A more direct conversation

As per my previous post, Prasad's indirect, subtle approach did not work with the driver. Yesterday, Prasad laid it out. The driver immediately said that he showered every day and that he was clean but that he didn't use any cologne or powder. I would have just died, I really could not have given this kind of feedback to anyone, I have a hard enough time giving my team members feedback about their work, forget about personal hygiene. Anyway, Vijay took it well and did not seem to take offense, let's hope he doesn't quit. Today, the only smell in the car was the scent of a new car.

Prasad and I carpool back and forth everyday. Since our home is quite close to office, this has worked out really well. We leave shortly after Sindhu and Rushil get on their schoolbus and we leave our offices shortly after they get home from school. Since we have a cook and a maid, our evenings are actually quite sane as compared to San Jose where we were juggling cooking, cleaning and making sure their homework is done. Now my main focus is their homework.

Next week is Diwali and the kids have the week off from school. Prasad and I are also taking the week off and we're going to Agra, Jaipur and Ranthambore. Sindhu is very excited to see the Taj Mahal, the rest of the places, she can't quite identify with yet. Her interest was piqued though when she heard that Jaipur is referred to as the "Pink City". My office is distributing sweets to all the employees for Diwali and they are also organizing a potluck at the office. This is apparently the norm in India, they also gave us the option to donate the box to school children which I thought was a great idea. They specified that everyone should come in "ethnic" attire, I am often puzzled when that word is used here. Why is Indian clothing referred to as "ethnic", shouldn't western clothing be referred to that?

An unsuccessful discussion

If you recall from the last past post that our driver, Vijay has a body odor problem. As I mentioned, I would let Prasad handle this. So on Friday, Prasad decided to bring it up with him in an indirect way. He started off with, where do you buy your clothes, we wanted to buy you some clothes for Diwali (Did we?!?....) Vijay was a bit uncomfortable with the question and didn't really answer it. Then Prasad mentioned that in India, it's more sweaty here than in the US and that perhaps he could buy him some deodorant. Vijay said sure and then changed the topic and brought up that one of our friends will be back this Sunday. Vijay's brother drives for that friend. Now I'm not sure if he didn't get what Prasad said or just decided to to change the subject. On Saturday he smelled pretty much the same way. ...

First day at work

Not too much of an eventful day since we had a half day orientation session. There were quite a few things that were new for me and quite different from the benefits received in the US. Another colleague of mine was joining on the same day so we hit it off right away. It turns out that she also moved from California, she has 3 daughters, one of which is 8!! and she lives in the same gated community as we do!!! How's that for a coincidence. Anyway, we're already planning to have our kids meet, have them play tennis together and we can carpool. I also met another woman at the orientation, she just moved from Mumbai and she is a producer! She was working for MTV back in Mumbai and joined the video team, it was nice to meet someone from the non-techie world.

The office building is very nice, it's like being the US but even hipper. There are always folks sitting in the hallways chatting about something or another, seems somewhat more relaxed of an atmosphere. There are a lot of young people. I ran into quite a few folks I knew so that made me feel at home. The women mainly wore Western clothing which kind of bummed me out as I think I'll be the odd one out if I wear Indian clothing, what's with that ?!?

In the afternoon I met with my manager. She is quite friendly and we got off to a good start. The best part of the day was that I got driven to and from work and I actually read my novel during the car ride, how's that for relaxing! The only issue is that my driver has BO and I'm not sure how to handle this. We do need to do something about it since it can be nauseating since we're stuck in the same vehicle for extended periods of time and other than that, he's reliable and his driving is fine so far. He just started a week back and he's ultra quiet and hard to read so it makes it more difficult to communicate this uncomfortable feedback, I'll let Prasad handle it. :-)

Overall it was a good day, I got home a little later than I hoped to. Sindhu was all upset when I got home since she wanted to invite a friend over and she was chased away by their dog, she almost slammed her fingers while closing their gate and she lost track of Rushil and it started to rain. Poor thing was very stressed when she got home and she was relieved to see Rushil safely at home. She has developed more of a sense of responsiblity towards Rushil than she ever had in the US, it's amazing to see the change in her. The maid was also worried as she wasn't sure if she should allow the kids out. The cook wasn't quite sure what to cook, I forgot to inform him so I do need to get a better handle on things tomorrow.

Pictures of our home

In case you're curious, I took a few pictures of the house. I'll add more once our master bedroom and office/guest bedroom have been cleaned up.

International Day at Indus

I could not attend Internation Day at Indus as I was travelling to the US but I heard it was a grand success from Prasad. Each grade picked a country to represent. Sindhura's 4th grade class picked Turkey and Rushil's kindergarten (prepII) picked Similarities between India and Pakistan. Rushil's class did a short skit and he had 2 lines. He was the front of the Pakistan line and had to boldly say 2 lines, Prasad said he was crisp and clear and apparently not nervous at all. Sindhura's class also did a skit and she played the narrator part and wore a scarf to represent Turkey. After all the skits were over, the parents visited the exhibits, Prasad said the whole production was very impressive!

My Tweezer Experience

I couldn't find my tweezers for the last couple of days so I decided now that I have a van and new driver, today would be the day. I honestly did not think a tweezer would be so hard to find but boy was I wrong. It's amazing how many stores I have to visit to find the simplest things. I couldn't find a tweezer in any of the big grocery/department stores. First of all, a tweezer is called a plucker in India. This I found out after visiting the 3rd store and was acting out plucking my eyebrows to 2-3 people in each store till someone put me out of my misery and told me what they actually call it here. Communication problem is a mainstay for me here. Even if I speak a common language, my accent or their accent or the words I use or they use cause me to ask my questions multiple times to multiple people. Finally they direct me to the store manager who has the best communication skills and usually is able to understand what I'm asking. Anyway, finally one woman took pity on me and told me to go to one of the small fancy bangle/gift stores you find at most little corners. It took all of 1 minute to pull it out and it cost 10 rupees, I ofcourse bought 2 of them...

The same thing happened the other day, I was looking for pan leaves, small packets of tumeric/kumkum powder and supari to give as part of the goody bags for the Bommala Koluvu and again none of the large stores had it. I had to go to a pan store which I guess made sense, but those places are awful as they sell cigarettes too and all the men were wondering what I was doing there. Where do people buy pan leaves for pujas, I have no idea :-) And then I went to tiny stall where they sell provisions and he had all the other items I needed. I was a little annoyed and wondered why I couldn't just buy everything in one store like Spar or Total but then I realized that it's really nice to go to your local stall and develop a relationship with them and buy small provisions there rather than run to a large supermarket. The shopkeepers get to know you and when you are short a few paisas, they ask you bring it next time and they start ordering the items you like and remember what you bought the last time. It's nice to get personalized care.

What I'm squeamish about

Two things have always freaked me out in India, the bathrooms and the bugs. Although, the bathrooms in our home are pretty decent and we have these windows with these netted screens, we still see quite a few bugs especially in the evenings. I'm always going around closing open doors to keep the bugs out but it's not that easy. When people come over in the evenings, I'm the first to close the door as soon as they leave so we can prevent any bugs or lizards from entering the home. I may seem anal to folks but I need to preserve my sanity. Today I saw another lizard, it was very tiny one. I asked Prasad if he could do anything about it and he said I would just have to live with it. Then I saw this bug floating across the tv screen in the dark, I have no idea what it was but it freaked me out. We have an open field next to our home as they have not yet built a home there yet. I was told by the security guard that the previous renters saw snakes coming out of that field, this is really something I needed to know :-( Anyway, I think this is the one thing that will take me a long time to get over so please don't be upset with me when I close the door on you when you leave or enter my home at nighttime :-)

Seattle, the new twins and San Francisco visit

I had to make a quick trip to the US to get my employment visa to be able to start work on Oct 15th. I was quite weary about making a trip back since we just moved here recently and would have preferred to make a trip next year some time. But given I had no choice, I decided to make the best of it and boy did I have fun! First, I stopped in Seattle, I had originally planned to stay there for 2 days but given that the visa was only supposed to take one day to get, I decided to postpone my trip by 2 more days. That was the best thing I did, although my SF portion was short and I had a bit of a panic attack when I found out the India visa office would be closed for Mahatma Gandhi Day, all in all it turned out ok and I got my visa in the end. In Seattle, I visited Sarathy, Seema and the twins. My parents and Ravi were also there the same weekend, my parents actually surprised Sarathy and Seema. I had such a wonderful time with everyone, I wish I had brought my camera and posted pictures of the Seattle leg. I was fortunate enough to meet Seema's parents too. Arjun and Ahisha were an absolute delight, I forgot what it was like holding an infant and feeding them. They are just so cute and cuddly and you could just hold them in your arms for hours on end. It was so easy to get sucked into all the feeding/pooping/gas discussions that were plaguing them for the past few weeks. Anyway I was thrilled to see how well the babies were doing and could definitely appreciate how tough it is to raise twins. I was also able to make a short trip to see Lakshmi, Gopal, Arnav and Samhita. Although I was there only one evening, we had a great time catching up. Samhita had especially changed over the last 3-4 months, she had grown and was talking quite a bit. Arnav and her were having a great time playing with each other.

I was then off to SF. I spent one night a different place so I could see everyone. I managed to see mostly everyone except the guys from the two playgroups, other than TK and Subhas. I spent a night an Manju's, one night at Sri Devi's, two nights at Krithiga's and one night at Kavita's. They all showed me such a good time and were wonderful hosts. Sindhu sent me letters to give to many friends so I had to drop in at many of friend's homes. Many of them wrote back to her and she was thrilled to get the letters and small gifts they sent her. The 5 days were like one big "Girl's Night Out" I had a such a wonderful time. I even managed to get in some shopping and a quick trip to the office too. Much of the discussion in the US was surrounding the elections and I also saw the Vice-Presidential debate while I was there. The economy was another huge topic of discussion. In India, the topics in the news are so varied but in the US, the climate has changed a lot in the past few months and so the elections and the economy are the main topics. I do now see that the economic climate has also changed in India and we're hearing about more doom and gloom here too. Prasad and the kids did wonderfully without me, I was quite impressed with how well they managed considering he had about 5 days of holiday to fill up too. I now feel I could do this again. I felt at home in the US and it was to be driving again. The first day back in India took some adjustment but now I'm back into the swing of things again.

The Van

So our van arrived a few days ago but the driver we were hoping to go with (Manjunath) for those of you that met him didn't work out. He was charging us Palm Meadow prices so we decided to find someone else. In the meantime, our van (Toyota Innova) was sitting in our driveway for a few days since neither one of us was willing to drive. Luckily, Prasad's friend, Sanjay had a driver whose brother was looking for a driver position so we decided to give him a shot and try him out for a few weeks. In honour of our first day out in our new van, we decided to go to the temple. We have never done this for any of our other cars but we thought we should for this one. When we entered the temple, I had taken off my shoes but once the pujari started the "van puja", we had to go into parking area. I was out of my comfort zone of "not wearing shoes" so I asked Prasad if it was ok if I kept mine on. He "ofcourse" said it was fine but when the priest started the puja, he told me to take off my shoes. For those of you that know me, I'm very squeamish about bugs, dirt,etc.. so this was not something I wanted to do but did I really want to offend the priest. Anyway, we started with the puja and I must admit I found it a bit odd to be worshipping a van but we did it. The priest was more comfortable speaking in Kannada so he got our driver to do most of the rituals which was great because I wasn't about to break a coconut (it took me 3 -4tries at our gruha pravesam with Amma) nor was I going to put 4 lemons below the tires, who knows what would be under the tires. We're supposed to drive over the lemons as part of the puja. At the end the priest did a final prayer and asked Sindhura and Rushil's nakshatra which we didn't know, I could barely remember mine and I'm not a 100% it's the right one. It didn't help that the kids were scared to put their hands on the harathi and they didn't know that they should take the prasadam with their right hand. I guess everyone knew that we obviously didn't take our kids to enough temple visits :-) All in all it was a success and we ended our first day with the van at Dominos Pizza. Now we need to start planning all those weekend visits as this is reason we convinced ourselves to get a van instead of a smaller car.

Rushil

Rushil is really having a grand old time in India. There are quite a few boys in the neighbourhood and although they are older than Rushil, they don't seem to mind including him in their group. His friends drop by after school to pick him up, it's quite cute! Since they are older, this seems to be a bigger attraction for Rushil. He has become quite snobby and won't hang out with anyone if they are younger than him and ofcourse if it's a girl, he won't have anything to do with her. The boys hang out at the park, or they play soccer or they go to each other's homes. Today I asked Rushil what he liked about India and he said he liked the toy stores, the mall (apparently Forum Mall is the best mall in the world), Indian candy and now his playmates...

Dasara and Bommala Koluvu

I got back from a fabulous trip to the US on Tuesday morning. Luckily while I was out, Prasad went a store an hour from our place and picked up a "do-it-yourself Bommala Koluvu steps kit". He apparently struggled with it quite a bit as the parts didn't fit together very well but somehow he pulled it off. Dasara was on the 9th of October and the last day to invite folks over so on Thursday evening. I invited some neighbors, children/parents from Indus, some friends we knew from the US and of course, Shilpa, Chanti Babai, Lakshmi Pinni and Prachet. I know some folks will laugh but my cook took the day off since it was a holiday and I only knew about this the day before the event. Initially I was quite panicked but it turned out fine in the end. I did however have to move my noodle upma out of the menu as it turned out quite soggy.. I guess the pitfalls of not cooking often enough :-) I had been collecting quite a few idols/dolls over the few past months during our stay in India so for the first time, I didn't need to fill up the shelves with the kid's toys. Rushil had a great time, there were at least 7 boisterous boys playing in Rushil's room. At one point, Rushil walked out and told me they were all making a mess in his room and when I told him I'd help him clean it up, he walked back to the group happily. Sindhu was a little disappointed as there was only one girl and she was much younger than her. Her other friend in the community was out of town so we'll need to find more girls for Sindhu to play with. Shilpa/Babai/Pinni and Prachet stayed over for dinner aftewards, it got a bit late since some folks dropped in a bit later. We pulled off our first social gathering in our new home.