Mr Morgan knew Best

A long time ago, back in the early 1980's, I had a maths teacher called Mr Morgan. He used to stand in front of the whole class and tell us to pay attention, because one day we'd need to know what he was going to teach us. I didn't know at the time how clever Mr Morgan was. How he knew that one day I would end up living in India where unscrupulous shop keepers would try to add extra charges to my bills, at a time when I didn't even know I'd go off to live in Britain for 17 years first, I'll never know...

One of the things I really like about India is MRP. MRP is Maximum Retail Price, and it's printed on every item manufactured in India. It's generally printed very small, so you have to go off and look for it in decent light, but it's always there. And as a legal requirement, items imported into India have a label stuck on them, showing the MRP. MRP is good, because everyone who wants to buy a product knows exactly what it costs. It stops the "white tax", as my friend Mary calls it, being added to your shopping just because you're not Indian. The "white tax" is much more prevalent in Hauz Khas than it was in Gurgaon. I'm not sure why, maybe it's because we're so much more foreign in Hauz Khas than we were in Gurgaon, where there is a large expatriate community. Trust me, the Fairweather family is actually no more foreign than we've ever been!

There's an "English Wine and Beer" shop in the local market, which by the way stocks no English wine or beer. It's full of spirits I've never seen before, some beers I've never heard of, and a small range of Indian wines, including a rather drinkable Indian Rose. This rose has a MRP of 420 rupees a bottle, which makes it one of the cheapest wines we've found here that doesn't make you regret drinking it later. Well, not the first bottle... Anyway, we've been in three or four times now to buy a bottle or two. I have no idea what he charged us per bottle the first time, but it wasn't the same as he charged us the second. Now when I'm in the shop handing my money over I'm sober, I notice things like that. So I had a good look at the bottle when I came home, and found the MRP. Never again was the wine shop guy going to get his "white tax" from me. The third time I went shopping I took Raju with me, so he could carry all my purchases. I put two bottles of Rose on the counter. Wine shop guy got out his calculator and did his sum. 940 rupees. I turned to Raju and said, very loudly, he's wrong Raju, it's 840 rupees. See, the price is here on the bottle! 420 add 420 is 840! Amazingly, the wine shop guy agreed he'd done his sum wrong, even while using a calculator, and accepted 840 rupees. Thank you, Mr Morgan. You're right, mental maths is important!

And it's not just wine shop guy. Thalia and I were shopping at a stall the other day and she wanted to buy some hair slides. I was after a loaf of bread. One stall had them both. The hair slides were 10 rupees a pair, she wanted three pairs: black, blue and purple (or kala, neela and jamuni if you like the Hindi). My bread had an MRP of 12 rupees, but the man in the stall thought I should be paying 22 rupees. He declared I owed 52 rupees. I turned the loaf around to show the man the MRP, proclaiming loudly that the bread cost 12 rupees, and 12 plus 10 plus 10 plus 10 did not add up to 52, but 42. Mr Morgan would have been so proud...

Hold the Front Page!

On Friday, something truly momentous happened in the Fairweather family household. Something so strange, so unheard of, that Rod and I were caught completely off guard. We've asked around, and no one we know has ever heard of it happening in India before either. Workmen turned up early. I know, I should have asked you all to sit down first. Sorry about that.

You see, when we rented this flat there was no airconditioner in the main living room. That wasn't a problem, we arranged to buy one second hand off an online group for expatriates living in Gurgaon. Which was great, until the lady heading back to Austria decided to sell it to her landlord instead three weeks later. Bitch. So we needed to buy a second hand airconditioner. Needless to say, when it's pushing 40 degrees outside, there's not too many good second hand AC's floating around. So we call AC rental places and get the prices of different AC's. We decide, even though it's the most expensive, we want a split AC, because it will be quieter, and a 2 ton one, because the room is quite big, and we don't want to be hot anymore. Ever. The AC guy says he can install it at 3pm on Thursday. It's Wednesday, so that's not too bad. Our hopes are raised at 2.20pm on Thursday, when he calls to say he'll be at our place between 3 and 3.30. And he does turn up at that time, but he does not bring a 2 ton split AC with him. He has a 2 ton window AC. It'll be cheaper, but it'll be loud. I imagine my longarm stitching away, with the AC on, while someone tries to watch the telly. The TV volume is going to have to be so high eardrums will burst. There might even be blood. As all longarmers know, it's poor form to bleed on a customer's quilt, so we reluctantly send him away and tell him to bring a split AC instead. This takes great willpower, because it's 40 degrees outside. He says he will return at 10.30-11 the following day. Rod and I know what that means (11.30 if you're lucky, and never on a Sunday).

So when I woke up Friday morning at 9.15 (our bedroom in the new house is at the back and doesn't get any direct sunlight. It's impossible to tell what the time is when the curtains are closed. There's barely a discernable difference between 1am and 9am!) I put a load of washing on and sat down to read yesterday's paper over breakfast in my nightie. The paper guy still hasn't grasped the concept of morning delivery. And I have no idea who is delivering the paper. I have to wait until he comes for money to explain morning to him. Rod got up about 20 minutes later, and peered out Thalia's window to see if today's paper had arrived yet. Imagine his surprise when he saw two men unloading a 2 ton split AC out the front of our place. It wasn't even 9.45 yet. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief - this isn't how it works. We hurriedly got dressed so we could pretend we hadn't been caught out. Who knows, these AC guys could have been trying to catch the goras (white people) out...and we weren't going to give them the satisfaction of finding out they had!

Hot Hot Hot

Oh My God, it's freaking hot in this country! You know it's all getting to you when you describe a 40C (104F) day as being "better than yesterday". It's not supposed to be this hot yet, it's not May. I should be floating around in 36C (97F) temperatures, glowing like ladies do. Instead I'm slumped in a heat induced stupor, sweating like a horse! How did I let myself be talked into moving to such a hot place? Diamonds weren't even mentioned as tools of bribery...

But on a positive note, the bath has moved from its original position (upright, next to the front door) into our bathroom. Considering the neighbours like to ring our doorbell in the evenings to ask us if we've settled in all right, this is a much more preferable place to bathe. And I've even learned how to take the plug out at the end of my bath and not flood the whole bathroom floor. When Rod asked the installer if the bath waste went straight down into the existing shower waste outlet and the man said "Yes", what he should have said was "Yes, and also under the bath panel into the existing shower tray, and eventually out the top end of the bath, along the wall, and then across the floor all over your bath mat, if you're lucky". I'm sure he would have said that if only his English was better. Thankfully I was only lucky once.

Good News Day

Good News 1: We met our new maid today. Her name is Santoss (I'd say forgive me, the spelling's probably wrong, but she doesn't speak any English so she isn't going to be able to read it) and she starts tomorrow at 11. She works part time for the lady upstairs, Mrs Mehra, so she should be reliable. She looked not a day over 23 but she must be, as she has three children, aged 9, 10 and 12. I'd heard they marry young in the villages...

Good News 2: My bath arrived today. It was supposed to be here two days ago, so I was extremely pleased to see it delivered. A little less pleased when I found out I had to wait for someone to come and assemble it tomorrow afternoon. Imagine getting an IKEA delivery where there weren't any instructions, not even picture ones with no words. That is my bath with frame, with a small collection of assorted bolts and stuff. We don't know if we have all the right bits, let alone where they go. We've left it standing outside the kitchen, which is ultimately not where I want my bath to be.

But the bath is here, and the maid starts tomorrow, and the RO machine works and we have unlimited drinking water. Life's good!

Paper, Sir?

While we were moving all our boxes in to Hauz Khas last Friday evening, a man (I'm assuming he was the local newsagent) came up and asked us if we would like papers delivered. Brilliant move, I thought, because it saved me going down to the high street and finding the newsagent who delivered papers. But...(you all knew there would be a but, didn't you :-)), I assumed the papers would be delivered so I could read them at breakfast time. I understand many Indians have a much slower start to the day than Brits, who in turn tend to have a slower start to the day than Americans. Most shops here don't open before 11am, and many don't close until 9 at night. Maybe Indians like reading their papers later in the day, but if I don't read it with my breakfast cup of tea, I might not get to it at all. I know it's only been five days, but so far the paper hasn't turned up before 10.30am. It's just too late. Yesterday the paper did turn up at 6.30, but that was 6.30 in the evening...

H2O

Moving house has pointed out to me one thing all of us in the developed world take for granted. Safe drinking water. When you can just turn on a tap and drink what comes out without it giving you, at best, an upset stomach and at worst, cholera, you don't really think about how much water you use. Not just for drinking, but for washing fruit and vegetables, and cooking too. At the old flat we installed a reverse osmosis (RO) machine, which double filtered the water (activated carbon and UV light). This is brilliant, but we're still waiting for the filter guy to turn up to install it here. We were sure we had an appointment for 3pm this afternoon, but no one turned up. Rod phoned to make sure someone would come today, and was told we could have an appointment tomorrow for 12 in the morning (personally I think 12 is the afternoon. Frankly, the filter guy is so unlikely to turn up at 12, it will be the afternoon, even for Indians...) Anyway, while we are waiting for the RO machine to be connected, we are using bottled water. No sooner have we cleared the flat of the cardboard box mountain, of the protective newspaper mountain, now we are floundering in the empty 1 litre plastic bottle mountain. Like a volcanic island peeping out of the ocean, it is growing day by day. It feels wrong to throw them out, because I know the maids sell them to make a little extra money. But we haven't got a maid in Hauz Khas yet, so I have no one to give the bottles to. I really want to rectify both these problems (too many bottles, having to do all the housework myself) really soon! Both are bad!!

Moving On Up

For a while I was stuck underneath the cardboard mountain of boxes that Caravan Packers and Movers transformed A151, our Gurgaon apartment, into. Then in our new Hauz Khas apartment I was buried underneath every newspaper I'd read in the past month. Caravan Packers and Movers seem to be of the belief that if wrapping a glass in a sheet of newspaper will keep it safe, wrapping it in six sheets will keep it really safe. Unwrapping all those really safe glasses and half used bottles of condiments made my hands ache for two days! This afternoon the last big puzzle piece fell into place, when Airtel came and gave us a landline and broadband internet connection. So now I can blog again, and email again, and receive spam again... Joy!

For a while things were a little touch and go with the new flat, we weren't sure if we would be able to move in as planned. We had a “final, pre-moving check” last Sunday evening, five days before we took possession, and found there was still a lot of work to do. And before you think we’re fussy bastards, all we asked for was the electrical sockets to be screwed into the walls, for curtain poles to be fixed above the windows, the tatty furniture inside the apartment to be removed and for the house to have an industrial clean. We opened one of the bedroom cupboards and found a stockpile of plastic department store bags, an entire double shelf, neatly folded and stacked. Maybe the previous occupant had OCD - not one with a cleanliness angle - I’ve seen the ceiling fans. The landlord’s son (obviously a layabout in his 20’s whose Dad is trying to make work for his keep) said the reason the place wasn’t ready was that the painter hadn’t turned up today. I didn’t know painters did electrical work, fixed curtain poles and chucked stuff on the Indian version of a skip? And what was the painter doing on the previous 10 days? We understood, because layabout son told us so, that the cleaner couldn’t come until the painter had been. Like, obviously…

On Thursday morning, while I supervised eight hard working but unfortunately unattractive men turn A151 from a home to a giant pile of boxes, Rod went to view the new flat with the landlord. Unfortunately for the landlord, not much progress had been made since Sunday, and Rod admits he may have yelled a bit. Quite a bit. The painter had been and there was one youth cleaning the place with a cloth but no cleaning products - less industrial clean, more rearranging the dirt. The plastic bag collection and old sofas were still in place. The landlord told Rod not to worry, the flat would be ready by eight that evening. Rod told the landlord like Arnie, he'd be back...

On his return back to Hauz Khas after dinner, Rod the sceptic took the full cleaning kit: a large bucket, a scrubbing brush, cream cleanser, disinfectant. He's not sure what they fed the youth doing the cleaning, because he'd actually cleaned the whole place. Not well, of course, but it was a start. Rod showed him how to use cream cleanser to clean all the dusty grease from the light switch plates, and how to clean the inside of cupboards. The kid looked surprised. A white man is a man of status, and men of status don't clean, they get their minions to do it for them. Rod was happy for the landlord's minion to do it, but only if it was done to Rod's standards! Between them the place was clean enough to move into the following day. Which was a good thing, because we didn't have anything to sit on at A151 that wasn't covered in bubble wrap or cardboard!

Simple somethings...are sometimes hard

We're moving into a new apartment tomorrow, in New Delhi proper. So the last few days we've spent sorting and packing up our stuff. On Tuesday, Rod and I dismantled my quilting frame. It's not a job we enjoy doing, but we've built and rebuilt frames so many times over the last six and a half years we're getting quite good at it. What is a little more difficult here in India, is that a lot of useful things we would normally have lying around our home back in England we haven't necessarily accumulated yet, for one reason or another, in India. Unfortunately as a consequence of dismantling my table we discovered one of those missing useful things...

Rod wanted to bundle together the hydraulic legs for the table and tie them to the underside of the frame, so they wouldn't get damaged in the move. He asks me where we keep the string. Unfortunately the last ball of string I remember seeing was in my kitchen drawer, the one above the bin, at 77 Marina Avenue, about eight months ago. It might even still be there, because it's a damn fine place to keep a ball of string, but it's not exactly helpful to us here in India. So I decide to do the good wife thing, and go out and buy some string. How hard can it be to buy string in Gurgaon?, I think. Well considering it's Tuesday, the answer is very hard indeed.

See, for some strange reason, most shops in Gurgaon close on a Tuesday. Something to do with them opening Sunday, I think. But food shops are open, and wine shops are open (hurrah!) and so are newsagents and stationery shops. So Ragu and I head off to Needs supermarket, because they have a large household department, and I'm sure they have string there.

They don't. They say try Spencers Express, in the same shopping complex. They don't either, but they know a shop that does. It's on the next floor up, but it's not open today because it's Tuesday. So Ragu and I head off to Galleria. I try in the Stationery Shop. After all, a shop that sells pencils, erasers, rubber bands etc in Britain would probably sell string. This isn't Britain, Toto, and the shop has no string. The assistant tells me: "String is a speciality product, Ma'am and I need to go to the market to buy it. But market is not open. It is Tuesday". So I try the newsagents. They proudly hand me a packet of Scooby Doo Strings, the thin, multicoloured plastic strings that were all the rage to make small macrame-like twists a couple of years back. I'm starting to think, if I want string today, on Tuesday (which is obviously so unreasonable of me) I'm going to have to be prepared to think outside the box... Worst case scenario, Rod laughs at the Scooby Doo strings, and Thalia makes some multicoloured macrame like twists. As it turns out, Rod didn't laugh (because he too has tried unsuccessfully to find something simple in Gurgaon on a Tuesday). He used some of the Scoobys to tie up the table legs. Thalia made some Scooby Doos as well.

Australia Post

I visited Australia today. And before anyone gets gets their knickers twisted because I didn't pop in to see them, it was that little part of New Delhi which represents "the lucky country", the Australian High Commission. I belong to a quilting group here and apart from our leader, Anju, we're all expats. The majority of the group is Australian, with a few of us having had extended stays elsewhere. We have a couple of North Americans, a Venezuelan, a Belgian, a few Brits and a New Zealander. Today's meeting was at Paddy's house, and Paddy (proudly from Canberra), lives in the High Commission. Inside her apartment it sounded like we were in Australia, with only Anju's Indian accent and Kehi's New Zealand one amongst all these Aussies. But outside her apartment...we were still in India, Toto, because I didn't hear another single Australian voice. Shame.

But soon I will get my fix of Aussie voices. We booked our flights to Perth this afternoon for our six week summer holiday. New Delhi gets bloody hot in June - I've been told 50 degrees celsius (120 F) is not unheard of. It might be an urban legend, but I'm sure I don't want to be here to check! Why would I - when I can go to Perth for their winter when it will be 20 (70F)!

Give a Man a Fish...

And he eats for the night, teach him how to fish and he buggers off each weekend, so the saying goes. This evening I decided to try the theory out with Rod. Obviously I wasn't using fish, because he gets violently ill at the mere thought of seafood. I needed a much better lure (should I keep up the maritime theme?), and trust me, flapjacks are much better than a hook and feathers (okay, I'm done).

Rod loves flapjacks. To be honest, we all do. But when I make flapjacks, only he suggests I hide the tin where the kids can't get to it. For the sake of parental unity, and because Thalia reads this, I won't say if I do or not...

Rod's not the world's greatest cook. He can fry eggs, and make toast. And now he can make flapjacks too. He better not go buggering off for the weekend, and if he does, he'd better leave a few behind for the rest of us!