Off to Trivandrum

We're going for a short trip to Trivandrum tomorrow, we're taking the kids to see an Ayurvedic doctor. We're planning to go to Kovalam beach and see some other sights. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Our front door neighbors

Across the street from our house, there is another house being built. For the past few months, we have seen this house go from being a hole in the ground to a huge structure. Towards the back of the plot, there is a small temporary structure and a family lives there. This is a migrant family and both the husband and wife help with the construction of the house and at night, they sleep there. They have two young children around 1 and 3 years old. Very cute children and it's amazing to see how the little 1 year old survives in the harsh environment. Our immune systems cannot even compare to that that little 1 year old's. Everyday when I pass by, I look at them and they stare back at me. I'm not sure why I stare at them but I have this inane curiousity of how they live. Unlike in the US, in India, you have a daily reminder of how much disparity there is between us and folks like the family across the street. The children will not be able to go school, the parents move from constructing one house to another and do not have the means to register their child at a new school every 8 months or so. I remember one weekend, they were building the roof and there were many other construction families that joined them with their children. These were much olderchildren, 7-12 year olds and a few of them were helping with the construction. I was asking my neighbors if this could be labelled as child labour and they said, the kids have to be there with their parents and they help out rather that sitting idle. I am not sure how clearly the lines are drawn. There are a few places where schools have been opened for migrant children but 95% of the time, I don't think they get that opportunity. The children don't have shoes, they have torn clothing but they look healthy so I think they are eating well. We give them food from time to time and Sindhu and Rushil have given them some of their toys. Everyday, we're reminded of how much we have materially and still don't think it's enough. I wonder if after living here for a year or more, I will not longer be bothered by this. The most amazing thing is that they are all happy, probably happier than we are so who am I to feel sorry for them because ultimately, are we all not striving for happiness in the end?

Going Green!

I have never really been an environmental activist, yes I recycled and did try to use less resources whenever possible but I probably could have done better on that front. The other day, two of Sindhu's older friends, Uma and our neighbor, Maitri dropped by for a school project and had me fill a survey on my usage of plastics. Although I'm not an abuser by any means, I definitely could do better. Here are some of the green initiatives that fell into place after we moved here without much effort.

1) I was surprised to see how many solar panels are used in India. In the house we're renting, all the hot water geysers are powered by solar panels, and I see the same panels on the rooftop of most of the houses in our community. I wonder why we don't use solar panels as prevalently in California, we get plenty of sun over there too.

2) Our community harvests rain water at the clubhouse and reuses the water for the gardens. Our neighbor also harvests rain at her home, unfortunately our house was not designed that way. Not everyone thinks it is a priority.

3) Although plastic bags are given at the super market and vegetable stores, we reuse them as garbage bags or for other purposes so I don't purchase separate bags for garbage. At the beginning, I was annoyed that all the vegetables would get dumped into one bag at the vegetable market rather than each vegetable type separated out like in the US, but it's far more environmentally friendly as less bags are used. There is a growing movement for folks to bring their own bags to supermarkets and vegetables stores the way it used to be. Many of the clothing stores go with paper bags and I would say more stores go with paper here than in the US.

4) Although you see many places where people collect paper and plastic, separating all the recycling items from the perishables is not that common here. No one comes by to pick up recyclable items but I guess we have the choice to drop the items off at one of the paper and plastic collection centers. Something I need to improve on.

5) We produce less garbage here. Although the amount of packaging has increased ten fold in India in the last few years, we still produce less garbage here than in the US.

6) We consume less water. The kids and Prasad take "bucket baths" and I've mentioned this before, the geyser only provides a limited amount of hot water so no more long showers. No dishwasher and the gardener waters the plants by hand rather than with automatic sprinklers and we have smaller gardens and less grass.

7) We don't use a dryer except when it rains. The clothes tend to be stiff but we're used to it now.

8) We certainly save on gas (petrol) We only have one vehicle, the kids use a school bus, we both live near our workplace and we carpool to work.

I can obviously do better and will work on it. Any suggestions, please let me know!

Breakfast with the Oscars

Prasad and I played hooky in the morning and watched the Oscars together. We were busy getting S & R ready for school so we missed the red carpet and the first hour but it was fun watching the show nevertheless. They showed the Asian version of the red carpet this evening and so I did get to see some of what I missed this morning. Hugh Jackman and Natalie Portman have great voices, I thought the opening act was pretty good. I liked how they announced the nominees for Best Actor/Actress and Best Supporting Actor/Actress awards, something different from years before. Wasn't it funny how they kept zeroing on Angelina when Jennifer Anniston was on stage presenting awards? I was of course thrilled that Slum Dog Millionaire swept the awards. It was even more thrilling to see A.R Rahman perform, he is so humble and down to earth. I can't wait to see the Film Fare Awards, I wonder how Slum Dog will fare.

So, here's my take on the dresses because no discussion of the Oscar's would be complete without it. My top list of actresses with stunning dresses: Angelian Jolie, Anne Hathaway , Sara Jessica Parker, Amy Adam, Natalie Portman, Meryl Streep, and Penelope Cruz (didn't like her hair though). And the actresses with not so stunning dresses: Kate Winslet (she looked too old), Freido Pinto (colour didn't do it for me), and Marisa Tomei (she was in great shape though!)

Our First Pet

Sindhu and Rushil have been wanting a pet for the longest time. Finally we gave in and bought the least invasive and easiest to maintain pet, you guessed it, fish. Sasha and Max are the new additions to the family. Plenty of drama surrounding the purchase:

Sindhu: I want to keep them in my room.

Rushil: No I want them in my room, I'm going to teach them tricks.

Me: We're only getting one bowl and 2 fish. Where are you going to keep it in your room, you don't have a table.

Rushil: I'll keep the bowl on the floor.

Prasad: We're keeping them in the family room.

Sindhu: Then I don't want one. Someone is going to knock the bowl over in the family room.

Prasad: Someone will knock it over in your room. Family room or no fish.

Rushi and Sindhu: Ok fine.

Sindhu: I get to feed them.

Rushil: No I get to feed them.

Me: Rushil can feed them in the morning and Sindhu at night.

Sindhu and Rushil: Ok

Me: Who is going to wash the bowl every week?

Sindhu: Yellama... (the maid)

Need I say more?

Warning... sad story

On Monday, my colleague's nephew passed away after an accident. Today she shared how he died. He was coming back from his tutoring class and was crossing the same street that he crossed everyday. Unfortunately on that day, he slipped and was hit by a truck and died instantly. The watchman and my friend's 11 year old son ran out to see what happened and saw him lying there. The family is in deep shock. His mother turned purple and had to be admitted to the hospital. His grandparents are bedridden. His cousin is wondering how the boy's parents are going to cope. How senseless for a young 11 year old child to die this way. This is one of my biggest fears, the traffic is so unpredictable here. We have to cross the road and yet we're not sure if the vehicle is going to stop and if we don't take a risk, we'll never get across.

Six months ago, someone at my company was hit by a company bus. Can you believe the bus didn't stop ? He was brought to a hospital that was not well equipped. He called his wife and manager and had them arrange transportation to another hospital. Unfortunately, he lost too much blood and passed away before he reached the other hospital.

A couple of times a month, we'll see a motorcycle slip and someone fall off. Most of the time, they dust themselves off and get up again but it's very scary to see how common this is.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is but I was really shaken by had happened. So sad...

Ghee

We have noticed that people eat ghee indiscriminately here. Some folks at work told me that their parents send them a supply of ghee and expect it to be finished before the next supply comes in. They say that consuming ghee in the heat, cools down the body and heats it up in the winters so it's actually good for you. I don't dispute the medicinal value of ghee but consuming it everyday cannot be good for the arteries. I do have ghee in the house but it's mainly for the children and I offer it when we have guests that have children, otherwise, it stays in the fridge. I don't know, we hardly eat ghee with our food at home so I'm shocked to see adults cook with ghee and lather their chappatis with it on a regular basis.

Indian TV

I must admit, I have not really found a tv channel I like to watch. The kids watch Pogo and Disney channels and they actually watch more American shows than they used to back in Fremont. They also watch some of the local shows like Chota Bheem and Hole in the Wall. Prasad and I however have not been able to find any good entertainment channels. Yes, we watch CNN and so I did get the see the inauguration and some of the election drama. On occasion Prasad will watch a Telugu movie or there is one channel that airs Friends reruns so now I'm seriously caught up on Friends. Usually most of the channels are pretty unappealing even though there over a hundred to choose from. I really want to watch the Oscars so I believe it will be aired here but I'm not sure when. I haven't even seen an Indian awards show like Film Fare Awards, I have no idea when they air those shows. I miss shows like Grey's Anatomy, Lost, and other comedy shows. Pretty dismal I suppose but I guess we make up for it by watching movies on our DVD player.

One thing I have noticed is that commercials have definitely improved and they are quite entertaining and humourous. Even I get them even though many are in Hindi. They have some amusing Tata Sky commercials with Amir Khan and Airtel commericals with Vidya Balan and Kareena Kapoor. Even the ones without movie stars are funny. I think Prasad finds the commercials more entertaining than the actual shows :-)

Valentine's Day!

Oh yes, we had a romantic evening planned, dinner, dancing, gifts, the whole shabang... NOT! I did however receive beautiful flowers. Also last week, I did some splurging at a Satya Paul store so Prasad linked that purchase to Valentine's Day :-)

We had a pretty packed day. Sindhu had a birthday party yesterday morning and Urvashi slept over last night so Sindhu was thrilled. My uncle and aunt were visiting from Goa so my cousins, my uncles and aunts came over for lunch. Lunch was followed by Wii and Carrom board matches. Later that evening our friend invited us over for a surprise birthday party so our evening entertainment was covered too.

In case anyone was wondering what happened to the Moral Police in Bangalore on Valentine's day, apparently, there was "perfect harmony" in the city and the celebrations took place as planned. It helped that the head of the Sri Rama Sene party and other potential disrupters were put behind bars. I actually wish I was out in the city to see how Valentine's Day is really celebrated in Bangalore, maybe next year.

Rare Moment of Kinship

This is a rare moment for Sindhu and Rushil. This usually plays out with Rushil riding off with Sindhu's bike and Sindhu chasing after him screaming. Rushil has convinced himself that he has outgrown his bicycle and takes every chance he can get to ride Sindhu's bike.

Pest control - Take 2

So we saw a cockroach the other day. I was told that they multiple very quickly so rather than staying in denial, I decided to call up a pest control company. The company I used for our ant problem seems to have gone out of business. As always, this is where the adventure begins. A friend of ours recommended a company that she was using. I called them but the man either couldn't understand a word of English or was hard of hearing and he just kept grunting "Uh?" repeatedly, I didn't call him back. I wanted to find a herbal company to avoid a toxic pesticide. Godrej is a reputable company but does not offer a herbal option. All the herbal pest control companies offer a paste which will kill the cockroaches but are vague about the content of the paste and only claim that it is made of many types of herbs and they use a "secret formula". Sounds skeptical, nah? Anyway, I narrowed down my search to one company and they said they would send someone at 6:30pm that day. He called me repeatedly to confirm the time but 6:30, 7:30pm rolled by. We had to step out for a bit and I think he showed up at 8pm. I asked him to come the next day and this time he arrived at 4pm. Fortunately I was home as S&R had a school function and I worked from home in the afternoon. This is the problem, people show up before or after the appointment time. Anyway, he stuck the paste at all corners of the house, and repeatedly told me how safe the product was, let's see what happens....

Single Women Seeking an Apartment

I was reading an article today in the newspaper about how difficult it is for a single 20-something woman to rent an apartment in Bangalore. It seems that most owners will ask for a "Character Certificate" to even consider the woman and at times, they charge them higher rent. Even after the place is rented to them, there is no guarantee they won't be kicked out. It's really unfortunate to see this, Bangalore has a very young dynamic population many of which are single women recently graduated from college and working in the high-tech field. I wonder how they manage, I should ask the few I do know. In "Marrying Anita", Anita is a 30 year old single woman from the US who moved to Delhi and also had a difficult time renting an apartment for the very same reason. Although I didn't give the book rave reviews. there were many parallels in her experiences living in India as with ours.

Lazy Saturday afternoon in Indiranagar

Prasad thinks blogging about a Saturday afternoon trip to Indirangar is not really a topic but I beg to differ. I would love to live in Indiranagar. Ten+ years ago, Indiranagar was considered to be the boonies but now, it is almost the heart of Bangalore. If our workplace and our children's school wasn't so remote, I would move there in a heartbeat. I would however need to find a gated apartment or community as I can't live in a house or apartment directly off the street. I know that many Bangaloreans disagree and think that living in a gated community is really not "living" in Bangalore but for me the advantages of a gated community outweigh the disadvantages. Mainly, I want the children to be able to freely move within the community, meet with their friends and not have to worry about traffic and other security issues. Back to the topic at hand, the main reason I aspire to live in Indiranagar is the excellent shopping options available and its proximity to the city center. It has many upscale stores, restaurants and offers many other services. We stopped at a Satya Paul designer shop, they were having a 40% off sale and I did indulge myself a little. Then we headed to 100ft restaurant and sampled excellent Mediterranean food and checked out their boutique. They had outdoor seating, a beautiful evening breeze and we had a great view of 100ft road from our table. The only negative was that it was so noisy due to the traffic. Anyway, there are a bazillion other stores and restaurants to check out so we'll need to venture out to that area many more times.

We stopped at this well-known used book store called Blossoms, on Church St. in downtown. It's a 3 level store and carries many books, quite different from Landmark since it's a used bookstore. We picked up Enid Blyton classics and Meg Cabot books for Sindhu and hold your breath, I picked up Twilight. I was going to get Indira Gandhi's biography but I dropped that one and picked up Twlight instead. I'm sure some folks are cringing as they read this, but I really had to find out what all the hullaballoo was about. Will let you know after I read it. And the great thing about Blossoms is that I can return the book and get 50% credit towards another book, not bad eh? Speaking of books, I just finished "Marrying Anita" by Anita Jain but I was not so impressed and wouldn't really recommend it.

I also caught up with Teju over the weekend who was visiting Pune, we didn't get to see each other but we had 1.5 hour conversation over the phone. Well a mishmash of notes, hope you all had a great weekend.

Guest Blogger - Sindhura

Last night, I asked if anyone had any good topics for the blog and Sindhu said she would like to share a few things so Sindhu is guest blogging today.

Hi,

I was invited to my first birthday party in India. I am really excited about going to Bhavana's birthday. She is one of the smartest children in my class and she is really nice also. I didn't think my first invite would be from her, but thought it would be from someone else.

Now about school. Today we had tryouts for Sports Day next week. We did heats for races, long jumps and cricket ball throws. I was third in the relay races but I won't be able to participate in Sports Day, that's ok, I'm still really happy that I get to participate in something else. It was a tiring day and I almost fainted because we had to run a 100m and a 200m relay race.

On Monday, we had a Hindi Assembly and I did a dance. It was the best dance I've ever done in my life. All of my friends in Hindi class were in it. Those are the pictures above.

In school, there is a horse stable with real horses in it! There is also a swimming pool and we get to swim every week.

I made pretty good friends in India but not as wonderful as my friends in America. There is a girl in school named Lea who is really really nice and an outstanding drawing artist, she is French and used to live in California just like me. Urvashi, Uma and Nimisha are also really good friends that live in my neighborhood and I play with them a lot after school and weekends. Uma's birthday is on the same day as me but she is 11 and I am 9. Nimisha, Urvashi and I had a sleepover together on my birthday, it was really fun.

Bye! Thanks for reading. Miss you all

Sindhura

Moral Police

A couple of weekends ago at a Mangalore pub, the members of a political party "Sri Rama Sene" (army god of Rama) attacked young women and men that were dancing in an "obscene manner" in the name of "moral policing". Where was the pub owner, security, where were the police, it's hard to believe that something like this could happen at a public venue. The same group is now threatening to cause problems in Bangalore as they are vehemently opposed to the celebration of Valentine's Day. They are planning on forcibly marrying couples that are dating in public and will setup protests at restaurants, hotels and pubs where Valentine celebrations will take place. They prefer the couples celebrate at home or at a religious institution but not publicly. They are even opposed to Valentine Card's being printed and sold. They are apparently going to have five teams comprising of a priest with mangala sutras and any unmarried couples found to be expressing their affection for each other, will be forcibly married and their marriage will be registered. This was splashed all over the news yesterday and also today. The government is claiming they will have sufficient security to stop the "moral police" from executing on their plan. Does this all sound a little insane to you, forcibly marrying couples!?!

Let's talk about the weather

So what's new, the weather is getting warmer. Looks like winter is over. Can you believe, winter over in February? January and February are the coldest months in the US and Canada especially out east , I hear it's -35C in Ottawa so this takes some getting used to. The days are longer which is wonderful! But it's getting hot and today Rushil complained about the heat. I'll have to lather him in sunscreen and remind his teacher that he needs to wear a hat. And they have started swimming again at their school which is always fun for the kids. I sometimes take a walk after lunch and today the sun was slightly scorching, it was 31C (nice to be able to go back to Celcius) so I know what Rushil was complaining about. I think it will be a hot summer, I'm dreading it but it could be worse, I could be living in Chennai or in Ottawa. I have nothing against those two cities, if anything I'll always be partial to Ottawa, it's just that I don't want to be in Chennai in the summers and Ottawa in the winters. I hope the warmer weather brings delicious mangoes and other tropical fruits and I hope it doesn't bring ants, more mosquitos and other weird bugs into our home. Winter in Bangalore was great, warm weather during the late mornings and afternoons and cool weather in the mornings and evening, really quite perfect, similar to California but temperatures are less extreme here.

So I'm putting a moratorium on all travel till the weather cools down as it is pretty much summer everywhere starting March. But Prasad is vetoing me and keeps asking where we're going during the children's Ugadi break. My vacation will go barely go positive in March so I don't want it to creep to negative again but Prasad is not giving up. It seems I'm holding him back :-)

Off topic but somewhat still related to weather. Did I mention we have a vegetable garden? It's organic and pesticide free at least for this season. Our gardener maintains our neighbor's yard and they also have a garden. Seems their vegetables were growing faster which made him anxious so he kept pestering us to add chemicals to speed up the process. We asked him to come up with a chemical free option but he never got back to us. Anyway, we have lots of tomatoes, green chillis and cauliflowers. We're now adding okra and Rushil brought some carrot seeds from school so we'll be growing carrots too. Seems we can grow pretty much anything all year round, ain't that cool?!?

More on humidifiers

Update on my quest for a humidifier. You would not believe how many places I called and not one single person knew what a humidifier was. I repeatedly spelled it out and the retailer would said, "Oh! a humidityfier? We don't have one" I even tried baby stores based on a recommendation from someone else but no luck. Then google came to the rescue, a Bangalorean on some website was asking for the very same thing and one reader suggested buying an air cooler! I never thought of that, but it was a brilliant idea. Except, it's not that easy to find air coolers anymore, seems like everyone has graduated to air conditioners. After going to four stores, finally Prasad found one at Girias and they only carried one brand. It is pretty much a glorified humidifier but that thing makes so much noise, a burglar could enter our house, and wipe out everything while we're sleeping and we would not hear a thing. So now, we have the fans blasting, (the weather is getting warmer and it keeps the mosquitos away) an air purifier going on one side of the bed and an air cooler on the other side. We need a mini-power station to power that one room. FYI, air coolers are not that effective in cooling a room, but you all probably knew that.

Lunch options

I'm not yet tired of the food at our cafeteria. After eating at the SJ cafeteria for 7 years, I welcome this change. They have several stalls mainly comprising of North Indian and South Indian Thalis with a delicious bowl of curd. Yes, I call it curd now because honestly, if you say yoghurt, no one has any idea what you're talking about :-) Other options are mini-thali , chat, biryani , custom-made spicy sandwiches, fresh fruit bowls and fresh fruit juices made on the spot. And they have a soup and salad counter. I have never been a big fan of having salads as the main course, primarily because my appetite is not fully satisfied with raw vegetables. In SJ, I would only order salad if I was in a huge hurry. I finally decided to venture out try out the soup and salad this week. The soup was nothing to write home about but the salad was delicious. This may not interest meat lovers as the choices for the salad were vegetarian only and it is a much smaller selection than what we get in the US. We select the salad items and then the chef individually tosses the salad with dressing and herbs. It was delicious!