india

September in India and Elfland

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September brought it’s share of excitement for me. Once the kids were in school, I took a two week trip to India. I had figured that it was a good time to take off while weather in State College was still ok.

Leaving State College without the girls turned out to be not the easiest thing. The idea of going so far away bore down on me as I drove in the middle of night to Washington DC to catch my flight. Putting my worries aside, I boarded the flight for an 18 hour trip to India via Doha (Qatar airways). Qatar airways was adequate with super short layovers, although this caused some stress on my way back since the flight from Hyderabad to Doha was delayed.

Sis, mom and dad picked me up at the Hyderabad airport. We went to mom’s place. Ganesh puja festival was going on in India. There were statues of Lord Ganesh everywhere. My parents’ apartment complex had one, with cultural events every evening.

My hope was to get some stuff organized for parents so that they would be more comfortable there. I must say I was happy with all the things I was able to do towards that goal in the two weeks. It was a packed schedule with shopping for clothes for mom (and some for the girls to take back with me), buying appliances, managing their paperwork and even getting them to buy tickets to visit us in April next year. I was very pleased with how things went.

Once home, I was thrilled to see all the progress made at home. Leena’s room was finished and painted, which is quite an achievement, since you could see insulation when I had left home. Johan finished insulating, and he and Wayne did drywalling and painting. Amazing. Johan and the girls had also worked hard at cleaning up stuff in various parts of the house and the end result was great! Tanya has an arm band now in kickboxing which means she is ahead of me in class! She seems quite pleased about that!

I have been moving along since back home, trying to get the house organized and my first children’s book going. It should see the light of day next year. Excited about my progress!

Kylo Ren the dog: Hmph! Despite the fact that I am very smart, no one ever asks for my opinion. Did mom ask if I was okay with her leaving and travelling off to some far off place? No! Luckily for Leena I didn’t starve. But let me tell you, my care was less than premium, and I could definitely feel the lowered standards. Once mom was back, I let her know exactly what I thought of her disappearance. A few bites did the trick. With mom, it’s easy. All I have to do is to place my cold and wet nose anywhere on her bare skin. She shrieks and I immediately get the pleasure of exacting my revenge.

Lately I have been getting in trouble for no reason whatsoever. My family says I am too pushy with my snout. But all I do is show love, when it is absolutely necessary. Like the times when Tanya leaves me for two whole minutes. When she comes back, I feel that it is my duty to tell her how much I missed her. But when I try, she gets all mad. Not fair. I bet other dogs aren’t left alone for such long periods of time. Ohh, here comes the Queen bee, Grandma Rosie!

Rosie the dog: What?!! Grandma?! Don’t you forget that you are my husband. That would make you grandpa. Hehe. Actually that makes sense. I am still sassier than you even at the ripe age of 15. Grandpa!

While I have been a happy go lucky 15 year old, lately my family has developed a strange and annoying habit. They like to pick me up in the air. They pick up my entire body and hold me. This is because I have lost a lot of weight, so now they treat me like a stuffed toy or something. But after being suspended in air for a couple of minutes, I remind them that I am no stuffed bunny. I bare my teeth most menacingly and snap and bark viciously. They get alarmed and put me down. I like being down. In fact my favorite position these days is to be as far down as possible, sleeping 22 hours a day outside in the sun. The last two hours are spent eating and barking at random people to incite Kylo into barking.

Oreo the chicken: Hello Rosie. May I have the keyboard? Oh! She is asleep. My turn! Hello, dear readers. I am here to make my debut into the world of blogging. The older hens have been bragging about the wonderful blogs they have written, and the wonderful places that they have visited. Paisley and I turn green with envy, but thankfully, since a lot of our feathers are black in color, the envious green stays hidden. It won’t do to show envy. Our pecking order stats can take a hit!

Let me tell you the story of Paisley and I. We were born and raised in the Bald Eagle area. We are one year old. Although we lived out in the boonies and can be considered to have had an idyllic childhood, reality is far from imagination. We lived with a few other chickens and a couple of nasty roosters. Every day was war. As a result, we have some trust issues. Our owner got some new peeps. One day we heard her talking with her husband that they want to downsize our brood. The hubby looked appetized and we smelt danger! One fine day our owner caught Paisley and me and put us in a dog crate. “This is it”, I thought. We are soup! But life had other plans for us. Soon people came by and took us in plastic containers to a new backyard that had three other chickens. These people named us Paisley and Oreo and wisely kept us separated from those scary older birds. They would try to socialize us by getting us together in the yard. The older hens made several planned attacks on us. However, they were foiled by the humans who sprayed them with a water gun! I am happy to say that I am now well assimilated into the group and am also getting warm and comfortable with the humans. Paisley is a whole different story!

Paisley the chicken: I yell! Yes, that’s my specialty. I let out such a shriek that humans get temporarily disoriented and confused. While they are figuring out what just happened, I use all my evasive and maneuvering skills to get away from the humans.

That said, I do get close to the humans. I am curious about them, but like to play it safe. I am slim and beautiful. I have been told that I have beautiful eyes (ahem). However, my slender build has placed me lowest in the pecking order. Sigh! If not for Oreo, I don’t know if I would ever get any food. Oreo is big. She almost looks like a turkey. Oh I am so glad she is my friend and protector!

Our new terrariums!
At the airport in Washington DC
Going to parents’ apartment in Hyderabad
Trying to crack the elusive box puzzle
Lord Ganesh in the apartment playground
Another Ganesh idol nearby
Out with sis and bro in law
The strays of KBR park, Hyderabad
Peacock babies!
With Priyanka
Bunnu, dad and BIL
Lord Ganesh is about to leave
Bye until next year. He will be immersed in Hussain Sagar lake
Off we go
At the morning walk place
With mom
Ah! My friend Sreeja
He sells idlis, dosas etc for breakfast in the apartment complex
Sunday vegetable market in the apartment playground
My parents’ apartment complex
Veges!
At a pub
Happy hour!
Pigeons galore
With Bunnu
Hmm, yummy cream
Leena’s new room
Cuddle bugs
More cuddles!
And some more! Because one can never have too many
Oreo with mom
Tanya at her barista job
Aww this dog!
Out with the girls and the great protector Kylo Ren

India trip: Part 4. Musings

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This trip to India has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. Due to various reasons, Corona Virus being the biggest, I was in India after a long gap of four years. I found that a lot of my parents’ way of living was unchanged. It was like I had never left. But there were also big, noticeable differences in how Indians live their lives which were interesting but also very unsettling.

Due to various reasons, my lifestyle back in the USA is overly simple. For one, we have never used a TV. When I was a kid, my parents refused to have a cable connection so that we would concentrate on our studies and not get distracted. I hated having no TV as a kid, but liked the idea as a grown up. TV is distracting, but it’s the advertisements that are a bigger bane. One thing that I have noticed is that due to lack of our exposure to ads and Television series, our family is living in a bubble while the world has moved to a different place. This, combined with our general disinterest in shopping, made this trip a funny, eye opening experience. I must also mention, countries such as India and the UAE have been prioritizing glamor a lot more than the USA. This is an opposite world from 25 years ago.

During our flight to Dubai we were bombarded with glamorous ads of Dubai. The Dubai airport is also an over the top show of goods and glamour. There were shops after shops full of perfumes, liquor, chocolate and expensive jewelry. We had our first cultural shock right there. The all pervasive smell of perfume was overwhelming to our underutilized noses and we quickly retrieved to a resting space. They space had lounge chairs arranged in various formations with people resting on them! It hilariously reminded me of a scene from a typical science fiction movie, or a Robin Cook book! However, the chairs looked comfortable and were just what we needed to stretch our tired selves and so we proceeded to join the scifi cast!

Getting to India, on a first glance, things look the same. Ladies in sarees, the strays, and an occasional cow on the street. But I soon realized that the wad of cash that I was given to spend by my dad wasn’t going to help me much. Unless I was happy to leave obscene amounts of change with every purchase.

India has become cashless, and most people pay by scanning a QR code that all stores display. Urban India is also into extreme shopping, which seemed to be a disturbing trend. Amazon is everywhere, and they also have a company named “Swiggy”, which delivers anything people want in 10 minutes to an hour. People will sometimes use Swiggy three to four times a day to order anything as per their immediate whim and fancy. Swiggy is akin to Aladdin’s genie. It produces whatever you desire in very little time, with a few clicks and without moving from your house. This creates an endless opportunity for instant gratification, which, of course, ultimately creates dissatisfaction and prevents people from being grounded. Not even to speak about the pollution from all the drivers moving about, the plastic packaging waste and money wastage. So this was undoubtedly the worst trend that I saw.

On the upside, the elderly and disabled can benefit immensely from this system, since you can get things on your doorstep. This is particularly useful since the traffic is a nightmare. But if you think further, the nightmare traffic is created partially by the goods movement by Amazon and Swiggy. We patronize them, thereby supporting the bad traffic. As a result of this traffic, now we sit at home and patronize them further. We still lose out by not getting an opportunity to step outside, thereby using our bodies lesser, and pushing our minds into a rut. This results in more disability, which gives even more business to these companies. What a vicious cycle.

My rants may suggest that I didn’t like being in Hyderabad, but it actually had the opposite effect. I wished from all my heart that I lived there and would be a part of the craziness that is India. It would have been gratifying to be a part of the solution in a country that gets an impressive number of things done, when compared with the meagre amount of resources that they have access to. Despite the Western world squeezing every last bit of resource out of India, pushing regulations that make India poorer, pushing waste that make India dirtier, pushing their GMO seeds to compromise India’s agricultural capacity, and making regulations that they have no recourse against, India functions remarkably. But there’s a lot wrong with the mentality of the population there (as in any other place). A change is desperately needed.

Getting to my parents, their world seems almost unchanged for the most part. There is a nice rhythm to their daily routine. We had a nice, easygoing time there, with us spending a lot of time with cups of tea, sitting around and chit chatting. The kids got a chance to connect with them. Tanya is amazingly in tune with them and their ways. Leena is too, but she is mostly busy either reading a book, or crocheting, or doing some other activity. Tanya would join in the family discussions. Leena, on the other hand, only talked about this animal or that bird! The other topic that Leena would endlessly talk about was general trivia. She is full of trivia and keeps doling them out. Sometimes we stared jaw dropped, or sometimes we laughed, but it would get a little much after a while. Regardless, we all had a great time chit chatting our days away. It was the biggest highlight of our trip.

We came back refreshed and with a lot of material for me to work on this year as I move further into writing. Hoping for, and wishing you, a great year ahead.