<<     May 2007     >>

I, Martha

Well, at the ripe old age of 33 I'm officially past my prime - at least lately. I've gone to sleep at about 8:30 every night since we've arrived here in Kathmandu; wonderfully exhausted and flopping into bed, certain to wake up again at an equally early time the following morning; 6 a.m. today.
I guess it has something to do with the endless flights of marble stairs and expansive floors and balconies I've been sweeping and washing, or just the task of moving the contents of our suitcases up and down three floors as I decide what goes where.

It's great exercise, taking care of a house this size - and I feel a sudden scary kinship with Martha Stewart as I place white candles in rows of silver metal bowls down the center of our darkwood dining room table, carefully wrap the ugly cushions with handmade beaded Nepali pillow covers, measure windows and doors for those flowing white must-have curtains, or select matching kitchen towels in greens and blues (hung creatively to hide whatever strange food-art the previous tenants - a Japanese family I've heard - made on that particular wall).
It's alot of work, but an equal amount of fun, and the domestic goddess in me is reborn and happily wiped out.

I only wonder how long it will last.
I'm famous for growing tired of washing dishes and simply tossing them out in favor of a new set, or letting the laundry pile up while insisting that we can just *buy* new boxers for my darling rather than go to all the trouble of actually running the machine. (Should be no shock to me then that when I did unpack our things and nicely folded Hamid's unmentionables he had a solid 32 pairs - my own closet languishes as yet with piles and piles of everything waiting to be hung on the shiny silver hangers we purchased at Bhat Bahteni, the local Kathmandu version of Target but with a really first-rate section of imported wines and cheeses.)

I'm even cooking (gasp!) and have made tiger prawns with spinach tortellini, salads drenched in balsamic, thick and fragrant french toast, and well...OK, that's about it. But in all honesty it's only a matter of time before I defer to the delivery service offered by Kotetsu, the Japanese sushi place on Lazimpat just up the hill from our Samakushi neighborhood, and live solely on raw tuna and miso soup - not a bad way to manage life at all if you ask me, especially when one considers that the fish is flown in twice weekly after being hand selected in Japan by the owner himself.

All in all, settling in has been a wonderful experience. Waking up in this house surrounded by crisp bright sunshine, flowers and rose bushes, and twittering birds (a sound I have long missed while living in Bangalore) is something akin to a daily spa holiday and lends itself nicely to my laissez-faire take on what needs to be done and when - a truly modern version of what it is to be a homemaker.

I, Martha? Hardly. But it's a heck of a lot of fun to play house.

The Amazing Race home edition

I can breathe now, so I can tell you this story - finally - happily relaxing in the second floor bedroom-now-office of our gigantic airy Kathmandu house...

Have you ever watched The Amazing Race? I never had before I lived in Bangalore but with nothing much better to do some afternoons I quickly became addicted. It was the one show that could make me cry, oddly enough - from the excitement of watching people flit about the globe in a panic I would well up with totally spontaneous tears. Not full fledged crying, mind you...but the sort of being overrun with emotion that will tend to affect a girl once a month or so for no other obvious reason than she's losing yet another egg to posterity. Except this show, with it's desperate conversations at airline counters and frustrated negotiations with foreign taxi drivers just really brought it out for me no matter when. Bizarre, I know. In any case, I've thought often about how fun it would be to take part in the show and really kick some *ss when it comes to getting around on limited cash and language skills. And as it always seems wont to do (making my wishes reality), the universe ponied up a mini-version just for us just this past week as we prepared to leave India in favor of Nepal.

We'd been through Delhi to Kathmandu before and were very much aware of how insanely long it can take to get from the domestic airport to the international version in the city of wall to wall heat, traffic, and people and so this time we wisely booked a ticket that would allow us a three hour layover in Delhi - giving us time to clear customs with Mooshy and get from one flight to the next with as little stress as possible.
Well, I couldn't have known it when I woke up at four thirty a.m. so that we could have a leisurely final departure from our Bangalore house - but The Amazing Race home edition was on.

We were greeted first thing in the morning at the Air Sahara counter with a slap to the bankbook, having to pay an extra $250 U.S. for our exceptionally heavy baggage at check in (dog included) but took it in stride and went to sit in the lounge for the sixty minutes until our flight was intended to depart Bangalore.

Air Sahara had recently become our favorite choice in airlines for their excellent business class accomodations (I will never return to coach for as long as I live) and their assurances that Mooshy would be handled with care and caution. The thing we didn't yet know about this particular carrier is that they are famous for being late.
Our sixty minute wait turned into three hours altogether and when we finally boarded the plane we just knew we were in for trouble at Delhi, with an estimated one hour and fifteen minutes remaining to collect our baggage, the dog, get through customs, book a taxi with room for the three of us and all our stuff, and get to the Indira Gandhi International airport my stomach started churning in anxious anticipation, but we sat back and pretended it would be just fine - I mean what can you do about much of anything at thirty thousand feet anyway?

Arriving in Delhi a full two and a half hours later than planned Hamid waited for our bags and the dog while I went in search of the Air Sahara floor manager who was conspicuously absent from his assigned post.
A silent row of six or seven of our cotravellers who had or were about to miss connecting flights sat patiently near the empty kiosk while I tromped around looking for someone to fulfill the promise our cabin crew had given of 'personal attention to this matter once you've landed.'
Finding an Air Sahara rep took some asking around, and when he finally, sheepishly showed his face I knew I would either have to cow to this mess and spend another night in India (not an option, no way, no how) or break out the vocals in favor of getting some business done.

I chose the latter and within fifteen minutes we were equipped with a ready taxi, paid for by the airline and set on speed-racer to deliver us through the 120 degree heat to a waiting crew of four Air Sahara employees at the second airport who then personally walked us through security and customs in about ten minutes.
The best part? Because they'd kept us so long in both cases there was no time to weigh (and therefore charge us for) our overly stuffed luggage on the second flight so we ended up not having to pay the $250 in fees a second time.
Sinking into the cool, wide business class seats with freshly prepared, sweet-salted-lime juice in hand we wiped the sweat from our respective brows and sat back for the final one hour and fifteen minute flight to Kathmandu with a huge sigh of relief.

I guess, in the telling of it, it loses some of the urgency and I'm lazy to type in the millions of details (like that when we first got off the plane in Delhi we were literally passed from one grounds crewman to the next - you could just see in their faces that they had no policy at all for handling such a botched job and were looking only to move us on and out in a 'better him than me' kind of passing the buck, so that eventually we'd have to harass someone else over our increasingly emergent situation. Or, how the six or seven people who had previously been sitting so politely just waiting for someone to help them get to their connecting flights on time, actually got to where they needed to go because we did make some noise...otherwise, I imagine they'd still be sitting there clutching their carry-ons, waiting...)

So, we made it. We stepped off the plane into the blissfully cool sunshiney Kathmandu air and everything has been lovely ever since. We made it to the pit stop, not quite fresh faced, but most definitely in first place and although there was no TV crew to document our triumph we're quite pleased with ourselves over the whole affair anyhow.
And that $250 we didn't have to pay Air Sahara in the turmoil of our very late arrival, that's gone to furnishing the new house a bit - so there was even a little cash prize to be had, just like on the TV version.

Next stop: Kathmandu, Nepal

I've been working the past few days at stuffing our life into four suitcases - paring everything down to the absolutely-can't-live-without. I look around at all the things we've accumulated the past few years and am sort of wistful about the days when everything I owned fit into the large green hiking pack I used to lug around India...talk about the bare essentials.

It's amazing what you can live without when you must - and I'm laughing now at the downtown Seattle closet, not to mention the apartment, I once filled to the brim with all the junk I thought was absolutely necessary to make me happy, a closet bigger than the main room of our current house.

I'm still a crow - coveting all the shiny things that catch my eye, no matter where I am in the world. But knowing now that I'm going to have to cart whatever it is I think I want or need around from country to country works wonders on the will power.

Friends and family, knowing of my penchant for decorating even the most temporary of spaces, are asking me what I'm planning to do with the 25+ rooms in the Kathmandu house and I just shrug and reply 'Overlong, sheer, white curtains on every window and door, and that's it.' I've freed myself from the need to fill my space, my soul (whatever it is we're trying to fill with so much stuff) with things. I've got my husband, my Mooshy, and more than a few but not too many lovely things to wear. Enough is enough is enough and we are blessed with exactly whatever it is we're meant to have at any given moment; even if we can't manage to see it that way, especially with the media and society working so hard to convince us otherwise.

There will be no television - who needs it with the Himalayas off the balcony; there will be no artwork on the walls - who needs it with a rose garden the size of a football field; there will be a whole lot of nothing - and who needs much else anyway? A big empty house filled with billowing white curtains, fresh roses, music and joy and that sounds just fine to me.

Four days and counting. Here goes nothing, again, as always...

The Stone Age

Hmmm, well let's see....two days back in India after a fabulously relaxing holiday in Nepal at the gorgeous suite in the quaint and cozy Hotel Courtyard (ask for room 201 and order the basil encrusted prawns to enjoy alongside a stiff mixed whatever while you're nestled in at their comfortable and heavily fortified library/lounge) and it's back to the kind of reality I thought only existed in developing nations. Oh wait...right...

Yesterday we didn't have water, the day before that no internet, today we don't have cable. I'm just grateful that today we have electricity and internet so we can get some work done. Sheesh.

The irony is, Nepal is somewhere on that list of 'developing nations' as well - perhaps is considered even more a part of the third world than India for some reason sure to be provable as totally irrelevant in the scheme of political subterfuge that is modern day mapdrawing and nation labelling - but it's cleaner, more sophisticated, has gentler, quieter people and is more absolutely fabulous all the way around. Of course, it's much much smaller than India and is surrounded by one of the most incredible sights I've ever seen from a plane upon takoff (ie - the Himalayas...talk about wow.) Anyway, my relief comes in less than ten days when we hit the skies again and head off for our new home in Kathmandu. Then, once and for all, I can stop whinging around all the time about not being able to brush my teeth for lack of functioning indoor plumbing or read a book after six p.m. because it's too damn dark in here.

Princess with a palace to match, revisited

In a darkwood bar in Kathmandu, Nepal - walls painted a royal, deep red, faded spot lighting showing off local handcarved goddesses, and Johnny Cash filtering through the speakers - I found nirvana, or at least a little pathway in the right direction.
I'm technically in the middle of nowhere but I'm definitely somewhere...and I don't want to leave.
The bartender is inventing drinks for me based on whatever my whim of the moment may be. My husband is talking shop and politics with the Australian, Sasha, who leaves tomorrow for a Himalayan trek and like many, has just extended his stay in Nepal by two more weeks.
The film crew here to document Everest strolls in and out with portable boom and camera slung over their shoulders, Russian is spoken, people greet eachother in what I recognize as the global travellers' standard of "Hello, where are you from? Where have you been to? Where are you going?" There really is no such thing anymore as borders, it's more obvious from this vantage point, and is one of the most beautiful realities I've witnessed in this grand adventure that is my dream turned life.

With my best friend at one side sipping neon kamikazes and my darling on the other exploring all the possible configurations Jack Daniels is good for I enjoy my Bailey's straight and begin the inevitable mental math that will finally work out a way to stay here - right here - for as long as is humanly possible.

Kathmandu is a literal breath of fresh air after the muggy, dirty heat of India and we had decided within the first two seconds, standing on the tarmac outside our little plane, surrounded by low green hills and snow capped Himalayan peaks, that this is exactly where we need to be the next few months. With only five full days to enjoy the local flavors and shopping of the busy Thamel tourist district as well as find a house I bounced between adventurous elation and quiet anxiety over the how and what of making it happen on a more permanent level. We asked around about rental homes and even checked out the expat bulletin board at a nearby supermarket but came up with nothing encouraging in the way of a possible home.

Our last morning there, resigned to another hotel stint upon our return, I opened the day's paper at random to find the classifieds staring me in the face next to an ad for this month's Fem Face - a sad looking, heavily makeup-ed girl in poorly matched too-tight white pants, just plain wrong stilettos, and a pink stretchy clubbish top embellished with giant rhinestones, intending to exude sex and freshness and getting away with none of it at all. With only four listings for rental homes, one in beautiful but illegible (for me) Nepali script, I thrust the paper at Pujan, Miss Jess' Nepalese husband and silently begged the universe for at least two good possbile options to choose from. Just two...just show me two good little simple houses and I'll pick one, I promised.

Pujan hung up the phone and announced that an agent was on his way to the hotel. He had four houses in our budget to show us, one of them quite near the hotel.

Within an hour we were making our way down the impossibly narrow streets, two taxis carting the four of us and our property liason toward a future I imagined fervently. I thought of small kitchens, little rooms, a single bathroom with clean water and enough space outside for Mooshy to stretch his little hyper legs. I would have been content with a two bedroom house, I'd even have been happy - after two years in our tiny Indian home anything was going to be a step up and I was in no position to demand much of the universe on such short notice.

We arrived at the end of an even narrower dirt road, large homes sprawling behind compound walls on every side and a wrought iron fence opened in front of us to reveal a palace set back from the street by an immense garden full of rose bushes.

I stared up and counted the levels of a house I immediately mentally dubbed 'The White House' - four floors, all of them sporting balconies and full length windows. I looked at Hamid, he was counting too, his eyes glinting with uncertainty and excitement in the afternoon sun.

We approached the house on foot, passing a beautiful black statue of The Buddha, and I asked the agent who confirmed for me for the second or third time in the past thirty seconds that it was indeed a 'Complete house? Single family?'

So it took about an hour - we found our 'little' Nepalese house: a seven bedroom, four bathroom, four floor mini-mansion with garden to match. We've paid the first three months (something equal to a one month rental fee for a modern one or two bedroom apartment in a good Seattle neighborhood or a bad studio in SoHo).
Now, we're booking tickets to return, packing (of course I already had us half packed weeks ago), and planning gorgeous balcony-based habachi feasts and parties in the big room on the third floor of what will always now be known as 'The White House' and promises room to stretch and breathe in ways I could never have imagined.

Looking back now I wonder why I ever worry about these things at all in this ask-and-you-shall-receive existence. I've only minutes ago wished for rain...and it starts falling in our Bangalore neighborhood almost as if on command. Hamid shakes his head in amazement and asks me why I don't just go ahead and wish for a Porsche.

But I don't know how to play chess!

"Ah, so you enjoy travel planning and the ultimate in time management challenges?" it seems the universe is saying.

Point of fact, I do.
I like that we've been able to grow our little business to six times it's birth weight in just over a year - all while living in the third world, managing the United States visa application process for my Iranian husband and enjoying regular holidays to exotic places.

"Ha, ha!" the universe replies, "Try this on for size..."

We've just received word that we are wanted in Ankara, Turkey on June 7 for yet another round of truth or dare with the American Consul. I'm hoping this go-round is less um, mean and more...shall we say, on the positive side of the possibilities coin. This is great news, we're excited, we're ready...but we're also leaving tomorrow for a holiday/house-hunting and fact-finding trip to Kathmandu, Nepal only to return to Bangalore on the 9th for just under two weeks of crazy office hours, managing the donation and distribution of our household goods, booking flights, posting three massive packages to the States for storage (ironically full of darling traditional Indian clothes not for ME but for our children who as yet, do not exist) closing our lease and fighting for the deposit with a landlord who leans more toward 'thief' than property owner, and securing Mooshy's required travel documents. All of this absolutely must be accomplished by the 22nd-ish when we will then leave India altogether to move into a hopefully-already-found house in one of Kathmandu's better neighborhoods. That leaves us approximately ten days to get the new house in order, find a didi (Nepali for 'maid') and a driver, find a five-star doggy hotel, set up what I'm told is fabulously reliable wi-fi, catch up on a bit of work, book our tickets to Ankara, get packed, and go.

Phew.

I do firmly believe in the notion that the universe isn't going to dish out something I just can't handle - so even the most impossible of tasks really isn't all that complicated however frantic it might make me feel. And I've been looking forward to seeing Istanbul and the island of Antalia, not to mention the fact that Turkey is at the top of the shopping destinations list for the Middle East, running a close second to Dubai.

First things first: we sojourn to Nepal for a holiday. We breathe, we rest, we toodle around, we drink the bottle of Bailey's Miss Jess has told me Pujan hid behind the hotel bar just for moi, and we find a house.
As to the rest of it, I'm thinking we'll just amp up that good old fashioned multi-tasking talent to full speed ahead and hopefully land on our feet.