Back Home

After a relatively uneventful 25 hour travel odyssey and finding out that three of our bags decided to spend the night in London, we are safely back home . We are comfortably ensconced in our apartment and dealing with all the normal things including paying bills, scheduling playdates, dealing with health insurance and looking forward to seeing all our friends.

We'll be posting a few more India related comments over the next few days as we get our thoughts together and once we sort through the 1400+ photos that we took, we'll be posting an online album as well.

Sons and Daughters

Motherhood is a long series of subtle separations starting when your baby separates from your body.  From nursling to toddler to pre-schooler, each separation is a hard-won triumph but then all of a sudden they’re in middle school and you spend very few hours a week with them.  The greatest pleasure (and greatest trial) of this trip has been spending almost every minute of everyday with Nick and Nora.  I haven’t had this kind of time with them since they were babies, and back then they weren’t very good conversationalists.  That’s not to say they’re ready for a table at the Algonquin, but they are much more interesting now than they were then.

Nicholas has an amazing laugh that we don’t get to see much at home.  When he really gets going, his eyes close, his nose scrunches up and his body rocks from side to side in silent laughter before he can catch a breath and start the giggling proper.  I’ve also learned that he’s pretty good at remembering and telling jokes.

Politically, I get the feeling that he’s kind of center-right, his loathing of President Bush notwithstanding (and I had nothing to do with that, he picked it up from a babysitter he admired).  He is saddened by the lack of peace in the world, but also thinks we should go to war with China over Tibet.  It also turns out that Nicholas feels contempt for both missionaries and communists.  In the east and south of India, there is a strong communist party presence and when he saw their flags he let fly with a stream of invective.  I didn’t even know he knew what communism was.  The missionary thing was even more interesting because he really seemed to put some thought into what it means to replace one religious culture with another.  “You should never try to take someone’s religion away from them,” is how he put it.  That applies to both evangelists and communists.

Today he told me he’s thinking about studying psychology in college because he feels he’s pretty empathetic—unless you’re a religious nut or a dirty commie, I guess.

The one thing it would have been useful to know before taking him to India: he hates crowds.  Oops. 

Nora, who follows the rules pretty closely at home, has applied her own rules to everything here.  We like to say that in the Republic of Norastan things run differently.  For example, in the Republic of Norastan, one stands while eating. “I’m not built to sit still,” she says when I ask her for the fifth time why she is standing while eating her meal.  In the Republic of Norastan, kids don’t go to bed until ten o’clock, don’t need to brush their teeth and they eat candy after breakfast.  Unfortunately for Nora, her mom and dad don’t live in Norastan, but I admire her effort to exert a little control over the wacky situation we put her in.  We broke the rules of parenting by upending the safety and security of home and school, and turnabout is fair play. 

Not only has Nora inherited her father’s card playing ability, she’s raised trash talking at the card table to an absolute art form.  She is quick with a quip and it’s usually pretty spot on.  Try not to get insulted by Nora, because it’ll probably hurt.  We estimate that she’s played about 500 games of gin since we arrived, probably more. 

It’s been no surprise to us that Nora misses her very active social life, but we’ve been amazed at her nuanced analysis of her social network.  Nora likes almost every kid she meets and she’s adept at finding common ground with anyone.  When she talks about her friends, even the ones she hasn’t know very long, she can tell us a lot about what they like and don’t like and who they mix well with.  She’s still young enough that there is a charming lack of judgment.  Some people get along, some people don’t, it’s no big.  I wonder how she’ll do in the enemy-of-my-friend-is-my-enemy territory that is upper elementary.   

But the best thing I’ve learned about Nora on this trip is that she laughs in her sleep.   

As for what they have learned about us, the mystery that is one’s parents, I don’t really know.  We’ve had time to tell lots of forgotten family stories about our childhoods, our families and the world we grew up in.  I wonder what they’ll remember.

When we get back to our regular lives next week, there will be things I will miss about being in India, but mostly I will miss my kids.  

Improvising Hanukah, Or Why You Can't Keep the Jews Down

Not only is it Christmas time, but it's one of those years when the yuletide overlaps with the festival of lights.  The kids love when this happens.  It's all presents all the time.  This year there are no presents, just promissory notes.   They've seemed to have accepted that pretty well but the lack of a real menorah rankles.

Here's an excerpt from Nicholas' journal about our Rube Goldberg hanukiah:

"First of all I wouldn't be in this mess if Dad had brought the hanukiah and the candles, but he left them at home.  Now that it is holiday time we have a dilemma.  It was easy to find enough candles, so the trouble was with a replacement hanukiah. We found a perfectly nice silver platter for only 38 rupees (75 cents), but Dad wanted something more special which was annoying.  We then started to look for the tin containers bindi powder is kept in.  Finally, Dad got 9 cups with one taller than the others for the shamash."

Here are a couple of pictures:

We've mostly been lighting candles at restaurants so we don't have to sit around the hotel room waiting for the candles to burn out.  The wonderful thing about India is that no one seems to mind what strange little ritual you get up to.  It's all good.  The bad thing about lighting candles in Southern India is that most of the restaurants are open air and the wind blows the candles out.  Whenever the wind starts blowing we make lame jokes about needing a miracle to keep them lit.

What Nicholas left out of his story was a description of David searching through the bazar in Mysore.  We must have stopped at every tin tinker's stall, shifting through all their merchandise and completely unable to explain what we wanted or needed.  But,  love our cup hanukiah.  It's collapsible, utterly Indian, somewhat kosher and it only cost $1.75!  It's everything I think is wonderful about Judaism.  It doesn't require bricks and mortar, you can worship anywhere (and really observant Jews do worship anywhere and everywhere) as long as you know the prayers.  You don't even really need a rabbi; although ideally it's nice to have other Jews for the minyan.  You and your god, then your family, then your community: an ever-widening circle that shrinks or expands to fit the circumstances.  It's not really Christmas for us not being with my family, but give us 44 candles, 9 cups and a pack of matches and it is Hanukah.

Marvalli Tiffin Room

Would you believe the best authentic meal we’ve had in India was served to us by barefoot men from tin buckets?

Before we left on this trip, when I was asked, “why India?” I would half jokingly say “because I love Indian food”.  Unfortunately, we’ve been sorely disappointed by much of the Indian food that we were served in Rajasthan and North India (Tibetan momos being the one notable exception).  We had some excellent meals at high-end hotels but the bulk of what we ate was greasy, heavy and uninteresting.  The meat was stringy or fatty and the vegetables were cooked within an inch of their life.  Lisa and Nicholas were pretty sick the entire time we were in Rajastan and Nora refused to eat anything.  After the first week, it wasn’t just the kids who were clamoring for pizza and pasta at the end of each day.  Things improved once we made it further south as we could start eating some pretty high quality seafood and fresh fruit but on the whole this vacation has been a culinary let down. 

However our lunch the other day surpassed our initial expectations, heartened our foodie souls, and let us in on a uniquely Indian experience.  Our guidebooks (which had led us astray before) both recommended Marvalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR), a family-run Bangalore institution established in the 40’s, as having good vegetarian thali and so when we were hungry after our morning of sightseeing, we decided to give it a try.  The MTR is a cross between a Chinatown dim sum palace, a southern cafeteria and a church spaghetti dinner.  We walked in and first paid for our lunch then joined in a jostling line of Indian families waiting for Sunday lunch.  Once they called our number, we were rushed into a drab dining room and seated at a plain wood table set with no silverware, no plates and no menu just cups of water and cold pressed-grape juice.  A barefoot server came out and one dropped metal plates on our table.  The plates themselves resemble middle school cafeteria trays but with a crescent of  seven divots surrounding the main eating area.  Then with in a few minutes the food started making the rounds.  

Thali consists of a set menu and our servers couldn’t explain what they were serving as they spoke exactly as much English as we spoke Malayalam. About ten different servers (all barefoot!) went from table to table unceremoniously dolloping each dish out of two gallon metal buckets into the appropriate divot on the plate.  The food was delicious, vegetarian and a wonderful mix of spicy, sweet, sour and salty.  The pros ate it with just their hands and fresh whole-wheat dosas (pancakes) while we resorted to using spoons that were the sole piece of silverware provided to us.  The locals’ use of their hands was doubly impressive, as napkins weren’t provided.  We counted at least twelve different courses including dessert of coconut/burnt sugar/chickpea goo and we were totally sated for a whopping $1.65 per person. 

Nicholas adds: “ Despite how much my parents say that the food at the MTR was delicious.  I still think that the meal was the worst I had in all of the two months.”

 

We have started to get our New Years cards in the post but here is an electronic version:

Greetings from India!  This is Lord Ganesha.  He is believed to be the god of good fortune and prosperity as well as the remover of obstacles.  We wish you all of these blessing in 2009.

Happy New Years and all our best.

David, Lisa, Nicholas and Nora

Travel Diary

My brother emailed to remind me that I hadn’t written in the blog for ten days so I though that I would put together a brief diary.

 

12- 5 through 12-7 Goa

When we decided to avoid Mumbai, we elected to head a little further south to Goa and stay at the Taj resort.  It was fantastic.  There was a children’s activity center where Nora was the first child to show up and the last to leave.  It was “paradisical” enough for Nicholas.  And Lisa and I relaxed in a setting that was a lot closer to the Bahamas than the rest of India.  After five weeks of schlepping, mixed quality food and dodgy hotels, it was an unimaginable pleasure to sink in the tropical luxury of the Taj Holiday Village.  I’m not sure what was the greater pleasure: the swim up bar in the pool, New York quality pizza, Indian food that had been toned down to American tastes or other people taking care of my children but we enjoyed them all thoroughly. 

 

Lisa adds:  There comes a time in every long trip when you have to take the Am Ex option: Where’s the nicest place I can go and how fast can I get there?  And, by the way, the pedicure was the greatest pleasure.  You all should have had one.

 

12-8 Flew into Kochi

While we were able to spend the morning hanging out by the pool in Goa, we wound up spending the rest of the day traveling to Kochi. 

 

12-9 Munnar

The better part of today was spent driving up to Munnar which is up in the mountains and is the gateway to the Periyar wilderness.  We saw a couple of waterfalls and acres of tea plantations.  Theoretically there are beautiful overlooks into the valley but the clouds and the rain put the kibosh on that. 

 

12-11 and 12-10 Periyar

There was a short drive from Munnar to Periyar this morning before we went to the highly recommended and extremely yummy Chrissie’s Café for lunch.  We saw a small spice plantation that was shown in the BBC series around the world in 80 gardens.  They grew everything from cocoa beans to vanilla to the ubiquitous cardamom.  Plus there were tons of different flowers, orchids and other plants.  The following morning we went on a three-hour hike through the park.  We saw otters, wild boar, monkeys, malabar squirrels and a tiger track.  There was evidence of the incredibly stealthy elephants but naturally we didn’t see any.  Quite possibly the highlight of the hike was at the end when we took off our shoes and saw why were wearing anti-leech footwear.  There were easily two dozen leeches between us and Lisa actually found one clinging to her shin later (which is entirely harmless other than the creep factor).  We returned to Chrissie’s for lunch as once we find a good restaurant, we are incredibly loyal.  That afternoon we went on a boat ride around the park, which was relaxing but seeing any interesting wild animals was a pipe dream given how loud the boats were.  That evening we saw a pretty cool demonstration of the local martial arts. 

 

12-12 Kumarkom

We spent the morning driving down off the mountain to our hotel at the edge of the backwaters.  It was nice in that you had to take a boat to get to the hotel and there was a nice pool which was appreciated in the mid day heat.  We went on a small boat ride around the nature preserve seeing herons, cranes, kingfisher and the not very exotic ducks. 

 

Lisa adds: We went to the local Taj resort (there’s one everywhere) for dinner, yet again, and had a really nice bottle of chardonnay (of all things) from a region of France I’d never heard of.  When the sun when down, the women came out and lit oil lamps around the lake.  Stunning and peaceful.

 

12-13 Houseboat through the backwaters

The houseboat ride through the backwaters was one of the highlights of the trip for me.  We were picked up at our hotel by a houseboat—a 90-foot long barge that has been converted, then cruised down the canals and lakes that make up the backwaters.  It was supremely relaxing as I was able to sprawl out on the cushion in the bow of the boat and read for hours while the kids did their homework.  The passing scenery was beautiful with rice paddies stretching for miles around and there were untold quantities of birds flying around.  The staff of three people took care of all the meals so we could just sit back and enjoy.  After dinner we crowded around the computer and watched Ratatouille and then sat in the dark so we could see the bats flying around the boat. 

 

12-14 through 12-18 Varkala Beach

We originally planned our longish trip to Varkala Beach before we knew that we were going to spend a couple of days in Goa so initially we were concerned that our stay here was going to be overly long.   Particularly since there isn’t all that much to do here besides go to the beach.  Our hotel wasn’t luxurious but was clean.  In addition, this was the first hotel to look at our foursome and realize that they could up-sell us to a two bedroom suite.  Which cost an additional 400 rupees a day (approximately $8) and was money well spent.   We quickly found a lunch place called the Juice Shack which was appropriately named because it really was just a shack with a couple of juicers.  But they made good sandwiches and excellent smoothies so we ate there four days in a row. 

 

Our typical day was spent relaxing at the beach where Nora would spend hours and hours playing in the surf along with her new friend Eloise.  Nicholas chillaxed while reading the “Hitchikers Guide to the Universe” and laughed incessantly at what he describes as “the best book ever”.  At night, we would wander along the beach path where the restaurants have their fresh fish displayed.  We’d pick one of the similar restaurants and have a meal which generally consisted of a whole grilled red snapper for five dollars, pizza, coconut curry with chicken, kingfisher beer and a couple of fresh lime sodas.  Even on our final day here when Nora had developed a rash where her bathing suit had rubbed her legs raw, we were able to have a fun day shopping for presents.  Despite our concerns about boredom, we had a wonderful time.

Quote of the Day

Nicholas "A martial arts display...  I'm going to hate that"

Afterwards

Nicholas "That was AWESOME"  Demonstrating why his nickname is "Initially Reluctant Markus"