Water the flug

Two weeks ago, we wrote a complaint that the washbasin in our bathroom was shaky. So two guys came (Malayalam only) and dismantled the whole thing, leaving the washbasin in the fire escape and the only word I understood was “nala” meaning tomorrow. Well, the tomorrow only came after a week or so, when 4 (!!!) men showed up to “put in a flug”.

Having given up on anybody ever replacing the washbasin, it took me a minute to understand that they’d come to do something about it. I let them in, they carved out a hole in the wall, put in some cement and a wooden flug (now you get it!) and went away, asking me to water it twice a day and Monday (yesterday) they’d come and put the washbasin back up.

I’ve been faithfully watering the flug, but alas, no one has come to complete the task. And so we roll.

In knitting news, I’ve been working on this pattern, which caught my eye. I’m using Lion cotton and Sugar n’ Cream. Although the designer’s work looks scrumptious, mine is definitely going to end as an Ugh. The problem might be that (a) I knit too tight therefore my floats are too tight, thus not giving that gingham look, (b) cotton isn’t slippery enough for the pattern (c) general shabby knitting.

Also, the handle is done in double knitting in two colours, which has me completely floored, me never having done double knitting in colours before. I’ve tried checking out the videos available online, but I wish someone would explain this particular pattern to me. I’ve finished the body of the towel and it only needs a handle now. There is a chart, but I’m not able to understand that very well.

As you can see in the photo, it is still raining here. Apparently Kerala (and much of India) has had 20% excess rainfall this monsoon. Somebody forgot to tell the southwest monsoon that it must retreat before the northeast monsoon comes calling. We went on a cruise of the backwaters on Sunday, taking around the husband’s superior and family. That isn’t our boat, although ours looked identical. They do you for lunch. The boats have two bedrooms with attached bathrooms. You can hire them for the night as well. Food is traditional Kerala cuisine. The backwaters are used as the main media of transport in the region, and it was startling to see distance signboards we normally spot on highways. All in all, a unique experience.

Me, I’m a dry land creature, and while the life on so much water is fascinating to study and brood over, I much prefer less moisture. Water scares me. Nice for a break, though.

ETA: The designer is holding my hand while I attempt the handle. Progress shall be reported.

Paying the price

I have an odd approach to earning money (and spending it). Since I freelance, each article I edit has a price on its head. So I tend to think “I’ve earned Rs 1,500 over the last two days, which pays for the new cellphone I had to buy after my last one met an untimely end after a fatal encounter with azelastine, my nasal phus-phus.” Sort of seeing the trees too much and not the wood so much. Also, while I like the security of having a solid 5-figure amount in the bank, once I withdraw cash from the ATM, it’s like water. Somehow the real paper never feels as important as seeing the numbers in the account balance sheet. Why do you suppose that is? I find it very odd whenever I think about it.

Anyway, in England they give you back every single penny of your change. In fact, as soon as we arrived at Heathrow, I tried contacting an acquaintance who’d said he might be able to pick us up. I didn’t realise you had to prefix a zero to a mobile number even if it was local (you don’t in India), so my first couple of attempts were unsuccessful, and after the second try, the coin-operated phone actually returned not just my £1 coin, but an additional 10p coin. So funny! But then of course I got through to my contact (who couldn’t come anyway) and although the call only took 50p, the machine swallowed the whole £1 so overall I made a loss.

The London underground is totally amazing. There seemed to be so many different levels, one for each line, with each one invisible from the other. The system probably goes miles deep into the earth. I wonder how a cross-section of the ground below London would look. Some of the escalators were very, very high. Despite all the mechanisation, though, I realised not even in London are public transport systems totally friendly to the physically challenged. Not all stations have the escalators, and the stairs require fitness. Carting around my backpack (why are guidebooks and water so heavy?) I think I lost some weight. Next time I travel, I’ve resolved to go with a stronger, fitter person, who can carry around the maps and water and stuff, (and of course the massive amounts of change you acquire in a surprisingly short time). I shall only carry my camera and my enthusiasm.

Talking of baggage, I was lugging a load of it on the Saturday we returned from Sheffield to London. Since we arrived at King’s Cross by around 2pm, my mom (Can you believe she’s over 70?) suggested we should use the time to do some more sightseeing (it’s such an advantage having sunlight until 10pm – schedule all your higher-latitude travel in the summertime, it doubles your visiting hours). So there I was, wheeling the strolly, and packing my backpack, and we trudged to the Tower of London. The cobbles in that place really made it hard. Also, nowhere throughout the trip were we asked to (or allowed to) leave our baggage at the entry (except at the Dickens Museum).

I was also carrying a load of emotional baggage (colonial hangups), as I realised after we saw the Royal jewels. The sight of the Kohinoor made me want to return to India and start up a petition for its return. First, it was taken from India, and then we travel all the way and pay for the privilege of seeing it!!! Of all the nerve…

We met this Yeoman guard:

Who said his grandfather had been in the Indian Army and his father had studied in a place which is now in Pakistan. Of course, when you meet individuals, it’s hard to maintain any anger or prejudice (unlike when you think of the country or race). So we took a nice happy picture together. (Of course it was before I saw the Kohinoor).

My mom is carrying a usual bag from Sainsbury’s (she insisted on buying vegetables all the time so we could have Indian food after reaching home at 10 or 11 in the evening). Western food is good for breakfast and maybe lunch, but you start craving the salt and the hot by night time. (Except I bought a mix for Yorkshire pudding and was disappointed to find it salty when I baked it here in Cochin. Perhaps it is dunked in jam or something for eating? Odd when most of the other baked stuff we encountered in the trip was sweet).

Oh, and that sweater is my handknit. Seen here way back when. Ruth was nice enough not to fall about laughing when she saw it. (Of course she’s got the baby to think of, but you know.) Came in useful, though.

And I thought this was an interesting sight:

That er, cigar-shaped building (one of London’s famous landmarks) with the hoary Tower edifices on either side. I keep forgetting what it is called. Most of Central London, though, is still nicely older architecture and I was especially pleased that even shops didn’t deface the fronts, and were simple. Bombay would do well to follow suit.

Past history

So on the second Saturday we spent in England, we took the train back to London from Sheffield (from Meadowhall Interchange to Doncaster and then direct to King’s Cross). The taxi driver who drove us from our friends’ house to the station was of Pakistani origin and we had an interesting conversation with him in Hindi (with sort of political overtones, so not for this blog).

I love so much the sheer amount of information that is available in all the train stations and coach stations and interchanges and at the bus stops. There are route maps and bus maps and brochures. I picked up a whole load of paper, just as souvenirs. Culled a lot of it when we were packing to move from Vizag. Of course the best part was, it was all in a language that is de facto my first language. People I spoke to on the street and elsewhere didn’t seem to have issues understanding my accent either, but my mom was disappointed no one sounds like the Beeb! I explained that the Beeb accent is largely an artificial one. Ruth and Tom said perhaps some people sound like that in some parts of London, but we didn’t meet any. Anyhow, the weeks I spent glued to Silent Witness, Waking the Dead and The Inspector Lynley Mysteries on BBC Entertainment paid off and I understood the different accents quite satisfactorily. Actually, I think I’d have been intimidated if someone had sounded like the Beeb. This way, my accent was just another among a thousand others.

Not that I watched the series to learn the accents. Also the years of growing up with British writing meant I got a thrill just from recognising street and place names . Like unexpectedly stumbling upon this while looking for something else entirely:

That was on the way from watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey.

Or cutting through from Marylebone Street (after walking through Oxford Street) en route to Portland Place and seeing this board:

Almost enough to make me forget the ache in my feet (our feet ached the entire two weeks! Never have I ever walked so much in my life.)

Then for the murder lover in me (the genre of books, not the act naturally), this on the way to Trafalgar Square:

I made a lifetime of memories from those 13 days. And if I was nostalgic before the trip, now it’s like “I have to go back every year!!!”. Dreaming on…

While on the subject of language, this is the first time I’ve lived in a place where I don’t even read the script. English is ubiquitous, obviously, but I wish I could read Malayalam too. A penfriend from Cochin in my youth tried teaching me but I remember very little of it. One weekend, I shall try to locate her, as I remember her address by rote. Do you think I’ll be able to find her? It must be almost 20 years since we last corresponded. I’m hoping at least her parents will be here, even if she has moved away. I found a schoolfriend in Mumbai when we moved there, 11 years since we last met.

I think all my posts for the foreseeable future are going to be rambling ones. Stay with me if you can!

Resuming service

I am unhappy about Hyderabad and don’t want to think about it, so let’s jump in straight into this new place.

My impression of Kochi so far? Wet, cramped, wet, lots of traffic, wet, potholes, boiled rice, wet, no pavements, wet…oh, and did I mention the wetness? Seriously though, I guess I’m too much of a dryland person (The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics is situated in my hometown). I suppose we’ve missed the bulk of the monsoon, though.

Haven’t done much sightseeing, as we’ve been settling down instead. You know, I’d really love to know what goes on in a designer/architect’s mind when he (most architects for the government in India would be male) designs quarters such as these. The flat is large, the largest room by far being the kitchen! (with poor ventilation and little actual storage space). I tried to convince the husband that we could move the dining table into the kitchen, but he thinks it wouldn’t look good when we have visitors. And of course it would leave the dining room without a function.

What sort of families wouldn’t require cupboards? None of the rooms has any at all, and only two bedrooms have a couple of afterthought wardrobes added. In Vizag, all the wall decorations we’d packed in Bombay remained packed, because we didn’t want to defile the nice walls of the civil flat we were renting. Instead we decorated with stuff in the showcase. Here, on the other hand, there are absolutely no shelves anywhere, but at least a million nails driven into the walls by the previous occupants, so all the showcase stuff has remained in storage and out have come the wall hangings.

The husband indulged in some semi-forbidden activity by getting an extra loft-tank installed, as there isn’t any running water except for 45 minute intervals twice a day. Thankfully the kitchen has a loft tank and one of the bathrooms.

The furniture is mostly good, and after a lot of elbow gunk, the cabinet doors in the kitchen are decent now (the amount of ick on them was unbelievable and I didn’t think on first impression that any of it could be removed, but faithful Scotchbrite came to the rescue, along with lots of soap and water). Apparently the previous occupants didn’t care in what shape they left the house. There are two rocking chairs! Good for watching TV while knitting (of which there has been some).

Am I sounding incoherent? There’s lots of things to blog about, but I find the longer I wait to talk about something, the less likely I am to talk about it at all. Does that happen to you too? I somehow feel after a gap that whatever it was doesn’t matter any more.
To be an interesting blog, though, I think it is important to be regular as well as current. Hmm. No wonder this blog is so poorly read.

Today I enrolled as a member of the Eloor library here which is chock full of the kind of pulp/pop fiction I read and should keep me happy. Got two Heyer murders, one Ian Rankin (my first) and for old times’ sake, a Betty Neels (Kimberly, you’ve read her? You know, mushy chick lit of the traditional kind). The library isn’t close by, but maybe that will keep my expenses down. Also spotted a book sale, but the husband didn’t want to stop in the rain.

Before we left Vizag, the MIL and I had a romantic getaway at Araku. The husband was supposed to join us, but couldn’t as the trucker (try spelling that minus tr plus f) let us down but he joined us the second day for the actual sightseeing. Since it was a “suite” meaning a double bed and a diwan, no room rent was lost. I’ve uploaded pictures at my Flickr account. It was very green and lush. No actual rain, but cool. Also saw my first coffee plantation (drive through).

Off to watch Law & Order: SVU. Ta!