India

What it's like

The neighborhood kids are constantly trying to sneak in through our garden gates, I'm pretty sure they think it's a park. The walls are far too high to climb, at close to six feet, so they creep up to the open spaces in the iron fence, little eyes peering in at us, transfixed and glassy, like watching television. I wonder what they're thinking, while they're staring like that. They try to coax Mooshy near enough to feed him their homework, which I always find ripped to shreds and spread all over the place; English and Math lessons half digested.

"Namaste..." I try on the old 'Oh-aren't-you-cute-yes-I-love-kids' voice I used to be so good at. I am careful and quiet in my approach; pretending they are flighty birds or wounded things, but they scatter, running into the road with nervous giggles, stopping only when safely behind an open door or a mother's skirt. If I have chocolate they last only slightly longer; long enough to reach their small brown hands forward before scurrying off to devour the prize. They stand in windows, craning their necks to get a better view into our massive fishbowl of a house. They call to their friends, and amass in a convergence of little hyper bodies and heads, practically falling the two or three floors down just to get a better view. I catch them out of the corner of my eye and a gust of wind has taken them all away at once, the curtains fluttering only slightly in evidence that they were ever there at all. I smile to no one before I draw my own curtains closed with a sigh. Our neighbors may as well be ghosts; nosy or otherwise.

We are, apparently, interesting but terrifying.

It's been like this pretty much the whole time I've lived abroad. I'm used to getting almost run into by cars, bikes, and motorcycles - the driver turned idiot in the distraction of blonde hair and tattoos and pale skin. I'm used to it, but that doesn't mean I like it. I'm used to people taking a good few minutes to stop and just stare at me from the road outside my garden and chat amongst themselves about whatever it is people say about the neighbors. They do not look away or change their facial expressions when I find their eyes on me. They are not ashamed in the least to be caught in the act.

They are ghosts, all of them. They may as well not even exist for all the impact they have on my life and I secretly resent them for not being what I expect of a neighbor - of any human in close proximity day in and day out.

Why can't they just smile and say "Hello."?

It's a strange kind of attention, the whispering and laughter that follows the local foreigner down the street. It was worse in India where I was just as likely to wind up in the society section of the local paper; as if what I did with my weekends was all that fascinating. They've seen you often enough the past few months but still can't seem to get over the sheer fact of your existence.

I try to be kind and patient and smile in an all-knowing, self-deprecating kind of way, like, yes, I understand I'm the weirdest thing you've possibly ever seen in your life. But then again, sometimes I just stick my tongue out at people.

With love, from India

In preparation for our leaving India in favor of Nepal The Mommy set about purchasing all the goodies she was always oohing and aahing over. Usually bent on stocking her own wardrobe with locally crafted garb she instead found herself indulging in an entire traditional Indian wardrobe for The (future-definite-just-not-sure-when-exactly) Baby.

With prices starting at a third of the cost to buy the same handcrafted garments in the States The Mommy went a bit mad in her selections and literally could not decide which designs to buy in which sizes - so she bought them all.

There is a collection of 2 piece pattus (heavily embroidered or mirror worked skirts with matching halter and backless tops) all made of gorgeously colored Indian sari silk, as well as a few salwar suits (matching cotton short sleeve tunic/pants sets) in vibrant mixed patterns edged in complimentary sari silk.

As much as we'd love to share images of our purchases with you, they've already been packed up for shipping to the U.S. along with a fun collection of hand carved and painted wooden figures of a number of the Hindu gods and goddesses, some handmade pillow covers from Sri Lanka that remind The Mommy of something Pottery Barn would try to pass off at ten times the price she paid in Colombo, and of course little plastic replicas of the local-to-Southeast Asia mode of transport: the autorickshaw, complete with plastic barefoot driver and fare meter.

Americans abroad

He came around the corner - or, his stomach came around the corner and the rest of him followed suit - an American abroad in India dragging his carry on behind him. Pasty white legs puffing out red with strain above the rims of too-tight black knee socks pulled up as close to the hem of his baggy shorts as possible, requisite Tevas strapped on his feet, he moved past me and spied the Subway sandwich shop. His eyes lit up with the recognition of something non-curried, non-rice, non-masala and I noticed that his head literally lurched forward suddenly as if trying to spur his hulking mass to move faster toward the intended target.

He slowed down just long enough to glance behind him, spying his Laura Bush look alike wife and bellowed in a perfect southern American accent, "Hey huhn?! These folks gots them a SUBWAY right here!"

His Laura, dressed in her best J.C. Penney travel suit with reddest red Mary Kay applied to lips and bluest blue applied to eyes bugging out in excitement beneath frosted bangs, hollered back with unrestrained joy, "Rights here in Delhi!? Well a'll be!" She then sped up her pace, flipping her flops noisily across the tiled floor and pulling at the hem of her elastic waistband in an attempt at getting it right up there under her bustline.

Rounding the corner to join her husband's stomach she brought her hands up to her face and wailed again, 'Well a'll be! Now doesn't that beat all? Looky there - a Subway in India!' her sentence trailing off into a reflection of shock and awe generally inspired by the seven wonders of the world and/or natural wonders/disasters.

They clasped hands momentarily before moving toward the deli counter together, feet in unison; the perfect harmony of a long-married couple fulfilling their common destiny. Soul mates in the pursuit of a hot turkey sub with extra-extra cheese, lots of mayo, foot long (each), with sodas, chips, and those horrid little dried out biscuits Subway calls cookies.

Once seated, and with a mouthful of food in mid-nosh, Laura gingerly touched her husband's shoulder and said quietly, all serious-like "I've just got to call Marilyn."
He nodded enthusiastically with a little sludge of lettuce and mayo dribbling down his chin as she dialed her Nokia with the flick of a wrist and took another bite while waiting for a connection...I imagined she was ringing through to New Hampshire or Texas (the Bible-Belt seemed much more likely given the blue eye shadow).

"Marilyn? Marilyn? Hmmmm??! Hallow? Hallow? Can you hear me now?!" she shouted across the ocean. "Marilyn, Marilyn, you're not going to believe this! I just knew I had to call you, I mean....blah blah blah....(all the reasons she thought it was important Miss Marilyn know about the Subway counter in Delhi, India) and we're eating them right now, in the airport!!"

I imagined Marilyn being impressed at least to a knee-slap at the faintest possibility India would have any clue about Subway and that her own shock and awe was followed by an intense question and answer period capped off with "Are there really camels and elephants in the streets?" which would naturally be followed by calls to all the other ladies in the quilting bee/tupperware party/coffee clutch/bowling league to be sure everyone was quite up to speed on the adventures of Laura and her husband's stomach in India.

I wonder if the same calls were made when they came across the gazillion McDonald's, Baskin-Robbins, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Domino's and Pizza Hut locations spread out all over the country.

The unmistakable smell of India - DKNY to the rescue

We'd already dropped close to four grand on flights to and from Anakara plus hotel reservations, so when we realized the tickets we'd booked put us in Delhi's international transit lounge for twelve hours each way and the alternate option of travelling through Doha would have added another thousand dollars at least, we thought for the sake of a bit of cost-savings we could handle it. From the moment we stepped off the plane in Delhi, breathing in that familiar smell of fresh-baked yuck that India is permeated with we knew it was a choice we would come to regret.

Sitting in the airport, where modernity is just starting to eke it's way into existence, we looked around at the few other tourists smiling and perfectly happy to be there for hours on end and understood that the charm of India has been lost on us entirely, forever.
We made a pact that day never to return and I dashed off to the duty free to spritz myself with all manner of liquid couture in an attempt at reclaiming my olfactories.

I picked up a bottle of Gucci, Envy Me - my current favorite fragrance and sprayed away until I was a walking cloud of perfume. Remembering that Hamid was sitting alone on a bench that smelled all too strongly of the hundreds of pairs of dirty feet that had been propped up there over time I picked up a bottle of DKNY Delicious for men and breathed it in. It was so truly the definition of delicious that I reached for the girly version and felt as if I'd died and gone to heaven. Whipping out the bank card, I invested a measly hundred on the Costco sized versions of each and made my way back to my darling who greeted me with desperate groans of stink-intensified boredom.

We spent the next couple of hours dousing ourselves in perfume and breathing through our sleeves.

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.

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.

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.

The time of your life

I wake up to the silence of an early Sunday morning. None of the usual hawking of wares or groans of pregnant milk cows fill the street below our balcony door - now permanently open to allow for as much air movement as possible in the growing heat. I use this blessed silence to my best advantage, going through a quick set of yoga poses before I even get out of bed.
I've learned to accept these small pockets of tranquility as a gift from the universe - just a little something to stave off the insanity of what has got to be the noisiest society I've ever lived in.
My apartment in the middle of downtown Seattle, near a busy fire and medic station, was dreamy compared to this place where the noise seems to start every day at sunup with the sound of laundry being done; a singular heavy smack of something wet attacking stone heralds a new day - smack, rinse, repeat. That smack gives rise to a honk as an autorickshaw comes to life and speeds off - startling a group of lumbering water buffalo, two large adults and two adolescents voice their grievances against the busy machine that sideswipes their casual lope down the road. And then the neighbors are playing Green Day as loud as they can possibly manage, followed by the perplexing choice of Bon Jovi circa 1985. It's as if someone somewhere had pushed a giant 'mute' button on the world around me for that blissful quarter of an hour.

As the city springs back to life I look out the window and stare at my favorite palm tree, the one just outside our house, the only one on our entire street. They've cut the rest down in the mad dash to build over what was probably once nothing more than a field with a little river through it. This is their version of progress. There is no such thing as conservation. I sit and love my little tree and thank it for doing double duty; being gorgeous and windblown while carrying the cable, internet, and electric wires into our house for us. It's stupid to fall in love with a tree, but I have anyway. The tree has it's own life, it's own drama - crashing the dead and falling-away branches through our neighbor's roof during each and every storm; throwing it's coconuts through windows and into the freshly gouged holes in the house next door.
It's silly, maybe, to fixate on a tree as something to be missed once we leave here but the truth is, that tree represents everything I loved about India in the first place.

When I returned to India three years ago after ditching my study abroad program, I was travelling alone. I was absolutely and completely free and unfetted by the rest of the world for the first time. I can still remember sitting in the veloured back seat of a huge white Ambassador (very quintessential to Southern India), with the windows open the breeze in my hair and a million possible experiences on the horizon. My thoughts nicely framed in the endless border of palm tree jungles along the roads. The knowledge that the small amount of money in my pocket at the time was enough to keep me moving, fed and comfortable for at least the next few months felt like all I'd ever needed. It was like medicine, that freedom; and yes, it was the best thing I've ever done for myself - leaving the world behind like that to marvel at palm trees.

I've lived here for quite a long time at this point and have mixed feelings about the leaving we are preparing to do. On the one hand India represents probably the most important era of my adult life thus far. The people, places, and things I've experienced here are absolutely unmatched by any other at any time in my life. But it no longer really feels like I'm even in India anymore. My life here has merged with or turned into something one can only classify as 'everyday'.

This place is such an interesting (sometimes maddening) mix of ancient culture crashing against and trying to mesh with whatever idea of the West has planted itself here. Even in the middle of the city there are women to be found walking down the street with bundles of firewood atop their heads, scavenged from city parks and sidestreets to be carried back home for the day's cooking. They stroll past McDonald's in bare mendhi'd feet, uninterested in the hoardes of India's generation-now gobbling down supersized Maharaja McChickens to the overused beat of Fifty Cent. While I've been here, India has not succeeded in reconciling itself to one direction or the other and seems doomed to continue on in this zig zag path toward the future; piling it's garbage and it's poor in broader and wider mounds than ever before.

In the end it doesn't matter what I think or feel about India. I was a guest, at best. At worst, an intruder; spying on a culture that kept me always on the outside simply for my own inability to find the balance in it's confounded reality.
It is what it is and it's time for us to go. With Nepal on the horizon I've got one foot out the door already anyway.

R.K. Charity Foundation, Bangalore

We learned recently of a group of 45 children in Bangalore, all epileptic, all without easy access to the proper care and treatment they need because they are among the millions of poor and afflicted in India. They live togther in one small facility, and they all sleep curled together on the floor at night.

Life is pretty damn hard in India already; I mean, God, it's hard for us and we're in the top five percentile of wealthy residents in this sprawling city. Even I struggle with the dirt, the heat, the stench of streets with overflowing gutters, the lack of civil service; I can hardly imagine what it is to live here and try to deal with all the human discomforts with literally nothing to speak of in the way of food, clothing, education, support - the programs and services for poor people, particularly disadvantaged children, are few and far between.

We recently visited one of the charities we will be donating our housethings and extra clothes to when we leave the country in less than two months (the other is CUPA - one of a very few animal rights/no kill shelters/medical facilities in Bangalore, let alone India.)

We spoke with Sumathi, the woman who runs the entire show at the R.K. Foundation, covering a list a mile long that must be managed solely on donations.

Sumathi is a simple woman; we found her sitting behind her desk dressed in a t shirt and jeans. She was surrounded by a gaggle of teenage boys, all originally from the street. She told us how these boys help run the office; four of them sat kneeling on the floor sorting clothes for the clothing bank, our own initial donations added to a colorful pile. I was redfaced with a mix of severely overheated joy and shame as one of them brought us each a glass bottle of cold Maaza (mango drink) to sip as we took a lesson from Sumathi and her project.

I have lived in India for over three years and fully intend to leave the place better than I found it - the R.K. Foundation and it's mission for 'Energizing Progress' is the perfect place to invest that intention.

We have already made arrangements for those 45 afflicted children to each have a new mattress to sleep on but the list of needs and the programs that are serviced is endless. A dollar in India equals 45 rupees - and it can go a ridiculously long way toward a ten kg bag of rice or ragi (a local, indigenous grain), a pair of shoes, a mattress, a school book, a vial of insulin....but it is of course, not nearly enough.

India has been something of a nemesis for me, but it has also given me the most precious things in my life: my darling Iranian husband and our little Indian street dog. It is from within India that the concept of karma arises, and keeps tabs on our good deeds and mistakes - this, at least, is one way to help even something out; the incredible disparity between the haves and have nots - a cliche, maybe, but a very real, very sad reality.

It begins and ends with each of us, and I am reminded yet again of the true meaning of gratitude.

These [are] were a few of my favorite things...

On the phone with Miss Jess working out the details of our impending arrival to Nepal, the more permanent one, where we get to be neighbors in Kathmandu for a few months - and the conversation shifts to discussion of whether or not to buy a washing machine once we get there.
I'm recalling the first three months in Bangalore, having left behind the amazing housekeeping and laundry ammas of Tamil Nadu I was faced with managing my dirty clothes on my own.
As the little (that's an understatement) house I was renting had no room for either kitchen supplies or laundry facilities I did what I'd learned to do on my earlier backpacking treks to Goa: buy a bucket and little sachets of Tide and wash things myself, by hand.
This became tedious after a few weeks and the detergent was murder on my hands, so I contracted a young mother from the village literally right across the street from my house to handle the laundry for me.

She charged less than two dollars U.S. to wash whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted - but I insisted on seven (a little over 300 rupees) hoping it would ensure the safe passage of my gear through whatever system she would use to get them clean.
I felt free the day I handed her a load of my brand new handmade bedsheets, Abercrombie pants and tank tops, and whatever else had been languishing in a now heaping pile of things needing to be washed, and I thanked her and paid her in advance (again hoping it would mean some kind of insurance against the possible destruction of my precious things).

Three days later she returned to me a pile of sun-dried, clean smelling laundry that made my heart sing. I'd found the solution to my problem (laziness coupled with a dislike of detergent-hands) and I vowed to plunk an equally desperate load on her the following day.

As I unfolded the laundry to place the crisp sheets on the bed and clean clothes on hangers the corner of one of my new embroidered bedsheets caught my eye - it was torn, badly. I quickly opened everything else to discover bizarre black stains on more than one of my favorite tee shirts, numerous inexplicable gaping holes in both the bedsheets, and the drawstring missing from my favorite cargo pants.

Raging, I marched over to the village, children clamboring at my heels; a foreigner in the village was big news and they raced ahead, leading the way to my victim.

When she opened the door I was close to tears and showed her each damaged item, one by one - expressing my disdain and explaining that I'd just paid her to literally ruin my things.

"What did you do!?" I demanded of her "Did you wash them with stones!!??"

She looked at me and smiled sincerely innocent, "Yes, of course, madam. And a special washing mixture that gets them extra clean."

She reached behind her, producing a plastic milk jug with the top cut off, full of a black oily looking liquid with a distinct sheen of soap bubble across the top. She pointed to a pile of large round rocks, just outside the door of her meager house - as if to explain away my misery with proof that she had in fact pounded my clothes to death. To more clearly make her point she plucked a small wire brush (something I'd have used to clean a charred grill) from her pocket and demonstrated in a violent swishing motion how she had 'scrubbed' the laundry.

Needless to say, we have a washing machine (dryers are essentially out of the question here as anything will air dry in about two seconds in the hot Indian sun). I'm thinking an investment in the same direction will be a good idea in Nepal as well.

The thing at the bottom of the stairs

Adventure is my middle name and I'm not afraid of very much, easily throwing myself into most anything with abandon. I've been punished, sometimes mercilessly, by the universe for the more unintelligent actions I would have called 'fun' at one time and I've quite learned my lesson and cooled my heels a bit, settling quietly into my marriage and happily focusing on love and work and getting the heck out of here. But I have one terrible phobia, one desperate fear that holds me somewhat hostage in my own home.

I am afraid of our refrigerator.
I will not touch it anywhere except for the two inches of plastic handle near the top. Whatever is perched on top or housed inside must be plucked to safety with the utmost care because in India, when it comes to construction and all the particulars that go along with that, there seems to be no real understanding of the laws of electricity and a little (apparently unimportant) thing called grounding.

Every time I touch that damn box it shocks me, hard and deeply painful. On the rare occaision I accidentally brush the metal sides I stagger away cursing the landlord, the architect, the electrician, whoever comes to mind as partially responsible for my growing fear and such an idiotic safety hazard.

Hamid seems immune to this phenomenon, reaching into the fridge without a care in the world; rather than whine to him every time I want something I just drink my water and wine room temperature.

The Cure

It's 97 degrees at almost three a.m. - our ceiling fan is set to 'hurricane'. We are grateful the electricity has not gone out today - when it does we suffer like veal calves in a crate. During the random and all-too-often power outages I act out the melodrama of my death by melting and the only thing Hamid can move in his heat inspired lathargy are his eyes. He watches me flop about tut-tutting at my complaining as I go on drawing a sweat with the effort.
Finally, I will give up my impromtu dying to go sit in the bathroom with the cold water tap running at full speed.
Ironically, on these days, we often do not have cold water - the sun has baked it all steaming hot in the massive black plastic solar water tank on our roof. Oh the joys.

I have been feeling sorry for myself lately that I have nothing to wear (you can choose not to believe this as it is a blatant denial of the truth) but it doesn't matter because it is too hot to put much of anything on anyway. I wear a pencil skirt pulled up as a mini dress and call it good. Fortunately, we will escape the most dreaded heat a good month before it starts to get really, really hot - sometimes reaching 110 degrees.

It's been this way for three weeks and will continue to get progressively hotter until we must amp up the fan to 'typhoon' and sit limp before our laptops, listlessly manipulating our heaviness through the pudding thick heat.
It's only March but the Indian summer is coming, and coming fast.

There are a number of things we never bought for this house because from the fifth or sixth month into our cohabitation we were somewhere between convinced and simply hoping we would be leaving soon. One of those stupidly unpurchased things is a cooler - not particularly common in the average Indian home, but something I'm kicking myself for neglecting to invest in. For three years I have been convincing us that we didn't need an A/C - we're leaving soon, no need, I said. But now, as we are again at risk of sweaty fake dying during the eight or so weeks left in our little visit to India, we will buy one.

Then what to do with that big metal and plastic thing when we leave? What to do with any of our clunky household stuff when we leave?
In a nation where the neighbors can be spied going through your garbage to see if you've thrown anything useful away, you don't sell anything...you donate. All of it.
We will give it all away, every last bit, to this place and this place, knowing we will at least save another family from melting once we've gone.

Just put up a map and throw a dart...