod's house lease, Foreigners Registration document, contract of employment, check. Our marriage certificate...umm, not check. As we got married nearly 13 years ago, we haven't really carried it with us for a while. Quite a while. It's in a safe place. Back at Marina Avenue. Lata says, how can we prove you are married? I say, we have two children, I left a comfortable life in England and travelled to India to live with Rod, do you think I'd do that if I wasn't married to him? Hmm, she says, do you have anything more concrete? We have a wedding photo, and wedding rings. I'll even wear mine when I go there, I say.
Lata is unsure the official at the Secretariat will accept our wedding photo as proof that we are married, although she agrees that the Secretariat accepts some pretty dodgy photocopies, and that it would have cost us more to have mocked up this photo. The first day this worry proves futile, as he looks at the passports and sends us off to the Home Affairs Office in Delhi.

Another day, a different office. We go to the Home Affairs Office with all our official documents and our wedding photo. We take a token, and join the queue to receive an entry pass into the building. That pass allows us to join the queue to receive the application forms, which must be filled out in duplicate. We hand the completed forms back and are told to wait for an interview. We wait. When called, the man interviewing us is not concerned we don't have a marriage certificate. He wants to know why we don't have copies of the kids' birth certificates to show him. Obviously we have their birth certificates, in that safe place, yes, back at Marina Avenue. We have their passports, we say, which proves how old they are. Aha, says the man, passports don't prove that they are your children. Of course they're our children, we cry. Why would we bring someone else's children to India! He doesn't seem to think that's as bizarre a suggestion as we do. I counter, they look like me and they have his surname. Surnames are common, he tells us, lots of people have the same surname. Not Fairweather, says Rod, and plays his trump card. The school accepts that we are their parents, and places on the table the kids' acceptance letters from the British School. The man stops, the look on his face softens, and he picks up the papers. He reads, "Dear Mr and Mrs Fairweather. We are pleased to offer your daughter, Thalia, a place..." I'll see what I can do, he says. Come back at 5pm.

We collect the kids from school and go back to the Home Office. We join all the other poor unfortunates and wait. And wait. At 6.30 we are given a brown envelope with six seals on it. We must not open this envelope. We must take it to the Mini Secretariat. So we spend the weekend not knowing if we are going to be deported or not. Hopefully you won't have to wait that long to find out...

A good news progress report

1. I found the post office! Jane, the Mum of one of Thalia's classmates told me where to look. It was tucked away in the back corner of one of our local markets, Galleria. It's not marked on the map... Taxi drivers don't know what you mean when you say Gall-er-i-a, they want to call it Gull-air-reah, which sounds like an intestinal disorder to us...

2. I found BluTack! It was in the stationary shop at Galleria, hiding behind the photocopier. Thalia is really pleased, and Hannah Montana will soon be adorning her walls.

Birthday Boy

On Thursday, Raju, our driver, turned 21. We discovered his upcoming birthday last weekend, when we were all chatting in the car on the way to Palika Bazaar and Thalia asked him when his birthday was. He seemed a little surprised that we were interested, which in turn surprised us a little. When we asked if turning 21 was a big deal in India, like it is in the West, he explained that the high class had big expensive parties and gave gifts, and the low class, like him, didn't. Birthdays in his family were marked by sweets and Coca Cola.

Palika Bazaar is an underground warren of stalls teeming with people desperate to show us why their goods were better than the identical ones on the next stall. We had been warned it was the kind of place we should take Raju in with us, because being western we would be quoted well over the odds, and having Raju with us would get us a better deal. As well as helping suggest the stallholders moderate their prices, Raju tasked himself with holding Keir's hand so we would know where he was at all times. Frankly, that was the more difficult job. Thalia distracted Raju while we chose his present, an English Speaking Skills CD pack. CD 6 is going to be a cracker - it covers conversation about meditation. I imagine only India would feel that topic essential for someone learning a new language.

"So what do you like about meditation?"
"Ummm"
"Sorry was that Ohm?"

We gave him the present on his birthday, and Thalia and Keir sang Happy Birthday to him. He told us later that it was the first birthday present he had ever received, and was so pleased with it he bought each of us a bar of dairy milk.

Tracey Browning's lovely

...but someone in the Indian postal service isn't.

When she discovered I'd upped sticks (again), she emailed me to find out if I could purchase Tim Tams in my new location. Like England, Tim Tams are now widely available in India, in many more variants than I'd ever seen before. So my Tim Tam habit is safe. However, what I always pine for is Shortbread Creams, which she promised to send to me. Importers take note: please bring Shortbread Creams in as well as Tim Tams, I'd buy them, and they wouldn't half melt in the cupboard like the Tim Tams do.

She also promised to send a pack of Bluetac, which we have been unable to find, despite my brilliant description of bluetac - it's blue, like chewing gum, and it's used to stick posters on walls. Honestly, the looks I got, you'd think I was speaking a foreign language! Thalia is desperate to put some posters up on her walls, because this house is really very white...and white walls are something we're not used to.

So this lovely parcel arrives from the lovely Tracey, and some bastard has helped themselves to my biscuits! And they've pinched the Bluetac! At least they've left me the crafty magazine, so they either can't read english or aren't interested in patchwork...

one month down...

Well, we've all survived the first month, with no major illnesses or significant tummy upsets and only two replacement number plates - one lost in a flooded pothole, another came off worse for wear in what Rod described as a minor misunderstanding between Raju and another driver over who had right of way. I believe the other driver won. Replacement number plates are made while you wait on the side of the road, and they cost 100 rupees. The number plate guys are always busy, so I think number plates are made to be slightly disposable...

What I've learnt so far:
1. If you go down to the maintenance office and ask for a plumber because your drains are blocked again and they say they’ll send one up in 15 minutes, don’t expect you’ll see him in 15 minutes. Be surprised when he turns up at midday, two hours later, because he actually turned up on the same day you requested him. And if he fixes the problem on his first visit, be very surprised. I’d say, celebrate and have a drink, but not wine, because that’s expensive. And also, it’s now only early afternoon…

2. Don't expect anything to get fixed the first time. The plumber fixed the drains on his first visit today, but he also fixed the same problem last month. I'll be waiting with bated breath (and probably ankle deep water in the shower) at the beginning of October...

3. A bottle of wine in the cheaper end of the shop costs the same as 15 Bacardi Breezers. If only I wanted to drink Bacardi Breezers as much as I'd like a glass of wine!

4. I believe there is such a thing as an Indian Post Office, but I still haven’t seen one. After much searching on our road map I found the correct symbol, but it might be a typo, because it’s next to a lake, alongside an unmade road. There’s a housing development and a high school within walking distance, but no shops. Maybe I had an unrealistic expectation of where to find one…