The Little Man Next Door, Denial and Changing money

November 16, 2016 

Kamla’s grandson is Vihan and he is four. He could charm the horns off a Billy goat. When I first came to Asopalav he would walk by my door with his nanny or his mom on the way to school and yell out “Good Morning Auntie (older women in India are always referred to as ‘auntie’. In the evening after playing on the green he would yell out “Good Morning Auntie” His nanny would say loudly “Good evening Vihan, good evening” trying to correct him. It was months before he said good evening to me. Vihan is quite handsome and he loves to pick flowers and give them to his mom, his grandmother and to me. But he is very smart so he always gives the best, freshest flower to his family members. I take no offense and feel he has already figured out some important things to know in life.  He also likes to pick up bird feathers. Our society is filled night and day with peacocks and pen hens. So Vihan has a small collection of feathers. One day he gave me a broken peacock feather which I graciously accepted.


Yesterday the gardener was at his house and Vihan ran to him yelling ‘mali, mali’ which is a generic term for gardeners. When I first arrived I thought it was the gardener’s name. He gave Tilakram, the gardener, two of his peacock feathers and asked him to plant them so they would get bigger or maybe so there would be more feathers. So today when I was returning some dishes to Kamla I spied the feathers and took a photo. What a sweet story this was.

Today I went to CEPT where Ron works. He was at another location teaching a class. A friend at CEPT is married to a banker who has been most generous and offered to help staff avoid the long lines at the banks/ATMs which we think will persist for some time yet. Some people wait in line for three and four hours and the most you can exchange at any time is 4500 rupees, about $67. So I got the needed paperwork, attached a photocopy of my passport and visa and turned in 4500 rupees. Tomorrow I will get either new notes or all 100 rupee notes. Either way it will be legal tender as the 500 notes no longer are legal. Ron and I will submit paperwork for the next three or four business days and will have exchanged all our 500 notes. I have to say this is almost too good to be true. I will offer to take any notes Narian or Rahul need exchanged as well.

Narian came to work today after a four day absence. I knew he was taking Saturday and Sunday off but was surprised when he didn’t show up on Monday or Tuesday. I asked him today if I made it clear when I hired him that if he didn’t call me and tell me he wouldn’t be coming I wouldn’t pay him on those days. He said I had told him that. He said a friend committed suicide over a broken heart. His friend was having an affair and it wasn’t approved by his village. Who knows where the truth lies…Sankar has made me a little skeptical. I told Narian I was very sorry about his friend and that I never minded him missing work but he needed to let me know. He seems clear on this point now. I am convinced that we are living in a face saving culture where lying is acceptable to save face.

November 16

After work today Ron and I sat down with Rahul to tell him we would be leaving at the end of January. He got a little weepy and talked about how he never felt like he was coming to a job with us. He felt like he was coming to his parents. He has said this kind of thing to us before. I also sensed a bit of panic. Rahul has a huge mortgage, over half of his salary. He has talked for months about wanting to be an Uber driver so we had assumed he would follow through and buy our car. After we told him of our change in plans, he said he would talk it over with his wife tonight.

November 17

 Rahul told us this morning that he and his wife decided they couldn’t afford another bank loan. He told us separately. He told Ron on the way to work and he told me on the way to the ATM. I said ‘then you need to get a job. We will try to arrange our schedule so that you can take time off during the day to look for your next job.’ He told me he wouldn’t do that because he would not find a job that paid as much as we paid him and he said he really needed to make 30,000 as an Uber driver not 18,000, given his financial obligations. He gave me several other reasons he wouldn’t get a loan. Then he said he hoped we would loan him the money. This is quite unrealistic since we will not be living here and he would have no way to get money to us in the US. I said ‘if that isn’t possible what will you do?’ He said he didn’t know and that he would have to think of something else. It breaks my heart but this isn’t something we can fix. I suggested he think about borrowing the money from his in laws who are have some wealth from selling the land they used to farm. He didn’t think that would be possible.

Today I went to two ATMs at the mall at 10:00 hoping to beat the lines. I did except one machine was out of order and the other one was out of rupees. Great. I returned at 11:30 and there were only 10 people in line. There seemed to be some problems at times with the ATM and anytime that happened five of those in line would surround the person trying to use the machine. Forget privacy while entering your PIN. At one point a young man oozed pass me in line. I just moved closer to the man in front of me and occasionally looked a the guy trying to cut in. We both persisted. I was thinking about how I might assert myself or embarrass him. I was thinking to myself ‘he thinks I’m a little old lady with white hair. Well he has another think coming.’ Finally when it was my turn he eased back into the appropriate spot and I didn’t have to say anything. However as I was pressing buttons to withdraw cash I was searching the screen for ‘yes’ because I wanted a receipt and sure enough he spoke up and said ‘yes’ and pointed to it on the screen. Like I said, forget privacy. This is India and personal space is a foreign concept.

Late in the day when Ron got home he announced that the government is now restricting exchanges to 2000 rupees a day instead of 4500. Crap. We are trying to get enough cash to pay our driver, housekeeper and gardener before we leave here on the 28^th. I will need to make daily ATM trips and Ron will need to submit a form for each of us daily to his friend at CEPT. We decided to tell the landlord to use our three month deposit we made when we came for this month’s rent. That will save me four trips to the ATM! I so hope this issue will be resolved by the time we get back on December 8^th . To add to this cash crunch my debit card had four fraudulent charges from Sacramento so now my card is canceled. I feel vulnerable with us only having one ATM card and because we do not have a bank account here. The adventures continue.