Tag: India


Independence Day in Bangalore

16
August

Yesterday marked Independence Day here, the sixty-fifth anniversary of India’s birth as a self-governing nation, free from British rule. It is one of three official holidays celebrated nationally in India, along with Republic day which commemorates the date that the constitution of India came in to force (January 26, 1950) and Ghandi Jayanti (celebrating Mahatma Ghandi, born October 2, 1869).  In our short time in India I have come to realize that there are MANY holidays here, most with some amount of religious significance and festival associated.

We were here for Republic day in January, and observed that it is celebrated much like Canada Day, in some respects.  There was a festive atmosphere and many fireworks, but I remember remarking that there did not seem to be the public display of national pride that I would have expected.  “Just wait until Independence Day”, we were told, “it is a much bigger deal.”

Indian patriotism was much more evident yesterday.  There were banners, flags flown on cars, little children waving flags, and painted faces.

On the whole, I found the day to be much more subdued than I expected.  In the morning we attended a flag raising ceremony in our community, listened to the national anthem, and snacked with our neighbours, then went out to brunch with a group of friends.

There despite the somewhat festive atmosphere, there was no real boisterousness, and shockingly, no fireworks! We had a great day, and the lils were very happy to celebrate India, but I found it a bit surprising.

The cutest part of the day for me was brought to me by Goose.  We had given all of our helpers the day off, although our gardener came to tend to our yard as usual.  He doesn’t speak English, and I hadn’t been able to connect with him when one of the other helpers was around to translate. I had tried to tell him not to come, but failed. I am not sure that he would have taken the day regardless, given that he has worked every other holiday, even those where he was clearly told he could and should take the day off.  This distressed Goose the most.  She has taken a shine to our gardener, who plays with her, cuts flowers for her, and most recently created a garden for her sunflowers.  She chatters on to him and he just smiles. When she saw him yesterday she ran out and tried to tell him that he should go and take his holiday. He just smiled at her and carried on with his work.

I did also learn some interesting facts that I learned about India on Independence Day:

  • India has both a Prime Minister and a President.  From what I can tell, the President is the head of State, and the Prime Minister is the head of the government.
  • India’s current President was elected last month (ok I knew that), but that he was selected by the members of Parliament and the state legislatures, where as the Prime Minister is the leader of the victorious party in a general elections, which last occurred in 2009.
  • India is the world’s largest democracy.  I really should have known that.
  • India has never invaded another country.
  • The peacock is the national bird of India.  I always thought it was the kingfisher

Comment » | India, life

Power`s off… power`s on…

31
July

The past two days have been marked by two significant power outages in India. The first occurred in the very early morning on Monday, and knocked out power to 370 million people across seven states, including Delhi, in northern India. Power to most, but not all, of those affected had been restored by the time the second outage occurred this afternoon. This outage was more widespread, and affected over 600 million people across 22 states. Both outages are blamed on several states having overdrawn from the grid. The grids in the North, East and North East are interconnected, so once the grid started to collapse, it cascaded across the regions.

These outages remind me very much of the great power outage of 2003 that affected almost 60 million people in the northeastern US and eastern Canada. It too came as the result of a station failure in a time of high demand, and led to a cascading failure across the continent. There are two differences, as far as I can see. The first is that this affected ten times the number of people. The population of North America is roughly 530 million people, and this affected more people, many of them twice. The second is that the power situation is far from what you would call stable in India. Hell, I’d wager that on any given day a large percentage of the population in India will have faced some kind of power interruption at least once.

I have received many messages from family and friends, concerned that we are without power. Thankfully, Bangalore has not been affected, as it is on the Southern grid, which is unaffected, and perhaps more importantly, unconnected to the other grids that serve the affected areas. The truth is that I likely would not have noticed at all, as our community is served by a back-up generator that cuts over within minutes of the power going out, and we have UPS coverage for things like the TV and the computers/routers. Our inconvenience, at first, would be just that, an inconvenience.
Each time that the power goes out, and it goes out EVERY day, I think of the people who don’t have generators, don’t have power line conditioners, and don’t have UPSs. They aren’t so lucky, and if they live near me, there are days where the power is off all day, or cuts out a dozen or more times. We have had a number of things fail because they were not protected, including the power supply on our brand new TV, our induction cooktop, and our water purifier (three times). Shockingly, these were all fixed under warranty.

I don’t pretend to be an engineer, or an expert on what ails the power supply chain in India. I do believe that the problems are equally split between management and maintenance of the grid. The fact that the difficulties are so clearly widespread leads me to the conclusion that there is widespread mismanagement, from the Power Ministry down. The fact that I see scenes like this everywhere I go? Tells me that maintenance/security/installation is also to blame.

Most nights, Goose goes to bed with a story, and then quietly sings to herself in the dark. Whenever the power cuts in this time, she always pauses, then sings out, “power’s off…” if she is still awake when it cuts back again, she follows up with “power’s on…” It’s just the normal around here.

1 comment » | India, life

That funny stuff going on

30
July

The lils have become increasingly curious about the facts of life, and how they came to be.  While they haven’t actually come out and asked the hard questions, I know that they are coming.  Most of their curiosity is actually evident in their conversations with each other, as they explore where they came from.  We mostly listen in amusement, occasionally correcting gross misconceptions (like the idea that Goose was in “mommy’s stomach” with Woo, she just waited an extra year and a half before deciding to be born).

I sense that we dodged a bit of a bullet this weekend.  We were walking to the local mall, and Woo wanted to talk about the stray dogs.  Bangalore has a lot of stray dogs. They seem to be everywhere you go, except in gated communities, where the staff does a decent job of keeping the out.  They tend to ignore people, and seem to coexist peacefully with the other strays, although there are the occasional turf wars that result in much barking and the offending dog getting chased away. 

Woo wanted to talk about the dogs because the females are easily identified by the fact that their teats essentially drag on the ground.  We figure that they are breeding so often that their bodies never recover, and explained this to him.  He was more intrigued by the notion that dogs could breastfeed than he was curious about the constant breeding (phew). We answered all of his questions, and the matter dropped when we arrived at the mall.

On our trip home, it became apparent to me that Woo got the gist of what we were explaining. We used the appropriate terms, words he’d certainly heard before, and he seemed comfortable with them.  His interpretation, however, was coloured by the fact that he is five.  “Mom,” he said, “that’s a female dog. She feeds her puppies with all that funny stuff she has going on under her.”

Ah, the simplicity of youth. 

Comment » | India, life, Lils

Before there was the internet

24
July

If you worked in an office environment on about fifteen years ago, you likely received one or more letters by fax or postal mail that originated in Nigeria. They were scams, asking recipients to pay a little bit of money to secure millions and millions of dollars, and many people fell for them. So many that there are a multitude of anti-fraud initiatives devoted to education about and prevention of this type of fraud.

These letters, which were always handwritten, were the original spam in my opinion. Sure, there was junk mail, but it often came in the form of flyers which do have a somewhat legitimate purpose. These letters had a malicious intent behind them and they were relentless, especially when the senders moved to email. I got one of these had written letters at our home a few years ago, and marvelled that they were still going on in their original form. Sadly it means that people are still falling for them.

I went to the mailbox today and found this, apparently India’s version of the Nigerian scam letter:
Before the internet

It is a handwritten, contains a heart tugging plea, mentions an illness, family, and God. They don’t ask for a specific sum of money, just that “help” (or cloths) be sent, so as not to dissuade any givers. I think that maybe I have just become cynical in my old age, but then note that it is written in English, it was addressed to the landlord (whose name is not western), and the home is located in a known ex-pat community. I’m ok with my cynicism here.

2 comments » | India, life

The L word

6
July

Today was going smashingly.  The lils and I had just gotten home from a fun playdate and were basking in the glow of full tummies after lunch when I got a text that turned my day upside-down.  It was from a friend of mine who has a little girl Woo’s age.  A little girl that Woo enjoys playing with, who he and Goose get to hang out with at day camp most days.  “You better check your lils”, she said, “My girl and another friend from camp have lice.”

LICE

I have heard enough horror stories to know that it is inevitable that anyone with children will hear this warning at least once per academic year, I just hoped that we would be able to avoid it this year.  It really wasn’t what I wanted to be hearing 36 hours before we leave for vacation.  So I started alternating between Google and random haphazard checks of the lils heads.  I had no idea what I was looking for, so I just kept looking.  They were getting frustrated, and all I noticed was that my lils seem to have a lot of glitter in their hair for two little people whose mom is too mean to supply them with glitter.  I took a deep breath and did some more reading.

Based on my assessment of the lils craniums, it was unlikely that they had nits.  Knowing that we were going away, I did not want to take any chances, so I headed to the drug store for the special shampoo, even though I knew it only killed active nits. I spent the rest of the afternoon laundering everything that has touched their heads recently, including all of the 8 million blankets that they each keep on their beds; every lovey that they could conceive to take on vacation; both of their special pillows, neither of which have a removable cover; and every hat that we own, given that they each tried on every one of them yesterday as part of a vacation packing fashion show. All of this had to be washed in hot water, and then in the dryer for at least 15 minutes.  Our washer and dryer is a combo unit, so this took forever.  While I was doing all this I was also giving their hair the special wash and comb through.  Woo was easy enough, but Goose took forever. Her hair is at her waist now, and as white as the nits and eggs that I was looking for. When I finished all this, I realised that I had to call the friends where we played this am, but at least I was able to report that we found nothing, so hopefully exposure risk was low.

Now I sit having a glass of wine and scratching.  I have been ever since I got the text, and will likely continue to do so until I know that we are in the clear.  It’s clearly psycho-somatic, as it started the second that I got the text, and Willy reported similar symptoms. I hope we don’t have to do this again for a long time.

3 comments » | India, life, Lils, Parenting

Wordless Wednesday – Praying Mantises

27
June

What are you looking at?

I have an itch

Big'un

The pose

Baby mantis

6 comments » | India, Photography, Wordless wednesday

Six months

12
April

Today marks the six month anniversary of our arrival as a family in India.  We are halfway through the year that we committed to, and a big part of me says I can’t believe that we have been here this long, and a much smaller part says that it can’t possibly have been just six months, it must have been so much longer! India, so far, has been a wonderful but chaotic experience, filled with many great experiences, learning many new things, meeting fabulous people and making truly great friends, but also a great deal of stress, many tears, and some pretty lonely times, especially for me.  That being said, I would not change a minute of it.  It has really been a great six months.

A little while after we arrived, a lady that Willy met told him that she would never recommend Bangalore as a first ex-pat posting, it’s too remote, too isolating, and too hard to settle in. He nodded and smiled and then relayed the comment to me later. I initially agreed, but then later came to realize that it’s not true in our case.  If we hadn’t come here first, we might never have come.  This might be our only posting abroad, and I would not have wanted to miss the last six months that we have enjoyed in India.

The people here are truly the nicest people that I have ever met.  We have learned so much about the mesh of cultures that make up this vast nation, yet we have only barely touched the surface.  We have travelled, together and apart, to places that most Indians never get to see, yet there are so many more places I want to get to.  The food here is enough of a draw, and I haven’t yet perfected the dishes that we knew we love, and have learned to love.  I have taken many photographs, yet I don’t feel that I have done the people and this beautiful country justice.

There are things that bother me about this city, life in India. The traffic, the pollution, the waste, the garbage everywhere, the poverty, and the fact that there seems to be little value placed on such a large segment of the population.   There are also annoyances that affect me personally, like the fact that is takes weeks to have a simple thing fixed, that nothing ever happens as it should, where it should or when it should, and little things that become symbolic and big, like the fact that I can’t get a bank account or credit card here.  We’ve tried several times, and failed at each turn, so we’ve given up.  It’s their loss really, given that I am the spender in the family.  I am also somewhat frustrated by what I have failed to accomplish in my time here.  I had big goals, and I have barely progressed on any of them.  This is partially a result of some of the struggles that we have had to face, but mostly because of the struggles that I have had with settling in.

I frequently get asked about what I miss the most from home.  For me, the answer is simple.  I miss the people that mean so much to us, our family and friends. We are very connected to them, yet we are almost as far away from home as we can get.  If there was just one thing that I could somehow bring with me, it would be them.  We have been so fortunate to have friends and family come to visit, and this has eased this ache quite a bit, but we now face six months with no planned visits, nothing concrete or booked. I know that is in all likelihood going to change, that we will have some visitors, but I can’t get my hopes up.  Sure, I also miss wine, cheese, Greek food, great breads and baked goods, stable electricity, clean water, diversity in climate and a few other things, but those I really can live without.

We are at a crossroads, and now is the time when we start to think seriously about what we do in October.  We can either ask to stay in Bangalore, or we can go home.  We’re both on the fence, but one of us is leaning towards Bangalore, and one is learning towards Ottawa.  I am feeling like home is where I want to go, and Willy can see us living here for a while longer.  We don’t have to make a decision today, but we really do have to make one soon.  Regardless of what that decision is, we have six more months to fill with learning and exploring.  We want to see more of Bangalore, more of India, and more of the south Pacific.  This is our focus for the next six months.

6 comments » | India, life, Uncategorized

The value of a life

9
April

We got a call late at night last Wednesday. It was from our driver, who was distraught, and let Willy know that his neighbour had died, that he may need some time off. Willy told him to take the time that he needed, and hung up, concerned. We were surprised when Subbu arrived the following morning to take Willy to work. He explained it simply by saying that it helped to stay with routine. He was clearly shaken, and on the way to Willy’s office explained that it was his neighbour’s seventeen year old son who had died, and that he had committed suicide because his grades were poor. We were both shocked and saddened to hear this. Almost a week later I am still troubled. How could this happen, how could he think that this was his only choice?

My first instinct was to blame the parents. I’ve never met them, nor do I know anything about them or their family; I made some big assumptions. I do know that there is tremendous pressure in India for a child to improve their standing, to do better than their parents. I have read several articles that allude to parental pressure for success, including one that told not of a suicide, but of a twelve year old girl whose father forced her to beg on the streets when her grades were not to his expectation. I have also observed parental expectation first hand throughout our community. Success is not enough; the children are expected to excel, to surpass their peers too. That being said, I am wrong to solely blame the parents. While they may have had some expectation that their son do well, I am certain that they did not want to see him take his life.

It is widely reported that suicide rates in India, especially among youth and female youth in particular are extremely high. There are numerous media reports of children as young as eleven taking their own lives, often because they feel they have done poorly in school, they have actually failed or received a low grade, or that they worry that their parents cannot afford to send them to the post-secondary schooling that they will need to complete to better themselves. It saddens me to think that so much emphasis can be placed on schooling and marks for these children.

In the recent past, the Indian government has put into place measures that help families send their children to schools, and to help those in the lowest class improve their standing. What they haven’t done is help to teach those who hold positions of power the value of a human life. We frequently see labourers performing their tasks in very unsafe conditions. It happens in the community we live in, for example the man who sprays to protect us from the mosquitoes. We know that he is using a toxic chemical, and close up the house the minute that we hear his fogging machine start up in the distance. He rides by, and is not wearing any sort of protection from the harmful chemicals that he is breathing and coming into contact with. There is no way that he cannot be harmed by the chemicals, yet he has nothing to offer any protection. He may have chosen not to, but in all likelihood he either doesn’t know the risks, or hasn’t ever been given anything to wear. His employers need to ensure that he is protected, that his health has value, and they haven’t.

I am fortunate in that I am not poor, and I live in a country with ample opportunity for both of my children to follow their dreams and be successful, on their own terms. This has been a sobering reminder to me that I need to not only teach the lils to want to do well and succeed in life, but that success must also be defined in terms of their happiness; and that a life has value that cannot be diminished by a failure to achieve a milestone, or a belief that they may not meet anyone’s expectations.

2 comments » | India, life, Parenting

Wordless wednesday – Fly like an eagle

4
April

Fly Away

Building a nest

Gliding

Comment » | India, Photography, Wordless wednesday

I thought we’d made up our minds

2
April

When we first moved here, we hired a few helpers in the hopes that they would, well, help with the transitions.  Our driver, gardener, and maid have all proven to be just what we needed – and then some!  We were incredibly lucky that all three just fell into our laps as they did and are very thankful.  We had tried a cook as well and were really disappointed when she didn’t work out.  I had been especially excited to work with her, but the brief experience left us firmly convinced that having me cook for the family was the perfect choice for us.

Fast forward to this past weekend when, over dinner, some friends asked if we wanted to hire their cook on while they were away in Thailand for the week.  Two factors made me say yes without hesitating; the fact that they have spoken highly of her on more than one occasion, and that the lils are off school this week.  Not preparing meals in the afternoon gives me an hour or three where I can hang out with them.  As much as I love to cook, I prefer to hang with them.

Over the weekend, but without actually meeting up with their cook, we worked out a tentative start for Tuesday.  We planned meals accordingly, and talked it up to the lils.  They were a little gun shy, but progressed from outright resistance to excitement when we explained that they would be able to talk to her and let her know what they liked and didn’t.  Woo made a special request for Palak paneer, and I made sure I’d have the fixings for it for our first meal. He, in particular, was over the moon.

The past twenty-four hours have been pretty much a train wreck for me.  I was up until about three AM for no apparent reason, then awakened twice by each lil in the next two hours.  I woke up cranky and tired, Willy let me sleep until the last possible second, but that was only a little after seven.  The lils were cranky and tired, I was cranky and tired, and we needed to go to the grocery store.  I’d promised paneer for supper, and that was a time consuming promise, on what was likely to be a tough  day. It was a recipe for disaster.  As we were running out the door, I made a quick call to our cook to confirm a start time, and she let me know that she wanted to start today, as her plans had been cancelled.

In an instant, our moods all lightened.  The trip to the grocery was a breeze, we laughed and fooled around, there were no demands on our time other than lunch.  When our cook arrived, the lils were SO excited.  They hugged her on first meeting her, and insisted on showing her the house before letting her even see the kitchen.  Once they settled down a bit, they were allowed to join and “help” in the kitchen before we took off for a leisurely swim.  We arrived home AT dinner time and sat down to an excellent meal, that had just a hint of spice, but was completely tolerable for the lils (they get killed by chillies here).  I didn’t think that we wanted a cook, but one day in to this fun diversion, I am reconsidering…

7 comments » | cooking, India

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