As the blog has a little placeholder at the top saying “:Intro from Nina:” I suppose I’d better do just that. Our internet hasn’t been working for the last week and a half, so blog posting is proving a bit tricky. Whether this is due to the router playing up or Windows Vista up to its old tricks, we don’t know yet, but we’ll try and solve it soon. This may involve Ubuntu, or giving the fuck up and buying Windows 7, I’ll ensure you get further updates as the situation develops...
Anyway, because I’ve been doing the majority of bloggage, and because this is a trip that Ollie and I have made together I thought it was high time you, dear reader, got the flavour of India from the instigator of this little jolly to parts foreign.
The week after we got back Goa was a little hectic. We arrived in Bangalore, thoroughly rested and not in the mood for harsh haggling. We needed food, water and toilet roll (literally the three most important things) so we made a little expedition to the nearest mall, about 2K away.
All the shopping centres are fitted with metal detectors and a couple of surly security guards to check your rucksack, handbag etc. for I don’t know what – knives, bombs, children – something. I don’t even think they know what they’re looking for. Most likely, as it seems everywhere in India, the manager decided he needed a security guard and then had to come up with something for him to do. Similarly there’s a guy in the lift to press the buttons – possibly the most thoroughly depressed individual I’ve ever seen, but then he does spend the whole day inside a lift. Even though the locals do seem very confused by the whole ‘going up’ or ‘going down’ business, I’m sure they don’t really need him.
Once inside the mall you have to enter the shops. Firstly all rucksacks and items of shopping are deposited with a luggage monkey, who gives you a ticket to collect them later. Then another security guard checks the handbags of all the girls and puts stickers on anything it might look like you’ve stolen. When you leave the store another security guard inspects your shopping bags and punches a hole in your receipts, so you can’t somehow use them to steal something. I’m baffled by this. In fact one of the security guards looks at me like I’m making trouble, or possibly am stealing something.
The supermarket itself is very cool. There’s tons of fresh fruit and veg for next to nothing – I worked out that about ten tomatoes would cost you seven pence – and huge open barrels full of spices that you can buy by weight. There’s a rice isle and an isle for lentils, pulses, chickpeas and the like and all the meat is segregated in a separate ‘non-veg’ section of the supermarket. We were, of course, devastated to learn that the supermarket did not sell alcohol. In conversations with some other Europeans it was clear they’d had the same experience in finding alcohol and bars. Unless the shop or restaurant makes a conscious effort to look ostensibly western then alcohol is seen as a little seedy. Neither the hard-line Hindus nor the Buddhists think highly of drinking and that’s before we even mention the Muslims. I’m fairly convinced that the liquor store we visit is beginning to think us alcoholics.
As well as these shops there’s a couple of clothes shops, a store selling make-up and stationary, a truly bat-shit looking store we’ve classified as a toy shop (although the jury’s still out) and a food court. This has been a bit of a saving grace when growing tired of homogenous canteen food – one can grab a cheeky pizza, Chinese food, or even a MacDonalds. India, I think, is pretty much the only country where they don’t serve hamburgers. That’s right, no burgers! Not even the corporate fast food giants can market beef (if that’s really the word for a maccy-d’s) to the Indians. They do however have an extensive selection of veggie and chicken burgers.
The final two shops are a mobile store and the Indian equivalent of a Dixons. We decided we’d get an Indian mobile number later in the week and, to avoid having to haggle with rickshaw drivers, that we’d get the bus. This may seem innocuous, but the bus system here is utterly unfathomable and getting a mobile is like a story line from the film Brazil.
So anyway, we headed down to the bus stop and waited till the 226A trundled up. This seemed like the right one, mainly because it was blue and looked like it had been in the service of the US army circa 1960. It definitely wasn’t supposed to be red or green and certainly the new ones operated in some way that was perfectly logical if you knew it. 12 Rupees got us to the mall with only a few stares and the conductor stopped the bus when we wanted and everything. Win! Getting a mobile phone was a bit harder. In order to do so you need two passport-sized photos, proof of address in India, ID and seemingly also a previous Indian phone number. The conversation went something like
“Phone number?”
“We only have a British phone.”
“British?”
“Yes, we’re British, it’s a British phone number. We’re trying to get an Indian phone number because we don’t have one. Do you want to take our British one?”
Shake of acquiescence.
“0044....”
“Huh? Zero?”
“Yes, it’s a British phone number.”
“Not have Indian phone number?!”
“Um.. no, that’s why we’re trying to get one. We don’t have one because we’re trying to get one off of you. Do you see?”
But we fucking got one! :D Take that system!!
Our only other shopping expedition this week was a mega-cool one. Nina had been getting a bit frustrated trying to buy some nice Indian clothes. The problem being that pretty much all the Indian women are about five foot tall. The other being that Indians really go for the Hard Sell. Even if they don’t have the thing you ask for or anything you want they’ll try and tell you something else. In one store this consisted of literally throwing clothes across the counter in an increasingly desperate manner. Eventually we decided to find a tailor and headed to Commercial Street, the heart of the tailoring district.
Nina got two Salwar Kameez commissioned at about a tenner a pop and then we went to a place that looked like it could do some good shirts for me and maybe some for family or friends. I have to say it was pretty cool going through materials and styles, deciding what we wanted. When I left I had two shirts and a suit commissioned and Nina had gotten herself a ladies’ number. It was more than I had intended, but on the other hand it was probably the only time in my life that I’d have the opportunity to get a real suit made for less than the cost of an M&S off-the-shelf job!
(And we now go back to our roving reporter at the front line of education in India. Nina, what’s the situation where you are?)
Well, seeing as you asked so nicely, we’d gone to Commercial Street on Friday, which was apparently a holiday that I’d only found out about when the nursery closed on Thursday afternoon. Holidays in India tend to sneak up on you with around 24 hours warning. There are so many different faiths and branches of different faiths and state heroes and martyrdoms and protests and “here, why don’t we have a 3-day weekends?” that you have to check the night before if you’re supposed to be in work the next day or not. Unfortunately, it also seems like its pretty common to go into work on a Saturday too, so I was summoned into Rajarajeshwari Nagar to make puppets for 3 hours on Saturday morning. Fun times.
We had grand plans to go to the Kingfisher Great Indian Oktoberfest at the Palace Grounds on Saturday afternoon, so we were puzzled when someone knocked on the door and handed us the hallowed Key to the Laundry. We had booked it, but thought we’d done so for Sunday (the traditional day of puttering about in your jammies). We were wrong, so it was down to a grotty little room next to the Common Room (room of busted TV and manky ping pong table) to try and negotiate the completely over-engineered top-loading washing machine.
There are settings for saris, settings to “lightly mist”, settings to soak and steep and remove stains. There are probably undiscovered settings to starch, iron and fold and then tell you off about the state of the gusset. Could we find the setting that washed your clothes? Could we hell. We stuffed WAY too much washing into the drum, poured in a load of powder (“Saves two buckets of water” this stuff...), pushed some buttons at random and ran away.
Two hours later we came back, ignored the 1 minute left flashing on the LED display (it had probably been doing that for the last two hours for all we knew) and opened the top. Inside was, well, clean washing, what did you expect? After raiding all the lines on the roof terrace for pegs, we managed to get everything hung up and thanks to Indian weather it was dry an hour or so later. So in spite of failing spectacularly to get anything we had planned done, Saturday was a success!
Sunday was just as successful, but in a far more leisurely way. There is one biggish bookshop called Higginbotham’s on MG Road, which looks like it was started in the last days of the Empire and hasn’t really restocked since. It still sells the Penguin books that have the orange, cream and orange covers, which makes me rather happy, to be honest. However, I’d spotted a specialist Penguin stockist called Pageturners which looked like it might have some more up-to-date merchandise on its shelves.
I wasn’t disappointed. We spent around 90 minutes browsing, perusing and generally getting on the staffs’ nerves. We were given bags to carry round the books we picked up, they were so numerous. The ones that didn’t make the cut were left scattered round the shop, this wasn’t about to make a difference to their shelving system however, so we didn’t feel too guilty. My purchases were:
Science: A History – John Gribbin
The Good Man Jesus, and the Scoundrel Christ – Phillip Pullman (an accidental hardcover, oops!)
The Collector of Worlds – Iliya Troyanov.
Ollie bought:
The Poincare Conjecture: In search of the shape of the universe – Donal O’Shea
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Call of Cthulhu and other weird stories – H.P. Lovecraft
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Man in the High Castle – Phillip K. Dick.
He’s demolished the Poincare book and has moved onto the Phillip K. Dick book, I’ve just reached the end of my history of science. It’s really well written but, as a physicist re-reading the descriptions of quantum theory explained for people who weren’t mad enough to sign up for 3 years of the stuff, I’ve struggled through a lot of the section on the 20th century.
Monday and Tuesday were mostly spent either at work for both of us, or reading and relaxing. Wednesday we went back to Commercial Street to pick up my salwar kameez and have our second fitting for our suits. I was able to see one of the finished articles leaving the shop, and I’m super-excited about getting them finished on Wednesday! My salwar kameez are pretty awesome, I’ll add pictures to this post once technology decides to come back to our side. One is sky blue and grey, with grey leggings and dupatta, the other is teal, with brown trousers and scarf. I need to wash them both before I can wear them, they’re spectacularly starched to make it easier to cut the material, and I’ll be wearing them at the nursery for Diwali/Deepavali next Thursday, when it’s traditional to wear new clothes.
Talking of the nursery, things haven’t gone so well there. I was put in charge of the pre-nursery children after their other teacher quit, and I’m having a bit of a hard time of it. If I spoke Kannada or Hindi, it would be better, but I don’t so it’s quite tricky to give instructions and talk to the weans. The support staff are lovely, but again, only really speak Kannada or Hindi, so I’m still pretty darn stuck. That, coupled with another couple of issues I’ve had mean that I’ve handed in my notice and will leave when they can find a replacement for me for the pre-nursery. There are a lot of things that seem to be blamed on “cultural differences”, and it’s making me a bit miserable. As much as I hate being unemployed, I’ve never been in a job that made me this unhappy. It’s only going to be for a few weeks until we head back to the UK anyway, so I think (hope!) it’s for the best.
Thursday and Friday were both spent working, but Friday night was the start of another 3-day weekend, but a proper one this time! It’s Diwali this week, which I think is a bit of a 5 day extravaganza, but we only (I say only, I’ve done pretty well for days off here!) get Monday off work. As it’s also Halloween Ollie and I bought the three Evil Dead films and some cook-in-a-pan-on-the-hob popcorn. Definite win. We’re going to get a pumpkin and carve it tomorrow, it’s just going to be eaten by the monkeys if we leave it outside, but at least we can celebrate British traditions abroad!
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