Monkeys, Birds and dealing with the help

June 27, 2016

Goodness where does the time go? We had a relatively good week. Our humidity has been creeping up. It is 58% today and the temps have fallen to 100 degrees today. So we no longer have a dry hot, we now have a wet hot and it is still damn hot. Our walks in the morning have been shortened to three loops through our society instead of 3.5. We both get too hot due to the humidity. It feels a lot like Sri Lanka.

Sankar continues to offer me a challenge. He called yesterday to say he had a fever and did not come to work.  This morning he called Rahul to tell me he was sick, needed to go to the hospital for medicine and he would send Hosha over to pick up the money. I told Rahul tell Sankar no need to send her as we no longer were giving him any loans. We just had this discussion last week. No more loans. He was argumentative with Rahul and said he would come to work. I told Rahul I did not want him here if he was sick and I still would not give him any money before payday which is the end of the month.

He came anyway while Rahul was taking Ron to work. He could have won a role in an Indian soap opera with his performance. He came into the living room acting as though he was having a heart attack and other maladies as well. He chatted away and I have no idea what the hell he was saying. Then he started cleaning. I ask you why you would do that if you were so sick. When Rahul returned I asked him to again tell Sankar to leave but he is a butthead as I have mentioned before and he refused. He worked for two hours. It seemed to improve his health

At one point Kamla called to see what was happening as I had texted her to tell her he was not coming to work because he was sick and later texted her to say he was here acting sick. He cleans their cars every morning so that is why I had alerted her. She said to have him come to her house now. He went over there and she told him to stop badgering us about money. She paid him money she owed from Saturday when her son had borrowed Sankar to deliver a package using his auto rickshaw. It took close to four hours. So even after he had money for the hospital he continued to work here. I am pretty sure the rickshaw he is renting had another breakdown and he needed money for repairs. He came to work on his bicycle today. Regardless, I am finished being the bleeding heart as he lied to either me or Kamla this morning. Kamla said she told him his wife was useless and he should dump her and Sankar said he had sent her away this weekend to her mother’s home. Funny that she could come over this morning to pick up the money he wanted to borrow. So I have been taken in by this man. I still respect his work but not his word.

Saturday we tried another Italian restaurant and had another good experience. We are starting to build up a few choices now of decent restaurants where we don’t need to worry about getting sick. Afterwards we walked across the courtyard where there was a large bookstore. We have been to another outlet of this same store. I found a crossword book, not the NY Times but okay. We got three DVDs, one from 1984, a good Indian bird book and some office supplies. When we came out there had been a cloudburst and everything was soaked. Fortunately it had stopped. When we got home 10 minutes later we discovered we didn’t get a single drop. The monsoons are late for us this year. Some parts of Gujarat have had flooding and all we have had is a couple of sprinkles and one short downpour.

I went shopping one day last week and found some unique and gorgeous silk scarves and bought two, one for me and one for a gift. I was curious so read the tag and discovered there was a website and an email address. I visited the website www.neelgar.com and fell in love with what I saw. No on line shopping however. So I emailed the designer and asked if there were other outlets that sold her scarves in Ahmedabad since the store I visited had only four to choose from. She invited me to her home. OMG what a story. She has a degree in design and worked for a state run craft emporium initially after school, creating designs for rural women to make textiles. This eventually grew into her own business. When she started she had eight women who worked for her. She now has 600 rural women who create these incredible scarves/shawls using techniques that are centuries old. You can read about it on her website to save me writing about it. My favorite technique is called bandhani (the word bandana comes from this). The scarves take one to 12 months to make and are priced accordingly. All are silk. Some are a heavier weight silk and that adds to the cost as well. The prices ranged from $19 to $330 which is unbelievable. She sells them in the US for four times as much. I shall do some serious shopping at her home.

We spent over an hour on our first visit. I learned a bit about her history and saw many samples of her work. I bought four more scarves and a stole for myself. I went back the next day to pick it up as it had needed to be finished on the edges and I bought yet another one. OY! She is heading to Delhi for an exhibition but we agreed to have lunch and another viewing when she returns.

June 29, 2016

Yesterday morning a troop of monkeys hung out by our place so I got some good shots of these fun creatures. Locals see them as a nuisance and scare them away but I have always been enthralled watching them because they are so much like us and their facial expressions are intriguing.

Today I tried a new salon for a mani/pedicure. This is the fourth one I have visited. I am going back to the Hyatt mainly because it is clean. India has a very different standard of cleanliness. This place had an upbeat, cool décor but upon closer inspection the floor was dirty, the tray table the tech was using was dirty and I had multiple flies on me throughout. The place had AC and a closed door but somehow flies were present and a bother. The tech threw several of his tools on the floor when he was finished with them. I wasn’t impressed. The cost was significantly less than the Hyatt but no thanks. I don’t think of myself as a snob or as anal retentive about dirt. However I want a personal care appointment to be a pleasant and relaxing experience. When the surroundings are not pleasing or relaxing I rather pay a higher price for a better experience. Did I mention the ubiquitous TV was blaring away upstairs? A personal pet peeve in a salon yet commonly found throughout Asia.

On an entirely different subject, daily I see people living on the street here. I don’t think I have written about this in the blog. It is heart breaking. Families can be seen living on the sidewalks. Often they are next to a low wall of maybe three and half to four feet high. Usually there is an empty field of dirt on the other side that is sometimes used for expos. I think the homeless folks use it as their toilet as well. They are right next to four-six lanes on never ending traffic and traffic is loud here. Everyone uses their horns incessantly to warn pedestrians and other drivers that they are nearby. I am not sure sidewalks ever cool off here so they are in the brutal heat 24hours a day. They are also in filth all day with no place to wash. Sometimes I will see a jug of water and a child being washed with a quick pour over but the homeless sleep on the ground mostly although a few have a single rope cot. Some of these homeless have small businesses such as a vegetable or fruit cart. One woman I see regularly makes simple baskets and a couple of men make crude bamboo blinds that roll up. I can hardly tolerate the heat and I am never in it for more than 30 minutes and usually I am in the heat long enough to walk from the house to the car and the car into a store. I cannot imagine living on the sidewalk here. Dirt is everywhere on the streets and sidewalks. The air is filthy. You wouldn’t believe how much dirt Sankar sweeps up daily and our house is closed up most of the time. We open three doors in the morning to air out the house and to let heat that has built up escape. The kitchen door, the back bedroom door and the upstairs door to the porch are left open for about 30 minutes. If Sankar misses a day of work his dust pan is loaded with dirt when he sweeps upon his return.

There is another segment of society here that lives in impermanent ‘houses’. Structures that have been scabbed together with found materials and they are scary. They look like they would be used as torture chambers because there are no windows and there is only an opening in the front but without doors. So they are dark, hotter than hell and filthy. They are usually grouped together to form a small slum neighborhood. I assume this is how Sankar lives but I don’t know. India has rules about renting and you have to get some sort of formal permission from one state to the next in order to rent legally. Every time I see the homeless and the slum dwellers my heart aches.

Since buying the bird book on Saturday, I have been identifying birds on our property without the aid of binoculars. I am pleased that I have identified the following birds:

Red naped Ibis

Black Headed Ibis

Indian Robin

Jungle Babbler

Indian Peafowl

Common Myna

Every morning after breakfast I sit on the veranda and watch birds as they get insects/seeds on our lawn and in the trees and scrubs. Then I thumb through my bird book, read about the birds and make a positive identification. I spied the ibis on the society green across the street from our house. They are there many mornings when we go for our walk between 6:00-7:00.

Life is good.