What I miss the most

A lot of people have asked me what I will miss about Dallas. How I will get settled in India after such a long time. Honestly, I have also been pondering these questions for a long time myself.In fact for over two years. The family moved here 5 months back and they were all settled by the time I got here. There were not many complaints from them including DH who had to figure out how to get to work without a car and my 7 year old who got his first taste of the school system in India. So settling down here was not too bad.

I was worried about not being able to figure out how to run a household in India, never having had to do that in the past! That was taken care of by the time I got here. I just had to take over the reins. I guess I will have some hiccups but because the kids and DH have had a chance to adjust already, it is much easier.

I haven’t looked for a job yet. Don’t know if I want to either. For the first time I don’t have a plan for my career. I don’t know what I will end up doing. I was conditioned to always have a plan. I freak out when I don’t have a plan or at least a hint of a plan. I don’t have a plan but I have options and happily I am not worried about the lack of a plan.

I thought I would miss the freedom I had in the US the most. The ability to go grocery shopping in the middle of the night, not feeling threatened walking down the street by myself and being independent. I have seen that things in India have changed since the last time I lived here. We may not have a 24/7 stores in India but I have been out fairly late for Indian standards and not felt threatened in Bangalore so far. Now, I went to Delhi for 10 days and that was a different story but it’s like the difference between being in Dallas and being in New York. As for Independence, I think there is a different kind of independence here. Public transport is easily available, and with the advent of cell phones, your reliable corner auto or taxi is only a phone call away! Last week I ventured out to do groceries by myself and all I had to do was call the taxi driver on his cell adn he was here within 10 minutes. I went to the grocery store, got everything and was back in 2 hours. The best part is I didn't have to drive or lug the groceries back to the house myself :)

I thought I would miss my workout sessions but even before I could get here, I enrolled in power yoga classes, tried it this week and liked it. We also have a pretty good gym with a personal trainer at the place I live in so I can’t really complain. What I do miss are my companions and my coaches. I had a camaraderie with them that will take some time to build up here. I do miss being able to go out of my house and running on the local streets though. The traffic and the condition of roads here is not conducive to running. Maybe if we lived in a huge apartment complex with nice paved streets, I could go running on the street again, until then I will have to find a different way to get my cardio.

I really miss my dance classes. I started learning dance within a year of moving to Dallas. Never thought I would start learning at that stage in life but a dear friend was learning and I loved to dance so I started taking classes as an experiement and almost 13 years later was still going to class until two months before I left. My teacher is an amazing woman who could handle teaching adults like me who had never learnt to dance their entire life but were enthusiastic about it even after life caught up with them J. I have started my quest for a new dance teacher in Bangalore but I cannot get my head around learning from anybody other than Padma.

The kids miss their activities as well. I haven't found a little gym where I can enroll the kids. I need to find swim lessons, vocal lessons and some sport that they can enjoy outside of school. I am sure I will be able to find it but I am worried about how to get them there and back without having to hire a driver. I think I better get used to the idea of driving on the streets of India soon!

What I do miss most is my friends, my support structure. The people who were an integral part of my life. Some of whom I have known since the first day I landed in Dallas, others who I had met along the way. The ones who were so close to me they were practically family. I might as well have been married to them! Anybody who has lived in the US for an extended period of time knows that we build a web of friends around us who become our family there. They are the ones who were but a phone call away any time of the day or night, the ones I shared my successes and failures with. Who were as happy as I was when I bought my house, had my babies or got a new job. They are the ones who would babysit my kids, tag team for drop off and pick up duties for kids’ activities, come to midnight shopping sessions with me, kept me motivated to continue my dance, music and workouts through all the craziness of being a working mother of two monsters.

The ones I would call in the middle of the night to rant about the insane people I had to deal with while trying to sell my house, the ones who would hear me cry on the phone and come over so I could vent some more. The ones who would show up at my door with food because they knew I was alone and sick and too tired to cook. The ones who stayed with me through all the craziness of trying to wind up things in Dallas by myself, the ones who gave me all the support I needed to manage that madness. They are the ones who formed my support structure in a foreign land. The ones who cried when I left.

That is what I miss the most. I am sure I will make new friends but there are some people who are irreplaceable and I left some of them back in Dallas. They are the ones I miss the most!

I do miss some of the creature comforts that I was used to in Dallas as well and I will blog more about that later but this is about what I miss the most :)

 

Getting a phone in India

Now this was an experience worth mentioning. First of all, anybody walking off the street cannot get a cell phone in India. DH came here back in August and he couldn’t get a sim card for himself so a friend had to apply for it and lend him the sim card! In comparison, I was able to get off at London airport, go to a cell phone store in the terminal and get a new sim card within minutes!

When I came here last week, we started looking for a service provider. Now, since DH has been here for almost five months, it should have been easy enough for him to establish proof of residence, proof of employment and get it all checked out. You would think all this could be done over the phone but since physical verification of the address is required, it took, brace yourself, four days for our sim cards to be activated!

I understand all this added security is important because there have been way too many times cell phones have been misused here but four days?

The first step was getting the sim cards. Regular stores wouldn’t even entertain us because apparently we don’t have what passes for proof of residence in Bangalore. Thankfully his office has an agent who is a representative of the cell phone company dedicated to help the employees( the perks of working in India! You get your own rep for the cell phone conglomerate).So, getting the sim cards with the number was a matter of hours. So far, so good.

And then the wait started. The cell phone company needed to verify his employment and residence before the cards could be activated. They called us to say they would verify his employment on Tuesday but DH was sick and at home so, it got delayed. I still don’t understand why they couldn’t verify the residence on Tuesday since he was home but what do I know? Anyway, the employment verification happened on Wednesday ( although now that I come to think about it, was it really necessary since the Airtel rep delivered the SIM cards to the office originally!!!) and we had to wait another day for the residence verification to happen. Why they couldn’t do both on the same day beats me!

Thursday afternoon, somebody shows up at our door and asks if DH lives here. I answer in the affirmative. He asks some legit questions about the duration of the stay, whether we are renting or own the place etc. Finally he asks for address proof! At this point I am thinking, hello! Did I not just answer all your questions? Anyway, he explains he needs a copy of a utility bill or something which shows him as the occupant and finally a light goes on somewhere in my head. I can understand the need for paperwork to establish proof of residence.

BTW this was a total surprise! We didn’t expect them to ask us for a copy of the utility bill. If that was all it took, was it really necessary to physically verify the location? When I gave him a blank look, he says, anything would suffice, even a visiting card!!!! At this point the entire purpose of checking and rechecking identity is lost on me because as far as I can see, anybody could print visiting cards and have their name on it. AND the visiting card that “sufficed” as proof of residence, didn’t even have our home address on it!

It is a mystery to me why they have such detailed rules and processes when there is always a loophole for all of them! I think the verification process is good because at some level it limits the misuse of cell phones by antisocial elements but if it takes 4 days for somebody to get a cell phone activated, I think there is room for improvement in the process.

This wasn’t the end of it either. After all this verification, the agent calls us and congratulates us on being proud owners of new numbers with the cell phone company. DH tries to get the sim card installed and SURPRISE! “No Service”. So, he calls customer service and asks them what was going on. The customer service is not only unhelpful, they hang up on him! So, he calls his office rep for the phone company who promptly conferences a customer service rep in, gives him a piece of his mind and asks him to figure out what’s going on. After being on hold for 15 minutes, they don’t know what the issue is. Finally somebody figures out that after all this verification, we had to call them back and ask them to activate the sim cards. It’s ok to expect a new sim card to be activated but it would have been nice if somebody had told us that!

So DH calls and gets the sim cards activated and 15 minutes later we had service! YAY! But wait; what’s this, we don’t have access to the data network! WHAT????? So we get on the phone again and you guessed it, data network activation needs ANOTHER call! At this point I am speechless! We want to call and yell at them but don’t see a point in it so we call back and politely ask our data access to be activated. Finally after another 15 minutes on the phone and ANOTHER 15 minutes of waiting we have both phones working! Phew, what an evening. Just thinking about it makes me feel tired! Jet lag is still keeping me up though L. Trying to go to sleep now, stay tuned for more…

Maid Service

I have been jetlagged and sick these first few days in India but I have had a chance to experience maid service to the nth degree. After spending 13 years in USA where daily maid service is only for the uber rich and weekly maid service is expensive and difficult to find, I spent the last week wallowing in luxury. I did have a cleaner who came once in three weeks and a maid who helped with the laundry and kitchen once a week and that felt like luxury back in Dallas!

DH and In-Laws have hired a nanny/housekeeper, a maid who comes daily and cleans the house and a cook. So, I have had to do NOTHING. The cook comes early in the morning and makes breakfast, lunch and dinner. The housekeeper takes care of packing lunches/snacks, getting my son's uniform and backpack ready, setting the table for breakfast which includes tea for DH, milk for the kids and different breakfast for the adults and kids. The maid comes during the day and cleans the house from top to bottom including making the beds! Can you believe that? I don’t even have to make the beds!!!

I got lucky with the maid and housekeeper. They are very good at what they do and they have a lot of energy and enthusiasm. In fact my second day here, they offered to open up the rest of the boxes, clean up the kitchen, offering suggestions, following directions and even after I was tired, they kept going on! They cleaned up the mess from the boxes, cleaned the counters, the maid did extra dishes, the housekeeper kept up the pace. The cynic in me is waiting for the bomb to drop. I was expecting the maid to take the day off the next day but she showed up! Wanting to open more boxes! She did drop a small bomb on me today though, she asked for half a day off on Sundays J. Well, considering most domestic helpers get all day off on Sunday it wasn’t too much to ask so I granted it to her J. Do I feel powerful or what!

The housekeeper works pretty hard. My in laws trained her well so she has a list of duties lined up each day. She is also pretty god at remembering and following directions so no complaints there either. This happens to be her first job so I guess she hasn’t learnt the ways of the world yet. She will probably get there eventually but for now I am enjoying having good help. The only catch with her is the whole I am possessed to being haunted deal. Frankly I think she has a deficiency of some sort which is making her hallucinate. I have a mystery on my hands and I will get to the bottom of it.

I am sure all of them are trying to impress the “lady” of the house. (I couldn’t resist calling myself that :P) but it’s working! I don’t think I will need all three in the long run (Hey, I need to do something to keep myself busy!) but right now I am enjoying all of it J

First Day in India

So, today was my first official day of life in India. I arrived yesterday but was so jetlagged, I slept the entire day. After 5 years of thinking about it, 2 years of trying to do it and months of planning and tying up loose ends I am finally in India now. How does it feel? A lot of people are curious to know how it feels to be back in India. The mother land! Do I feel all patriotic being back in the country? Especially since my first day is the 26^th of January?

Well, honestly, I don’t feel any different than when I am here on vacation. Right now my in laws are managing my house and even though the rented house has all my familiar furniture from Dallas, it still feels very alien.

First impression of Bangalore is very good though. The people seem very nice; traffic was not too bad although I didn’t venture out during rush hour. Kishen tells me it is a very late city so rush hour doesn’t start until 9:00! That would take some getting used to. I don’t know what my schedule is yet so I am not worried about the rush hour J.Well, after moving a family of four across the world you can hardly blame me for not knowing what I am doing!

There is a long list of housekeeping waiting for me. Boxes to be unpacked, cupboards (translated to wardrobes for my uninitiated Americans friends who are reading this) to be organized, kids’ activities to be researched, Nakul’s school to be figured out, vehicles to be bought, maid service to be taken care of and an innumerable other things that were pushed to the list of things to be done when “mommy” gets hereJ.

Talking about the maids, the maid service in India is a double edged sword. To the casual observer, it might appear to be a lifestyle fit for royalty - having a maid who cleans your house every day, a cook who cooks your food and a nanny who takes care of the kids. Especially if you have lived in a part of the world where household help is a luxury not the norm and after handling all that and a full time job in the USA, it did seem that way.

Well, it is all good but you have to take it with a grain of salt. The catch is that you need to have the will power to deal with the madness that goes with it. You become so dependent on the help that the first thing you think about in the morning is ‘I hope the maid doesn’t take the day off today!’ I know it is sad but that is the ground reality here.

The maid is a fickle being with a list of at least 10 reasons up her sleeve of why she needs to take the day off. It ranges from being sick to an unexpected death in the family. It’s funny how they never seem to take a day off for a happy occasion. You would think the entire population of maid servants in India was wallowing in misery!

If you have spent any amount of extended time in India, you have seen it all and heard it all. But I bet nobody has ever heard the one I heard this time! My nanny claims to being either possessed or haunted by the ghost of her aunt and claims she needs to go through an ‘exorcism’ to purge herself of this spirit.

Since December of this year, she has been visiting an exorcist every so often (I don’t know the frequency yet) to go through a “treatment” which consists of lashings with a broom and a lot of ritualistic singing and who knows what else for a couple of hours after which the poor creature is bedridden for two days recovering from it! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about this!

I feel bad for the girl because she needs to go through this but I am also worried about leaving my children in the care of a person who claims to see ghosts! Who knows what psychiatric problem she has and how it will affect my children in my absence! I think we will end up replacing her but the entire situation is so bizarre I couldn’t help writing about it.

I would be lying if I said I am not a little spooked by it myself. With all my high and mighty so called educated views I do get scared watching horror movies and when I listen to “true” stories about people seeing ghosts so yes, I am a little spooked but at the end of it, my children’s safety is at risk and regardless of how good the girl is with the kids, I don’t think I am willing to risk it.

I was expecting life to be very different in India but NEVER in my wildest imagination had I thought I would come across a real life example of a person who claims to be haunted and a group of people subjecting her to so called “treatment” to cure her. All I can say is Welcome home! Expect the unexpected J

 

Stress is a function of the quality of life.

So the new job started this week and along with that the daily madness of waking up, getting everything from breakfast, lunch and dinner ready before I leave so I can have a few moments of peace when I come back, drop off and pick up duties etc.

But amazingly, I am actually enjoying all of this. I spent the last two or so years in a miserable job and my first break from the misery came last summer when I went to work with a group of people from my past who helped me regain my faith in people. I will take this moment to send a shout out to my manager- no names but he is one of the best people I have worked for in a while. I cannot thank him enough for being the kind of manager he is.

I will not go into the details of the nightmare I lived through for two years before I was able to break out of it, it will suffice to say that I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy and another day there would have driven me nuts.

My two years of hell along with pregnancy and postnatal hormones had all but drained me of my last drop of hope but the hopeless optimist that I am, even through all of that, I still held on to the last sliver of hope. I had a lot to be happy about during that time though. We had a new baby, Kishen got his MBA, Vivek was growing up to be a really smart kid, my sisters had kids around the same time, but although I enjoyed the moments, I could never truly feel the happiness of the moments and events. I felt like I was in a dark box, experiencing the happiness through a small window in the box. The stress of dealing with hell 8 hours a day took up my last ounce of energy and I didn’t seem to have any left to enjoy the more important things in life. I was more than obsessed with doing better, I was consumed by it. Then I realized, I was not the problem, and that was when I decided; it was time to get out of the situation.

I was struggling to find work life balance but until I got out of there I didn’t realize that there is no need to look for that balance. Work and Life are like two sides of the same coin. One does not have any validity without the other. Work is a part of your life and if stop chasing balance, life will find it for you.

So, I was elated when I got an opportunity to get out of there. I would have jumped at the first opportunity that came my way and thankfully it turned out to be at a place I loved with people I knew. I took it and that was the end of my nightmare.

It took a while for the horror to go away though. For the first few weeks, I kept feeling I was living in a dream and any moment I would wake up and realize it was all a dream. Then slowly but surely, like a tiny ray of sunshine breaking through a dark cloud cover to bring light and warmth, the realization that it was over and this was reality started to sink in.

The quality of my life was at an all time low for two years and no matter how many positive experiences I had, I stressed about everything. I wasn’t happy during a major part of the day and it messed up everything. I stressed about sleeping at night, waking up in the morning, getting ready for work, getting the kids ready, eating food, not eating food, you name it, I stressed about it.

Getting away from there was like getting CPR after being under water for a really long time. I thought I would never be able to breathe again. Thankfully I was wrong. I started breathing again. The new place worked wonders. I was able to enjoy the small things in life one more time. It took me about three months to realize that the nightmare was over but when I did, I looked at life from a new perspective.

My positive experiences resulted in a better quality of life for me and voila, the stress was gone. It’s like it was never there. It seems like a distant memory now. Its funny how our brain always brings positive experiences to the forefront and stashes away the negative ones to a far corner of memory. It was a life lesson for me. I never thought I would become skeptical but now I believe skepticism is the brain’s defense mechanism. I am not skeptical (yet) but I have learnt to take a deeper look at things.

The last few months have taken me back to the positive experiences of my past and I have arrived at a junction of the past where the future looks really good. I know it sounds crazy but it’s the truth of my life. Positive experiences of the past + super future outlook make for the best quality of life and a good quality life makes for low stress no matter how hard you are working ☺

Here’s to the positive experiences in life- may we have more of them with a sprinkling of not so good to remind us how good we have it ☺

Staying at Home

So 2010 December saw my contracting career come to an end. It wasn’t entirely unexpected but still I was faced with looking for a job yet again so I decided to take a break while I looked for a job. My defense was: I haven’t taken a break since my older son was born and I need a break right now. I also wanted to spend some “quality” time with the baby so here I was, in the middle of December, looking forward to some time off in early 2011.

Well, the first thing we talked about was- you guessed it: finances. After long deliberation (by dear husband (DH)- I don’t like to be bothered by frivolities like money) it was decided that I could take some time off. So now the question was how long. DH suggested 6 months. It sounded too good to be true- do I dare dream about spending lazy afternoons watching movies, playing with the baby, going for walks, taking the kids to the park or the mall (hey, I am allowed to be selfish). And then I thought about what would really happen- cooking every day, pickup and drop off duty for the older kid, no more housekeeping services etc. You get the picture so I decided I would sacrifice my 6 months of laziness and settle for about a month or so while I looked for a job. I planned on continuing the nanny service for the baby so I could (ahem) look for a job. After all, how could I look for a job without help at home? I didn’t want to lose the nanny I had either so we decided to continue with her. The best part was I found a before my contract ended and I could still get my 3-4 weeks off. I was ecstatic and was dreaming about my days spent at a spa or browsing books at Barnes and Noble, catching up on technical skills, playing with my new laptops, coming home to play with the baby, try new recipes and not worry about housework.

As luck would have it, our nanny found a better position and decided to leave!!!!!!!! Sudden crash to reality but no worries, I could do this. How difficult could it be to take care of the house and the kids? I had done it in the past and I could do it again for as long as it took. So, I put on my housewife hat for three weeks and planned out lots of things to do- clean out closets, try recipes, read to the kids every day, workout etc. etc. The first week was really good mostly because I still had the nanny so I was free to do what I wanted. I got a lot of things in order- inside and outside the house and I couldn’t stop wondering why I hadn’t taken time off sooner. I had some cousins visiting, it was the end of the year so I had parties to look forward to- it was just perfect. The year ended on a really good note and 2011 started on a great note. I was looking forward to my new job and I had 3 weeks to spend at home before I started working again.

The first Monday in January was good. The nanny came for one last day while I coped with dropping Vivek off and taking care of some last minute stuff and just generally getting used to the idea of not having any help around the house. It was good. I thought I would be freaking out by the end of Monday but I was calm and actually looking forward to the rest of my “vacation”. The next couple of days were tiring to say the least. I had to wake up in the morning, get Vivek ready for school, make sure he ate some breakfast and deal with Nakul trying to trip me up while I ran around like a one of those harried moms on TV. Then came the part where I put them both in the car, drive to Vivek’s school, drop him off with Nakul screaming to get out of his car seat and follow his brother. Back at home, it was breakfast time for Nakul, followed by bath time and then cook lunch for him while he tried to make me play with him. Needless to say I was TIRED by lunch time. Thankfully Nakul took a loooooooong nap after lunch which gave me a chance to take a shower and relax for 5 minutes before getting started on dinner for both kids. To add to all of this drama, Nakul developed a really bad cold and gave it to me too. So, the first couple of days of ‘blissfully’ staying at home were not so blissful. I had pictured being able to watch a movie, work on my new MAC, brush up on some technical knowledge, write more blogs, take Nakul out for walks, try out some new recipes but my vision was shattered with a loud crack!

By the time Wednesday rolled around, I had a better handle on the situation or so I thought. I was able to get Vivek ready and off to school in a decent time. I optimized cooking time by combining lunch and dinner preparations together. I had the kids ready and cooking duties done by the time I dropped Vivek and got back home. I was tired by 9:00 am but that is beside the point . When I picked up Kishen on Wednesday night, I was hoping for some relief but he was jetlagged and sick as a dog so the entire week saw me working harder than I had in the past year!
I had a renewed respect for Moms/Dads who stay at home and take care of the kids and housework. I don’t know how they manage to keep their sanity with so much to do all the time. By the end of my first week off, I was ready to go back to work and hire a housekeeper to do all of the housework for me. I guess I have been spoilt by the availability of a Nanny at all time for the last year or so. It isn’t cheap but compared to the mountain of work that needs to be done, I will take it any day.

It hasn’t been all bad really. I did get to spend more time with Nakul and Vivek and even with all the housework, I am still relaxed. I know a lot of women who have two kids, full time jobs and no help at home and they are doing great. Call me lazy or anything else you want but I need a housekeeper and I need her fast!!!

The Everyday Celebrities

Have you ever wondered about the everyday celebrities in our life? The checkout clerk at the corner grocery store, the owner of the Indian superstore, the owner of the new India restaurant in town.

All these people and many more like them have one thing in common, they are the local "celebrities". Sure they don't have celebrity status and people don't queue up for their autographs but they are celebrities in a different sense of the term.Before we go there, lets define who a celebrity is. Loosely speaking, a celebrity is a person a lot of the “commoners” recognize. We vie for their attention and feel a sense of satisfaction at being acknowledged by celebrities: Imagine being on first name terms with George Clooney.

Although our everyday celebrities do not share the same status as George Clooney but they are celebrities in their own way. They are easily recognized: think about how troubled an Indian grocery store owner looks if you spot him/her at Walmart or Sams Club. They almost give you the cold shoulder like any other celebrity. They are worried about being recognized (probably because they don’t want to be spotted buying garbanzo beans in bulk from Sams Club to resell at their store :) ). Ever run into the grocery store owner during your early morning walk? He/She will not meet your eye, act like they have never seen you and pay extra attention to the MP3 player they are listening to (in case you have the audacity to stop them and say hello, they will claim that they were worried about the MP3 player and weren’t paying attention to the rest of the world)

Those of us who have bragging rights to “knowing” some of these local celebrities, feel a sense of pride: yes, I am talking about those of us who have the perpetual need to brag about “knowing” the owner of the new Indian restaurant, or the grocery store owner giving them an ever increasing celebrity status.

And last but not least, whether we like it or not, we love being acknowledged by these people. How many of us would love to walk into a restaurant and have the owner greet us personally (it usually gets you extra attention from the wait staff and maybe even a free glass of something every time you go there). Or being on first name terms with the grocery store owner (he will push you to the front of the line on a crowded day). I think it is this need for these small favors by the rest of us that turn these people into small time celebrities and if they bask in the glory of it, then so be it. Who am I to deny them their pleasure?

So to all the small time celebrities in my life, I hope you enjoy your celebrity status and I will be an admirer as long as I can get my free glass of mango lassi next time I come to your restaurant and my free DVD rental at the grocery store ;)