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Minibreak

I don't know why but I'm feeling very Bridget Jones lately - a bit roundy...yes...but that's not the point. I'm exhausted and frenetic and prone to bouts of wailing at my keyboard each day. A new development in my emotional spectrum - being obsessed with my work and trying to learn to balance the anxiety of a million projects to be started and finished with my usually very worry-free (and somewhat work-free) self.
We've been working approximately twelve hours a day, nearly every day, for the past two months.
The new year is always a busy time for us - lots of resolutions coming out of the woodwork for clients who want to start the year with a fresh look or a new program. And it's great, and we love it, but when I wished for even more fabulous clients in the new year I had no idea the universe would deliver with such an unending generosity.
I've capped my client list now and have started to see a light at the end of the tunnel - no, we're not turning work down, we're just running away from it all for a few days.

It's time for a minibreak.

I've always wanted to go to Kodaikanal, a gorgeous mountainous hill station in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu. While I was living in Auroville it just never happened; I passed it up for Goa more than once and then life went on and things got busy and it fell by the wayside of 'places to go' in favor of 'things that need to get done.'

In an attempt at recapturing some serenity we've hired a car and driver for the four days we intend to be unplugged and have booked a fabulous entire two bedroom house literally on the lake in Kodai, complete with a personal cook. The cost of our escapade? Rs 7,500 ($167 U.S.) for the car and driver, who will drive us the eight hours to and from Bangalore and will be at our disposal while we are there, and another Rs 6,000 for the house for three nights.

We'll open the month of February with a testament to a promise to ourselves not to work every single day in 2007, sans laptops, mais avec Mooshy, of course.

Professional moneyspender

So, we were in Hyderabad, trapped between an early morning arrival for a very little amount of business to attend to, and a cancelled-and-rescheduled-for-later flight with Air Deccan - again opting to fly with the autorickshaws of the sky...It was more than annoying but they sent us an SMS on the cel phone just to make sure we were aware they'd cancelled our flight - at least they followed it up.

With our meeting at the Iranian Consulate finished in a matter of minutes we were left with more than nine hours to kill - and what better way to do so than to go shopping?

We went straight to Hyderabad Central, a bigger and better version of our own pathetic Bangalore Central. After gifting my darling with a Citizen watch than can only be described as a work of art we plunked the debit card down once more for a four piece set of lovely and delicate unmentionables (the first I've bought for over a year simply because they are nearly impossible to find here) and a darling small white round trotter-style handbag.

It was the second out of town shopping trip for me in a month, as my one day in Sri Lanka in early January ended up being just that as well. The thing about Sri Lanka that's so great is that because their currency, Sri Lankan rupees, is valued at about half that of Indian rupees everything appears as half price to me. It's like a big huge 50% off sale over there...I would just look at the price tag and mentally cut the price in half. Talk about instant gratifcation.

After blasting through Hyderbad's downtown mall we carted our purchases out of the life-sustaining air conditioning and into a heat that wilted us both back to our five a.m. wakeup. We decided to take a room at the hotel we'd stayed at on two previous trips to the city and were happy to find they would reduce the usual price for such a short stay.
With the crutch of a big bed, cable TV, room service, and hot showers we both crashed out after poring over my new passport and our recently acquired goodies.

Three hours later we woke up and went out for dinner at our favorite local restaurant, The Paradise (ironically housed in a typically stinkydirty neighborhood of the same name). With four levels of seating, one of which offering fast homemade Indian food at stand-up tables at street level, we opted, as usual, for the top floor. A more serene setting off the street, and ordered all of the delicacies we knew they could provide.
Hyderabad is famous for its Biriyani - one of Hamid's cravings and The Paradise also makes excellent veg and seafood dishes pour moi. We topped it all off with a freshly prepared beetroot juice (no sugar...divine) and fresh lime juice (also no sugar).

All in all it was like a little accidental holiday - a nice last visit to one of our favorite cities in India.

Kinda cool

A quick trip to Hyderabad on Monday, two flights in one day = happy exhaustion and a brand new Persian passport.
SO weird to see myself all scarfed-out in the photo page, next to stamps from the very gracious Iranian consul and that lovely Persian script I can only hope to be able to actually read one day. They've done some kind of fabulous photoshop on the image - making my eyes appear very, very blue and my lips and cheeks a natural soft pink that I really don't remember as having graced my visage the day the photo was taken. I'm flattered and wonder why we don't do the same in the U.S. for driver's licenses and the like.

I am now, for all intents and purposes, both American and Iranian. No small thing considering the increasingly tense political relationship between the two nations.

The passport, a lovely deep reddish brown color opens and reads right to left, as all Persian books do, and has it's pinkish pages graced by a very faint watermark of the face of Imam Khomeini inside an ornate star pattern - like the middle of a delicately designed Persian carpet. It's quite pretty, actually - and evokes the same feelings of potential adventure and excitement my own United States passport did when I first received it, brand new and a bit stiff.

Now, we've just to figure out exactly how I'm meant to travel around with the two passports - naturally the majority of my travel stamps will go into the American passport, which had become so full it was annotated with an extra 25 or so pages while we were at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi last year. But the question of with which passport do I stamp in and out of various countries before and after a visit to Iran remains. I know there are loads of people with dual citizenship (and a relative collection of passports) happily cruising around from country to country without issue - I've just got to figure out the protocol.

The passport, which expires after the normal five year period extended to any Iranian passport, allows my unfettered travel to and from Iran - no more visas to apply for or extend. No concern for the American-ness of me getting in the way of enjoying the other half of our family at will. This is a freedom for which I am eternally grateful.

It will be interesting to see if my own country is as forthcoming with a passport for my darling Iranian husband.
We can only hope for the best.

We feed him...really!

Mooshy continues to thrive and seems to quadruple his puppy energy daily - leaning once in a while toward what we shrug off as natural bouts of destruction.
I've started to tally the losses and this is where we are thus far:

-One computer adapter cord (This was actually a blessing in disguise as it 'bit back' with a little jolt of ungrounded Indian electricity as his needle-sharp teeth punctured the soft rubber wrapping and taught him never, ever to mess with any of the gazillion wires/lifelines to the outside world in our house. It also allowed Hamid to practice and perfect his skills in electrical wiring repair.)

-Three pairs of panties

-One sock (Of course, the other one had to be thrown away so...two socks.)

-One chappal (This is what we call flip-flops here in India, without the left the right is useless so...two chappals.)

-One pair of past-season Michael Kors jute ankle wrap wedges (My most precious fashion-victim trotters - they were perfect for negotiating the cracked and stumbly Bangalore sidewalks...alas....)

-Two dish sponges (The most disgusting of his clandestine treats - taken out of the bucket full of bathroom cleaning supplies.)

-One silk-edged natural straw floor mat (He didn't really eat this, per se, but chewed it to the point of 'I don't want anyone to see this and think I have no taste in home furnishings.')

-Countless black hair bands

-Equally countless black elastic hair ties

-One pot of very delicious (I'm quite certain of that) strawberry lip gloss (Fortunately it was of the 'natural' variety and so there was no concern for the health of his insides.)

-As many bugs as he can find (Which, in our pitiful little Indian house/dirt magnet, is more than I care to admit.)

-The occasional cigarette (We are trying to get him to quit.)

-One bottle of Garnier Body Coccoon moisturizer (He will actually lick this off our legs if he gets the chance - I've to stand on the bed to put the stuff on when I don't feel like sharing.)

-At least 100 Indian rupees (We're not sure exactly how much money he's stolen and digested - we find the tattered shreds of a bill corner here and there, tucked into the pillows of his little bed. I've taken whole twenty rupee notes out of his mouth, wet and smooshed.)

I guess that's about it.
The thing that hit me hardest was coming home to find my Kors in so many pieces - but, in the end, I'd trade a hundred pairs of designer shoes for this darling little beast.

Ego much?

Well....it was bound to happen.
I've started a folder in my Outlook Express to keep a record, a reminder, of 'reasons why we are picky about who we work with.'
So far, I have two entries.

There will be no Devil/Prada action here - I have no intention of dishing on the people I work with - or don't/won't work with in this case...but I will say that all in all I've been blessed thus far by a multitude of fabulous clients - all of them sincerely kind, fun to work with, very hands-on about their businesses, etc. And for this I thank the universe every day.
When I open my email, no matter how crazy-full some client-specific boxes may become (there are a few who regularly send me upwards of forty to fifty emails per day) I am always more than happy to answer their requests with my full attention and a smile. It sounds corny, but it's the truth - I really and truly like the people that I work with.
This is the case, though, due to careful scrutiny and a keen sense of what types of situations I'm willing to get myself into. It's all about boundaries, and then some...
Just recently I came across a potential client who would have been great (better-than, actually) for both our bank account and our portfolios but it became clear very early on in the interaction that maybe the relationship wouldn't have been so great for our sanity.
This potential client, with all the business in the world to offer a ready and willing web designer/programmer, just didn't have it in her head to communicate with me in a way that made me feel that the relationship would have been worth anything more than dollars and cents - and frankly, we don't do this work for the money.
If we did, we'd have lots of stuffy corporate clients and charge at least three times what we do now.

Instead, we keep it very low key and friendly - a little familial bevy of small-business clients who write their own game plans with pen and paper and keep their own hands in the virtual dirt of their expanding businesses. They deliver their fabulously-manifesting directives with a friendly inquiry into how my personal life is going in this god-forsaken country and how is my darling husband faring on the visa process and I reply in kind and send them flowers and goodies on special occaisions. I actually, truly and really, have sincere love for these people - all of them women, all of them independent and strong as hell, all of them working their butts off to grow something, to achieve something - and depending on us to help the whole process along. I like the collaboration, the reflection on the growth and manifestation in my own life. Their successes are my successes and vice versa - and as such, we all grow together.

I don't know, maybe it's old-school and ridiculous to continue to expect this kind of thing in a business relationship. To hope to adore my clients - but I do, and I will continue to do so because that's what works. That's what keeps me answering the emails that increase exponentially when my back is turned. That's what keeps me doing the work in the first place.

I've got this folder now and its two off kilter little reminders - something to keep me on point about why I hand pick the people with whom we work. These goddesses of the business world literally become a part of my life - and that's a space I will always protect dilligently.

It was either PMS or the truth

The truth is I was a bit upset when I wrote the last post - there was an article in the local paper about how India's social values must incorporate more creative arts in order to flourish and with everything else that's been going on around here lately it just sent me over the edge. Yes, creative arts are crucial to a blossoming society and it's people - but so are the basics like clean water, social health, and a good education - things sorely and so obviously lacking in this nation. These days, India just makes me sad, and being sad makes me tired. And so I'm sad and I'm tired and really just ready to get out of here.

Fortunately, we've just received the very last of the papers we need to make ourselves presentable to the U.S. Consulate - very exciting developments indeed.
We expect to know if they will make the rest of the process very, very easy or very, very hard for us sometime in the next two months. In all honesty, I'm thinking they're likely to be quite nice and helpful - if they opt not to be my own fate as a girl very much in love with her husband and not seeing separation as an option would lie somewhere in the vicinity of Iran proper - and I'm banking on the guess that at this particular juncture they'd like to keep their own a little closer to home than that.

In the meantime, I'm getting packed for next weekend when I've to go on my twice-yearly excursion to Sri Lanka for a bubble bath and some good duty-free shopping. Just 24 hours on the quiet island will make a world of difference in my perspective. And when I return we'll start counting down the days until we can pack up for good...

Let.me.out.

Our 2007-eve celebration was wonderfully private - we stayed home to dance in the kitchen because no one can see us from there - it was New Year's Eve after all - but we've no desire to risk the clubs where strangers gape and reach for a touch as you move through the crowds (seriously - ick, no thank you) so we stayed home and shared a bottle of imported wine and played the stereo too loud like kids who's parents have left the house for the weekend.

But at midnight, when all of our neighbors were outside shouting in the new year and lighting off firecrackers the realization that we are going to leave this God-forsaken India in five months no-matter-what brought me more joy than anything else that night.

I am, quite simply and unapologetically, tired of India.
Exhausted, in fact.
I'm watching Jeremy Piven stroll around these streets courtesy of the Discovery Channel with his little leather satchel and happily-unkempt-traveller stubble, his lazy baggy pants and wide-eyed holiday attitude making India seem like a land of adventure and charm...and I change the channel with a sigh of disgust.
I've seen more travel, wedding, and real estate specials on this country lately than any other on the planet and they all make me cringe because I know the truth that isn't visible in the televised folds of a rich bride's silk sari or a star's private estate in the suburbs. Sure, on the flat screen it looks almost shiny and exciting - and for a few solid weeks it can be - but I've lived here for three years - long enough to see what can't be seen from behind the nicely polished windows of the five star hotels other westerners pack themselves into.

There are the obvious things: cows and people alike eating garbage and depositing their digestions wherever they happen to be, the sewers running rivers into the roads every time it rains and sometimes even for no good reason at all, the absolute stench of these streets - years of people using any old street as a toilet - urine and decaying trash wafting up and stinging my eyes in the hot afternoon sun. The endless generations of dogs constantly mating and fighting and dying in heaps of mange and sad-eyed sickness at the side of the road - left to rot for weeks before whatever civil service is supposed to be on top of these things finally decides to do it's job. The tiny squeaking offspring of these wild beasts are kicked and battered around like footballs by thoughtless people walking the streets in the middle of the night. I've grown heartbroken standing on the balcony trying to defend their little lives as if it would ever make a difference - even our houseman has trained his little four year old daughter to hit the smallest dogs with a stick that he keeps for that purpose alone. The actual toilet that has remained in the street of our neighborhood for six months - moved once or twice by a passer-by likely inspecting it for possible uses but otherwise left like a lame garden ornament in a patch of dead grass and litter; the toilet's previous owner not the least bit ashamed to be responsible for such a thing.

I'm not Indian and I don't pay taxes here - so perhaps I've no right to complain. But while the president of India has stated out loud and in public that he's perfectly happy to let his people eat grass as long as he has nuclear capabilities I've been living among his people - and though I've not actually seen anyone eating grass it looks to me as if there are more than a few who'd be very grateful for even that. While the various other politicians loll about in Mercedes parades and brand new white linen trousers the poorest children of their country go to schools that can't even manage to spell the text on their own signs correctly. The most recent offense I've seen - a local nursery school titled in bold blue freshly-painted letters "Nersery School.' The typos and abuses of grammar in print and media here are so blatant and so common I've actually started to wonder if they're made on purpose.

Our building goes without electricity on a regular basis at the whim of the landlord who may or may not transfer the money we've sent to the company that controls the frenzy of wires, wrapped haphazardly around a palm tree, supplying our current. The neighbors in the house next door inexplicably have control over our water in the same way and have lately taken to turning it off completely and escaping their house with what we've paid toward the bill.
There are no laws about this kind of thing, or, if there are I've not seen them put to use or even acknowledged.

Recently I heard the pleading of a voice, barely audible from among the chaos of what was a group of twenty men all shouting in Kannada. They stood over the cowering top-naked form who clung to the street he'd been flung to as if it could offer comfort or escape. From within the circle of twisted faces and raised arms the sound of the victim came pouring out, clearly begging to be released. But no one obliged him and they only moved in closer.

As the ring of abusers parted a bit I could see that the man had been stripped not only of his shirt but his pants as well. And then, incredibly, his underwear were also unceremoniously removed as he was beat about the head and shoulders a few more times before being released to run down the street completely naked, dusty, and humiliated, holding his hands to what was certainly an aching head.

We were told that he'd been caught trying to steal something - from where or whom I've no idea. And while this may be true I am still thoroughly unimpressed by the actions of my neighbors and the passers by who pitched in to this strange kind of vigilante justice. To have seen this treatment of another person, criminal or not, in full view of the entire neighborhood and all the children in it (who came running to form a border of excited aniticipation at the edge of their screaming fathers and uncles) was simply disgusting, and for me - the last straw.

India makes no sense to me - and frankly, after what I've seen lately I'm quite finished trying to figure it out.