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.