Partying and Parting

January 9, 2017

 Here it is the 9^th of January and I wore a sweater to walk at 6:15 and again at 8:15 because it is “cold” here: low of 57 with a high of 81. Our last month is dragging on. We are so ready to move on to what is next. Hard to believe we have been here almost 10 months.

Ron’s work is near completion and he is helping another group with a project but even it is spotty so he is bored at work often.  I fill my time with grocery shopping and preparing meals. I still walk three times a day with Ron (once at 6:15 a.m. and Kamla (at 8:15 and again at 5:00). Sometimes if I don’t sleep well I skip my walk with Ron to grab a few more minutes of sleep. I have been sick for a month and sleep determines how well I am recovering. Currently I have a coughing fit after breakfast and a drizzly nose but that is it. Thank goodness for small gifts.

January 14, 2017

Last night we went to dinner with our neighbors Dev and Priti. We had invited them saying we wanted to take them out as a thank you for their kindness to us.. We were driven in their car by their driver. Dev said he picked a restaurant that was quiet and we said great we will be able to hear each other and we can visit. HA! We arrived to discover a birthday party for 5 year olds. Need I say more? Oh yes I do, in addition they had live music with amplification just in case you couldn’t hear the performance in this smallish hotel restaurant. OY! We all just laughed. And of course had to scream at each other to be heard. Dev INSISTED on paying the bill. He said when they come to the USA we can pay.

This weekend is a HUGE kite flying festival and these folks take it seriously. It is noisy with air horns, blaring music, and yelling. Some fliers use string embedded with glass to cut the string of other kites in an endeavor to be the last flier standing so to speak. Our four year old neighbor has been out to collect kites that have either fallen or gotten tangled in trees and so far has seven to my knowledge.

 

  Around 11:30 this morning Amit, next door, came over to invite us to their terrace to fly kites. Their terrace is much higher than ours as they added a floor to their home. Most homes here have a roof top terrace and as we looked around from their high vantage point we were amazed to see how many people were on their roof terraces flying kites. Parties galore.  Amit was the main flyer with Ron assisting with the reel of string. Any time Amit’s kite string was cut by a competitor he would jump up and down facing them on their roof top and yell congratulations to them.  When he cut someone’s sting he would repeat the jumping and yelling but shout bragging rights. 

I think I have mentioned that we live in a dry state here. I learned that Gandhi initiated this and it has been in place since his time here. It is strictly enforced to the point of being absurd currently. Dayal, Amit’s father, has had a legal permit to buy alcohol for 36 years. Yet he is not allowed to serve it to anyone in his home. So Amit poured Ron and his beers into copper/brass mugs, as opposed to glass which would reveal the contents, and pretended it was coffee. When they ran out of beer a servant brought up another bottle but they quickly hid it behind the terrace wall and Amit squatted down on the floor to refill their mugs so no one could see. He jokingly invited Ron to take his photo so we could show our friends in the US how Indians drink beer in Gujarat. We all laughed. 

After flying numerous kites, we came home to get ready for a society luncheon at the clubhouse green. It was another gorgeous day here and it warmed up to 84 degrees. It has been cold and some days the house never warms up, making we wish for a space heater or furnace. The party was catered and there was a simple meal of pappadam, a thin cracker, white rice, a vegetarian dish with a cooked balls of dough and mixed vegetables, fried bread and sweet dhal. Dessert was jalebi, fried orange dough in sweet syrup served warm. I would like them without the syrup but it isn’t possible here. Gujaratis eat a ton of carbs and it is not at all unusual to have at least three to four carbs in a meal. 

Afterwards we came home and picked up a gift basket I had gotten a couple of days ago to give to neighbors who had given us tickets to Saptak, a 13 day festival of Indian classical music. We attended two evening performances and thoroughly enjoyed them as each was different. This a 37 year old festival and people come from all over the world to attend. Tickets are not for sale but rather given to those who support the Saptak foundation. Our neighbor’s mother started the tradition all those years ago. We had a short but great visit with Rajal and his wife. Rajal was a professional tabla player and retired due to a problem with his shoulder. He took time to tell us the whole story about how his mother was a professional dancer, and then went intro theater after having her family. It really was great to hear the history and development of the organization and festival. The first performance was for one night and featured Ravi Sankar if you are old enough to remember him. The festival grew in popularity and it now 13 nights. It ends the night before the kite festival so it will now always be a 13 night event.

 We came home and rested then watched a B or C grade movie. Afterwards I went for a hour walk with Kamla. We had leftovers, watched the NPR Newshour on the computer and Mohan came over with barbequed paneer which was a nice addition to our meager meal. We went up on our terrace because we were told there would be some big, about three feet high, lit paper lanterns aloft. We were lucky to watch someone in the green opposite our house light one and set it free and watch it drift to the sky then float across the neighborhood. We don’t know if they use kerosene or wax or what to fuel them. We have seen tremendous displays in Thailand of these lanterns. I have to wonder what happens once the fuel runs out. Does someone get bonked n the head with the falling mechanism that carried it aloft?

We watched Oliver Stone’s Nixon until 12:20 way too late and it wasn’t that good with all the inferences to conspiracy theories. Neither of us could get to sleep and it was sometime after 2:00 before we drifted off. I slept in until 9:00 after texting Kamla at 7:00 that I would not join her for our morning walk. 

Sunday was the second day of kite flying and it seemed that fewer people were participating today, maybe because there was not much wind today. We stayed home and relaxed. We are reading the same book (e-readers) Thank you for Being Late and it is a great read by Thomas Friedman about the current and future world we live in. Much is about how technology has speeded up our existence.

Our days drag a bit as we are eager to move on to what is next but we have until Feb 3^rd before we leave India and are managing it. We will have a respite during our trip to Nepal between the 27th of Jan and the 1st of Feb.