Reason 952 to love the British media

I was waiting for my coffee this morning, and had the opportunity to peruse a copy of the Times. Some helpful soul had left it open to the Sports section, and a full two page spread about Andy Murray at Wimbledon. By the time my cappuccino was ready, I had guffawed out loud multiple times. Said article referenced:

1. Jean-Paul Sartre and Huis Clos
2. Waiting for Godot
3. Steely Dan

W. T. F????? This almost makes up for the irritating extra syllable they add to perfectly good words like "oriented" and "commented".

Almost...

Things that make you go bwahahahahahahaha!

In critical, breaking news:

I just....I don't....I mean....wut?

Also: I may have just peed myself a little bit, what with the hysterical laughing. And the bitter, bitter irony of it all.

The bad

So our trip to India was not all sunshine and bougainvillea and jellabies. To be fair, a large portion of the stress was entirely our own faults, and it all worked out ok in the end, but the run up to the trip was one huge 14 day bundle of cluster f***.

Here's what happened: a little bit more then two weeks before we were scheduled to leave, we discovered that we needed visas (bad news item #1). Now, anyone with an ounce of brain power who didn't live in the EU would have thought of this long ago, but we've gotten so used to being able to jet off to foreign lands without a care in the world, that it never even occurred to us that India would be any different. Ummm...

Good news item #1: as UK residents of more then two years, the average processing time for Indian visas was 2-3 days. Hooray!

Bad news item #2: The list of documents that fulfill the requirements for proving UK residency were very small, and my name wasn't on any of them. So I copied my mobile phone bill, my marriage license and the gas bill and head off to the visa processing center, hoping for the best. I was disappointed. And I sat there for more then two hours in line waiting to be helped.

Bad news item #3: When I finally got up to the counter, I discovered that none of the documents will work to prove residence for me. Not even the marriage license. More importantly, Boo had less then 180 days validity left on her passport (166 days to be exact), so they can't even put her name into the system. And also, since I've put Himself's profession down as "Researcher", I have to provide a certified letter from his place of business swearing left, right and center that he will not do any "Research" while in the country. I collect everything and leave in an absolute panic. Tears ensue on the train home.

The rest of the weekend was spent alternately wanting to throw up and wallowing in despair. I had visions of Himself and Dev going alone, while Boo and I wallowed in misery at home. It wasn't pretty. However...a little birdie (aka one of the other parents from school) told me about how this one time? She got a same-day emergency passport for her son. Hmmmm...

Monday morning I called the US Embassy. And then waited anxiously until 2:00 pm when I could actually talk to a human being. In the meantime I sent them several semi-hysterical emails - "I know emergency appointments are for life-or-death situations and this certainly doesn't qualify, but..." When I finally talked to a real live person, however, it was fairly straightforward. I explained our dilemma. She said "No problem. Can you be here at 8:30 tomorrow morning with all the paperwork?" We had all the paperwork already, but we had to take Elder Sister to school. "Ummm...how about 9:00?" "OK. Just be here as soon as you can and we'll get you a one year emergency passport." This is probably the only time I have ever thought "God Bless the US government!" (Good news #2)

After our whirlwind trip to the Embassy, I headed back over to the Visa Processing Centre, and barged up to the woman who had helped me previously, declining to sit and wait for 2+ hours (she told me I could, otherwise I never would have dared!). All the paperwork gets processed smoothly (Himself became a "businessman" and I became "unemployed"), but then we entered Bizarro world. Or the Twilight Zone. Or some strange universe in which the Powers-that-be try really hard to see what it will take to get Porpoise to lose her shit in a very, very public way.

This lovely young woman, who had told me four days before that even though I couldn't prove residency my visa should be processed within 5-7 days (which would have been fine), now turned to me and said "I'm very sorry, but the High Commission has just informed us this morning that the turnaround time on non-resident visas is now 14 working days."

I felt a bit like a bomb had just gone off - there was ringing in my ears, the world wobbled around the edges, I needed to have a little lie down. And then I let go. I pushed all the papers towards her and said "Take them anyway. I'll just wait and see what happens." Paperwork submitted, fees paid, I wandered back home and had several large drinks.

True to form, visas for the rest of the family took two days. On the day before we were to leave, I got pushy and called the Indian High Commission to find out what had happened. The result? "Your visa has been approved and processed, and you should be able to pick it up tomorrow." Should being the operative word.

I got my visa at 2:00 pm the day we were getting on the plane to go to Delhi. Nothing like cutting it close!

There is more bad on the travel end, involving traffic, snow and almost missing the plane, but you know what? I think the visa story is enough.

And I may need another little lie down now...

The Good

The first time I flew to New Delhi, I remember taxiing in to the terminal with rain pouring down so hard that I couldn't see out of the window. It was the end of the monsoon season, and we arrived in the midst of the last, really big rain of the season. The rest of my memories are quite fragmented (not surprising given the intervening 37 years, right?) but are present in pictures - the bamboo walls of the playhouse in our back garden, the lizards that climbed up the walls of my bedroom, tiny gas lights lining the wall around our house on Diwali. And there were the less pleasant memories - being in a car surrounded by lepers at a stop light, dust and dirt and people living in squalor on the side of the road,

My expectations for returning were pretty open ended, given that I didn't have many memories of living there. I was amazed at how big Delhi is - maybe it was that way in 1979 as well - but it is a massive, heaving, roiling pile of a city. There is a sense of rampant growth in every direction (which could be both good and bad), and an overwhelming enthusiasm for more, more, more! This was evident both in the never-ending construction that seemed to be everywhere, and in the seemingly indefatigable pressure from various peddlers of goods, ranging from cheap toys to postcards to random knicknacks of every variety.

But what did we actually do? After discovering our neighbors just down the road,

we went sightseeing. One of the amazing things that has changed is the vast work that has been done in restoring and renovating the endless ancient architectural sites. The first one we visited was the Red Fort in Old Delhi.

(note: the good quality pictures were taken by Himself, the crappy ones are from my mobile)

We had a lovely time just wandering around the Red Fort - I remember seeing it as a child, but not anything about the inside.

Boo was appropriately attired, of course...

After wandering around for a while, the girls and their grandparents went off back to the hostel for a rest, while Himself, my brother and I went off with one of our hosts to the depths of Chandni Chowk and had a fabulous time wandering through the old markets, bravely trying the local foods. We would never have been so brave if we hadn't been with a local, but she directed us to some of the most exquisite food I've ever had - samosas and jellabies fresh out of the pot (of ghee!), sweet biscuits that were sort of like shortbread cooked over open coals, creamy lassi served in earthenware cups, dal halwa with almonds... It was Sunday, so the market was relatively uncrowded and we could look around more or less at leisure.

After eating ourselves into a stupor, we headed back to Humayun's Tomb, where there is a huge amount of restoration ongoing, using the original techniques.

So to replace a jaali (stone screen)* that has been broken,

they have stoneworkers cutting a new one using the same techniques and tools used back in the 16th century. I found this to be more spectacular then the Taj - the contrast between the red and white stone is unbelievable, and it's surrounded by grounds that contain numerous other burial sites and memorials. We wandered around, with the place mostly to ourselves - it was so peaceful and quiet. Just lovely.

The following day, we headed south to Agra. And once there, we went to the obvious place,

by somewhat less-obvious means.

Boo was in heaven!

The Taj was, well, about what you'd expect (and as I remembered): very crowded, and overwhelming in a "Oh, so that's what it really looks like" kind of way. It's familiar since there are pictures of it all over the place, but none of the pictures can quite convey the enormity of it all.

The next morning, we headed off bright and early to see the Agra Fort, which I think was my favorite place of the entire trip. Hang on for a multitude of pictures...

Yes, I took a lot of detail pictures. The things they did with stone are so extraordinary, and that's well before you get to the inlaid stuff!

From Agra, we piled back into the car and headed west to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. It's also known as the Pink City, not (as I had thought) because the sandstone used for building was pink, but because they painted all the buildings pink for Prince Albert's visit in 1876. Highlights of Jaipur included the Jantar Mantar, an ancient astronomical observatory that's been beautifully restored,

and the Hawa Mahal,

We also spent a wonderful evening at Chokhi Dhani, which is a reconstructed Rajasthani village, complete with craftspeople, dancers, puppet shows, elephant and camel rides, a maze, a fortune telling parrot, and traditional food served en masse on plates made from palm leaves. The girls were stellar about trying the food (Dev in particular, which is quite a good job for her!), although Boo made do mostly with plain white rice. However, when the jellabies came around (by the kilo!), she went into ecstatic reverie, which could only be assuaged by lying down with her head in one lap and her feet in the other. I was on the other end of the table from her, but every so often a little hand would rise up dramatically over the side of the table and swoop down for more sweets. Absolute bliss!

On the way back to Delhi the next day, we stopped at the Amer (Amber) Fort, which is set in an area that reminds me of the Great Wall.

The fort itself is hard to describe - it is a massive conglomeration of buildings with lots of narrow passages leading from one place to the other. A fantastic place (as most of these were) to wander with the girls, who were in absolute heaven.

There were (lots more!) carved stone screens, and some very brave parrots/cockatoos that the girls watched for a long time...

 

From Amer, we headed back to Delhi, well touristed. Or last day was a whirlwind of shopping (pottery! textiles! more textiles! ALL THE TEXTILES!) and packing and enjoying the last bits of time with my parents, who had to leave well before dawn the next day. And then it was slowly getting ourselves sorted out and to the airport and onto the plane, full of new sights and sounds and smells.

Up next: The Bad (none of which was very much so, and most of which was self-induced)

* I must admit that the majority of my pictures are photos of stone screens - for whatever reason, I found them absolutely fascinating!

India

In 1979, when I was seven years old, my family moved to New Delhi for a year. Or, in the case of my mom, my brother and I, 6 months. A couple of weeks ago, I went back with my parents and brother (along with my husband, my almost-5 and almost-7 year olds) for the half-term holiday.

It was mind-blowing. I'm still working on digesting my thoughts, and sorting through the piles of pictures, but I have three blog posts brewing with the details. I'm hoping to get them up over the next week or so, so stay tuned.

A sea change

This morning, in our ongoing (seemingly never-ending) process of finding a school for Dev for next fall, she and I went off to an assessment for a very good, quite selective and academically rigorous school. My feelings about the process of "assessing" (aka giving exams to) kids who are 6 and 7 years old is a post in and of itself, but that is how it works in these here parts.

We arrived at this very imposing place, went in to the main hall, and sat down to wait. They had split the kids into 8 different groups for the exams, and Dev quickly realized that none of the other three kids from her class were in her group. This was only mildly disturbing until she was called to go off with this group of people she didn't know.

"Mummy, I don't want to leave you."

That cracking sound was my heart breaking into itty bitty pieces. I was torn between extreme and unending sympathy, and the guilty heartfelt prayer of Please-God-don't-let-her-break-down-here-in-front-of-all-these-people. Dev has always had a tough time with going off in to new situations, particularly when she hasn't had a chance to sit on the sidelines and examine things for a good while. She will join in, but she does it on her own schedule and in her own terms. This happily going off into a brand new environment is just not her thing (for example, getting her to go to skiing lessons for the first few days last winter involved lots of chocolate and the added responsibility of Looking After Her Little Sister (who was completely unconcerned by wandering off with new people). After a couple of days, she was fine, but the first few were a struggle).

So I told her it was going to be ok, and walked outside with her while they all got into a line and walked off. The look on her face was pure fear and misery, but off she went - with many a backward look. So, so, so brave. I stood there waving madly every time she turned around, and trying not to let my eyes overflow completely. I was so proud of her, and so, so hoping that everything went well.

Fast forward to three hours later: I've arrived back at the school 25 minutes early to pick her up, just to be sure I'm waiting when she arrives. At ten to noon her group comes back, and she bounds up to me, a huge smile on her face. She'd had a wonderful time, aided in part by the jam donuts and biscuits that they had for a snack, and was full of enthusiasm. I gave her a big hug and told her how incredibly proud of her I was, what a hard thing she had done, and how amazing she is.

But the most unbelievable thing? My almost-seven year old decided that, since none of her school friends were with her, she would make a new friend. She walked up to another girl, and said "Can we be friends?" The girl said "Yes" and off they went. Color me gobsmacked - I never would have had the confidence to do that. Her new friend came and sat by us while we waited for her mum, and they had a great time giggling together.

Dev is very enthusiastic about the school (which is problematic due to its location, but that's an issue for another day). And she's done something that was really difficult for her to do, and come out the other side in better then one piece. Bravo!

ETA: Stellar Child has been invited back for an interview. Bravo again!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

From all of us on this side of the pond.