Home Improvement

Here's a picture of our driver Maraj (left) and guard Rambir (right, holding Isaac). That thing on the ground is the closet organizer the carpenter was building in the front yard for us. The most amazing thing was that the carpenter was dressed up in a button-down shirt with nice slacks and shiny leather shoes and he still looked that way when he left!

This is Babu, our landlord's property manager. We only wish we had such a good property manager for our house! Babu came over on Saturday and supervised the painter painting the gate, the plumber/electrician replacing two of the water heaters, and the carpenter building shelves and a clothes rack in the prayer closet. My favorite home improvement was the gadgets they installed on the doors to make them automatically shut when people come in to keep the mosquitos out (which I was even more grateful for when I found out yesterday that our driver Maraj's 6-year-old daughter has malaria)! Babu thinks I'm a crazy woman with my constant requests, and he just laughs whenever I ask for yet another thing.

This is Isaac standing among some of the beautiful flowers in our garden. Our mali (gardener) doesn't speak any English, but I asked him one day through Sarita if we could plant some vegetables. The very next day he showed up with tomato transplants from someone else's garden! And yesterday I handed him some herb seed packets and he cheerfully planted them--even the cantaloupe, which he thought was papaya and he kept saying would take 10 months to grow.

This is the painter painting our newest baby gate. He changes into his painting clothes in our front yard and squats wherever he's painting. He's very Zen.

This is Isaac taking Graham for a walk on a rug we got on loan. Graham is getting so mobile (though not walking yet!). I think if he had more floor time he'd be scooting around, but no such luck with so many people to carry him around!

Here's the loaner rug again with Farookh in the background. Farookh came recommended to me be a friend I met from Nepal, and when I called him up he brought over 10 similar rugs and laid them out in the living room so we could see how they looked! The service here is incredible. The rugs are very expensive though, so I'm on a quest for something less fancy and more inexpensive. I was also turned off to this rug when it stained Graham's hands and face when he started drooling on it!

On Saturday we asked Sarita and Sudhir to make us chapatis (kind of like wheat tortillas) and daal (lentils with curry-type spices). Yummy!

While we were eating Isaac opened the back door and looked outside. "Look, Mommy!" he said, "The guard is eating the same things we are!" Sure enough, his wife had sent him with the same delectable treat. Only he was warming his chapatis on the heater in the garage!

Russell liked the chapatis a whole bunch, but he kept insisting, "No, NOT chapatis, tortillas!"

A Day in the Life of Mindy

So there’s never a dull moment in India. Here’s the play-by-play run-down of my day:

4:00 am Isaac woke up complaining his arm hurt. I think it’s growing pains. I gave him some Tylenol after distracting him didn’t work and he finally went to sleep.

4:30 am Couldn’t sleep so I emailed and blogged on my newly set-up computer

6:30 am Took a very quick shower in order to have hot water before it ran out

7:30 am Sent Isaac off to school with Rich and the driver

8:00 am Tried to figure out how to direct Sarita and Sudhir to do the things I want around the house and while I was thinking they were working and I realized they’re doing pretty much everything I would ever do and more. The only thing we’re really missing is a good cleaner to scrub the bathrooms with so I can see how really bad or good they are. Still looking for that . . . Have yet to see Comet or anything like it.

9:00 am Received a surprise visit from the American Women’s Association (AWA) Welcome Committee Chair Sandie Axelson. She lives down the road and was stopping by to make sure I was finding my way to the meeting

9:30 am Sent Sudhir to the market to buy laundry soap, bread, and stuff to make cholle for us (which turned out to be garbanzo beans).

10:00 am Went to the AWA meeting at the Delhi Golf Club. It was extremely posh, and I was (again) very under-dressed and the only one with my children. But I brought Sarita with me to help and it was nice. I met several moms with young children and got an idea of what AWA is all about. They do shopping trips and culture meetings and community outreach programs.

12:30 Picked Isaac up at school and we had lunch (hamburgers and mint chip ice cream cones) in the cafeteria with Marcia and her kids (Thomas & Ellie) along with several other families from Belgium, Australia, Korea, and somewhere else in Europe.

2:00 pm Returned home from school and fed Graham.

3:00 pm Received a visit from a merchant selling stools made of rope and bamboo. I told him I may be interested in buying some and he said he’d come back in a half hour with the stools I was talking about buying.

3:30 Received a visit from our driver’s sister. It turns out he sent her because he doesn’t speak English very well and wanted her to tell me that he doesn’t want to work for us anymore because he can make more money as a taxi driver and wants to make sure we can survive without him. The irony of this is that we have another driver lined up for next month and were trying to figure out how to tell him!

4:00 pm Merchant returned and I bought two stools and three cute little kid chairs and a table for 1000 rupees (about $20).

4:30 pm Went to this amazing fruit and vegetable market called Ohkla Market with Sarita, Isaac, and Graham while Russell stayed home with Sudhir and did puzzles. While Graham slept in the car with Maraj (the driver) we braved the market. It’s basically this long dirt road with people sitting on either side with big piles of produce in front of them. It’s loud, smells of animal dung, but the produce is beautiful. Sarita walked the whole line asking prices and then we turned back around and got the things we wanted at the best prices. We got a huge bag (so heavy that Sarita and I had to carry it together) of potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, onions, ginger, and cilantro for about 100 rupees ($2).

5:30 pm We got home and Sarita realized her cell phone was missing. I think someone stole it from her at the market. She went to her room to make sure she hadn’t left it there and came back and I could tell she had been crying. I would cry too if I’d lost a cell phone that had cost me almost one month’s wages! I wished they'd stolen mine instead. I called Rich and he suggested we just buy her a new one. I agreed—after all, we call her all the time and use up her minutes anyway.

6:30 pm I fill up the bathtub a whole three inches or so for the boys to take a bath (that’s all the hot water there is). We read “Homer Price” (Thanks, Aunt Amy!) in the kitchen so we can watch Sudhir make chapatis (like wheat tortillas).

7:00 pm Isaac and Russell eat their chapatis at their new little rope bamboo table with cheese and apple juice. Daddy gets home and holds Graham and practices saying his numbers in Hindi (he’s been learning them from Maraj while he drives him around). We’re so glad when Daddy comes home!

7:30 pm Isaac slips on the water draining from the washer and bites his tongue and starts bleeding. Daddy flees to the bedroom for two hours of conference calls (he added that part—I’m not bitter!). Russell asks me to pick him up and take him to bed.

7:40 pm Two men show up to assess our air conditioning needs. They say we need 12 tons of AC power and Freescale has currently only allowed 7 tons. We’ll see what the next guy says. The landlord’s daughter returns my call from earlier that day and assures me that she’s sending someone to REALLY fix the leak in the wall upstairs so it stops growing mold, but it will take a week or so. Glad we haven’t moved up there yet!

7:50 pm Isaac goes up to the roof to hang laundry, which he’s been begging me to do all night. Last night he was lamenting that he has to go to school and miss out on all the laundry fun (“When I go to high school, it will be even worse. I won’t get to do ANY laundry!”)

8:00 pm Isaac goes to bed.

8:15 pm Sarita and Sudhir finish cleaning the kitchen and I finally get to try their yummy cholle (garbanzo bean soup with cilantro, red onion, lots of garlic, and tomatoes) with chapatis.

9:15 am My day goes full circle and here I sit doing the email thing again. Phew!