I'm not a tourist. I live here. For now at least.

Here's my latest purchase:

The t-shirt says: I'm not a tourist. I live here. It should serve me well next time I need to get a rickshaw!

The t-shirt is the brainchild of Fading Ladies and caused Raju much amusement!

During the week I emailed the Fading Ladies and placed my order. I got a text Thursday morning asking if I'd be home, as my shirt was with the Fading Ladies driver, ready for delivery. But the driver never came. At half twelve I got another text, which read:
"We had a minor fender bender this morning. Sorry for the delay. Can we come now?"
I replied, "Yes. Hope you are okay".
She replied "All is well. Was scary experience as man was thrown underneath car while we were driving but no one was badly hurt."
She's definitely no tourist if she can describe any event where someone ends up under your car as a minor accident!

The Italian Connection

We're selling our car, so the other day we sent Raju off to get the interior cleaned so it would look nice for the new owners. For some reason unknown to man, it took eight hours for the car to be cleaned. It really wasn't that dirty... But anyway, because the car wasn't going to be ready at school pick up time, I had to take a rickshaw to collect the children.

I walked down to the main market, just two minutes away. The first rickshaw driver looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language - okay, to him I was :-) The second rickshaw driver spoke enough english to tell me he didn't speak english. Can't complain here either, because I speak enough hindi to say I can't speak hindi - Nahin bolo hindi. Bolo english (No speak hindi. Speak english). The third rickshaw driver understood me very well. He looked quizzical when I said "British School, Chanakyapuri" (they all do), and nodded when I added "near the American Embassy". He quoted me 150 rupees one way, 300 for a return journey. Now, the going rate for a white girl is 200 rupees return, far more than an Indian would pay. I told him 300 rupees was way too much, this journey always cost me 200 rupees. No he said, pointing to his watch, not at this time. That wasn't really the right answer, as I've only ever taken a rickshaw to school to collect the kids at school pick up time. He was treating me like a tourist! So I walked away and hoped I'd find another rickshaw quite soon, as pick up time was drawing closer.

The next rickshaw looked pretty new and unbattered. It was probably too much to hope that this guy would want to charge me a "reasonable white girl rate" to get the kids. Again he looked quizzical at "the British School, Chanakyapuri", and nodded when I said "near the American Embassy". And he wanted 200 rupees return. Result! I got in and off we went. Just to be safe, and because I don't really want to go to the American Embassy, as we get closer to school I start giving directions. It's not too hard, because there's a series of roundabouts, and you want to go straight across all three. But just as we join this stretch of road I spot the car in front has a "British School Authorised Parking" sign in the back window. So I proclaim, "Follow that car!", which amused me far more than it amused the driver. He obviously hadn't seen as many car chase movies as I had. Although to be fair to him, most of those movies didn't involve chasing a 7 seater people mover with two child car seats in the back...

As the car in front went straight over the last roundabout he checked again that that was the way I wanted to go ( if I had wanted to go to the American Embassy, we should have turned right). Straight ahead, I told him, and straight ahead he went. As we were pulling alongside the Italian Embassy, he said "ah, The British School", like they all do. I have no idea why no rickshaw driver knows where the British School is until they reach this point of the journey, but they all have that "realisation moment" at the same spot. Strange...

Kehi Catch Up

Today Rod and I had a lovely day out with my quilty friend, Kehi. Kehi and her husband Marcus have just moved to Chennai, so we were lucky to catch up with her before we go.

She told me of her visit to Ideal Beach on Sunday, about an hour's drive from Chennai. There's a resort hotel there and some beach shacks selling trinkets for tourists. One of the shacks sold seashells (probably easier to do than to say), and Kehi spotted a great big orange shell she wanted. Badly. But the man said the price was 750 rupees, which Kehi felt was quite a lot for a seashell. She told the man she'd be back later to hear his best price. Then she went down to the beachfront to sit under a palm tree, read a book and drink champagne. I'm not really a beach person, but this beach is well named, for that sounds pretty ideal to me.

Around two o'clock a worker from the resort next door came over and told everyone the beach was closed, there'd been a tsunami warning. Now they take tsunami warnings pretty seriously here, as eight thousand people died on this stretch of coast in the Boxing Day tsunami. The hotel guy said they wouldn't be allowed to stay on the beach, but they could come and sit by the pool. Presumably they wanted Kehi to drink their champagne...

Marcus collected their things and began to move towards the pool. But Kehi was not going to give up on that shell so easily. She ran back to the beach hut, not because she was afraid of the impending waves, but because the sand was hot and Marcus had taken her sandals. The shell seller was closing up, he'd been given the tsunami warning too. Kehi offered him 300 rupees, but he really wanted more. She reminded him a tsunami might be on its way, so he took the 300 and she took the shell. Then she joined Marcus and all the others around the resort's pool, a whole five metres further back and two metres higher up than the tree she'd been so happy underneath. And the tsunami never came...

Kehi, Rod and I spotted this shop in the market in New Friends Colony. It sells cigarettes and paan, a mixture of tobacco and spices wrapped in a betel leaf. Paan is chewed by many across India and South East Asia, and after chewing, leaves your mouth full of red saliva, which stains your teeth and is customary to spit out. It's not wine tasting, there are no spittons, it's on the ground. Lovely. On both counts.

This shop keeper's obviously a fan of alliteration...

(I am) Packing Up

In just over three weeks we will be leaving India and heading back home to Britain. Rod and I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to sort out everything needed to make the move back as painless as possible. One of the things we had to arrange was a moving and packing company to get all our stuff back home. You might think that wouldn't be so hard...but, if it was that easy, I wouldn't be writing about it here, would I?

On our first attempt we called a number of moving and packing companies we found in a local version of the Yellow Pages. Two of them had quoted for our move from Gurgaon to Hauz Khas last year. One turned up, walked around the house looking knowledgably at the furniture we would be taking back, made a few notes on his pad and never got back to us. The other turned up, walked around the house, went away, came back the next day with another guy, took some photos of our furniture and went away again. When Rod called a couple of days later asking for their quote, both guys came back to our house with a scrap of paper. They said it would cost us 160 rupees a kilogram to send our stuff by air, or $70 USD a cubic metre to send it by sea. But they didn't know how many cubic metres the stuff they'd photographed was, nor had any idea how many kilograms our stuff weighed. So, a really, really comprehensive quote... Now, as I do not work for a moving and packing company I do not assess housefuls daily, so I didn't know either. But I was going to hazard a guess that with two sofas, a double bed and mattress, a dining table, six chairs, a chest of drawers and assorted boxes all made from Sheesham (Indian Rosewood, really heavy) and a longarm quilting machine and frame, as well as clothes etc, we wouldn't be sending our stuff by air!

Thankfully, our third moving company had a representative who did assess housefuls daily. Maybe not daily, but often enough to be able to look at each piece of furniture to work out how much space we would need in our container. And Peggy got back to us with a quote, typed, on headed paper without us asking for it. But the only problem was, even though we had had three companies visit, we only had one quote. So we tried again...

This time, we asked for recommendations on an expat internet group. Peggy's name came up, along with another two companies. Joy, joy, joy, more appointments...

A guy came, but he wanted to tell us how he'd arranged lots of moves for people at the British Embassy. We told him we weren't with the British Embassy, and weren't using the British government to pay for our move back, so we didn't want an "Embassy quote". The money's got to come from our pockets, which even in these troubled times, are not as deep as Gordon Brown's (or whoever is running the country right now!). And could we tell him how much we wanted for the RO water filter?

A lady came. I say came, she rang to say she was on her way, could we give her directions. We did. Then she rang back, telling us what landmarks she could see around her, and could we give her directions from there. We did. And then she called back, describing another set of landmarks, further from our house than the first set of landmarks, and asking could we give her some more directions. We did. Didn't think this boded well. If a moving and packing company can't find our home in Delhi, can we trust that they might be able to get our stuff to us in England? Anyway, she found her way here eventually. I say she found her way here, only after Rod told her to stop driving and wait for him and Thalia to walk to where she was so she could follow them. Anyway, once she got here she was very nice and efficient, but I couldn't help feeling maybe her company would do better if they invested in a map. Not a world map, just an Eicher map of Delhi...

Unsurprisingly, we went with Peggy. She found us first time, was on time. She has this air of efficiency about her. She's tall and imposing, speaks fluent German, English and Hindi. I have this feeling she won't let anything go wrong on her watch. Please God, let me be right this time!

A Stitch in (Indian) Time...

I might have brought the only longarm quilting machine into India, but the country is teeming with sewing machines. There must be five tailors shops in my local market alone, turning out everything from Western suits for the gentleman to cholis, the little blouse worn with a sari, for the ladies.

The model in the photo has really taken to his part. Suits you, Sir!

Not all the sewing machines are in fancy establishments like this. Outside, on the pavement, between the darbar cooking curry in a huge metal pot and an electrical repair shop, there’s a man sitting on the sidewalk with his sewing machine. All day long he hems dupattas, long, wide, scarf-like lengths of fabric, which ladies wear with their Indian outfits. The dupatta is a draped across the front of your blouse with the ends flowing behind your back (to prevent glimpses of cleavage), as a shawl if it turns chilly (it does happen, just not often), to cover your head if you’re going to a temple or holy place, or to protect your hairstyle when you’re on the back of your boyfriend’s motorbike. Unless they’re in a sari (which at 6 yards of fabric is a dress and dupatta all rolled into one), a lady’s not dressed without her dupatta. Personally, I can’t see the point of draping a yard and a half of extra fabric over me when it’s 45 degrees outside. Guess that makes me no lady! Anyway, the guy with his sewing machine is busy. He doesn’t even need to stop when the power goes off. His machine is powered by foot.

With all these industrious sewers around me, tailoring entire garments for sums you’d pay to have a broken zip replaced back home, I decided to treat myself. I’d brought a blouse with me I really liked, and wanted to have it remade in silk. I took it to Ramesh, whose sewing machines were hidden away from the front of the shop, so they could have even been some of those new fangled electric ones! Ramesh took my fabric and the shirt I wanted copied and told me to come back in a week.

So more than a week later, because Indians’ sense of time is “flexible”, I returned to the shop. Ramesh had stepped out, so the man who sat behind the counter decided to help me. I don’t know what his official job title was. Every time I’d ever been in the shop I’d never seen him do anything but sit behind the counter. I showed him my invoice, so he could get my blouse. He asked me to describe it. He barely spoke English. Having an invoice, with an invoice number, didn’t mean he knew where to find my new silk shirt. So not exactly a very efficient booking in system. In a pile of clothes behind the counter, I spotted an offcut of my fabric. I showed it to him, and using it he trawled through a pile of plastic bags under the counter to find the garment to match. That scrap of fabric could have been purchased by anyone! Maybe I had bought it, maybe I spotted it for the first time and liked it. He’d have no way of knowing…

But where was my original blouse? I found it at the bottom of a heap of other clothes, presumably other customers’ sample garments. I know my original blouse was only polyester, but it was still pretty. It didn’t really deserve that kind of treatment! I made him go and find the rest of the left over silk. No idea what I’ll do with it, but being silk it was expensive (by local standards at least), and it was mine. I’d paid for it. Eventually Ramesh returned and gathered together everything that belonged to me. I gave him my 500 rupees (£7, $11USD – double the usual price because working with silk takes twice as long) and left.

As a longarm quilter, the whole experience amused me. People bring me things that are precious to them – their quilt tops - to turn into finished quilts. I pin a label to them to identify who the quilt belongs to and hang them in a wardrobe, safe and clean, until I get to work on them. And once I’ve finished the quilting, the top and any extra backing and batting, get placed together in a bag with a copy of the invoice and hung back in the wardrobe until I can return it. I know at all times where the quilts are, and if I dropped dead, Rod would know who to contact to get them back to their rightful owners. It’s a fairly simple system, and I bet most longarmers use similar ones. Unfortunately Ramesh doesn’t use a system anywhere near as complicated as this one. And before we diss him too much, he’s one of the better ones. Heaven help the next lady who can’t spot a scrap of her fabric in the pile in the corner…

My Favourite Oxymoron

Yes, it's Fresh Cream. In a tetra-pak. Needs no refrigeration till opened. Best before 120 days from manufacture. I've no more to add...

Darwin Award

The other day Rod and I saw a serious potential candidate for a Darwin Award, the honour bestowed on those who "do a service to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool". We were driving along the NH8, the motorway between Gurgaon and Delhi, where the official speed limit is 50mph, but the actual speed you do depends upon whether you're in a car, tractor or rickshaw with a two stroke engine. Some of the vehicles which use the NH8 only dream of a top speed of 50mph, many more see the speed limit as something which only applies to other drivers, not them. But it was not the speed at which this potential Darwin candidate was travelling that caught our attention...

In the lane next to us was a guy on a motorbike. Maybe he'd rushed his morning routine, because he had failed to do his stretches in the comfort of his own home. So he was doing them on the motorway, while he was riding his motorbike. First he reached his right arm around his back, placing the back of his hand on his opposite hip, while his left hand held the bike handle. Then he changed sides, repeating with his left hand. While we thought this was a little odd, at least he had one hand on the controls. Which he did not, when he joined both hands behind his back and opened out the front of his shoulders by stretching back. We thought we'd seen everything, but then he took his phone out of his pocket and started texting. While riding a motorbike at 50mph on the motorway...

As Raju was driving our car and Rod was a backseat passenger, he tried to take a picture with his telephone. I don't have a problem with passengers using their phones, I just object when it's the one allegedly in control of the fast moving vehicle who does it. Our Darwin candidate spotted Rod and took his helmet off, possibly so he would look more dashing in the photo. While riding a motorbike at 50mph on the motorway... Rod was unwilling to take the shot, because he didn't think it appropriate to do anything that might encourage this guy to attain his Darwin Award sooner rather than later. But it's only a matter of time...