It ain't easy being me: The Boss's wife

Capgemini sent us to India so that Bill could create a Hyderabad based research and analysis group for the company.  Bill is in charge of 30+ people who are typically in their mid to late 20s.  They're young, getting married (typically arranged), having kids, buying apartments and cars.  For all of these life events there are carefully scheduled ceremonies to celebrate.  To shed even more good fortune on these events, the boss gets invited too.

Thursday night we went to a Housewarming party.  There was a dinner first (buffet style) and there was a Puja afterwards.  A Puja is a prayer ceremony done to bless (in this case) the home, and is done before sleeping there.  If you're interested in more details, here's a link:  http://www.indiaparenting.com/home-and-decor/59_828/hindu-house-warming-ceremonygriha-pravesh.html

Last night's dinner was scheduled to start at 7pm last night.  We wisely left the house at 7:10pm and arrived at about 7:45.  Apart from family, we were the first ones there.  Bill and I were greeted by our host, who introduced us to his wife and his father.  We were not introduced to his mother or any of the 5 older ladies there.  Odd.  I did the small talk with his wife explaining why the girls didn't come (umm...your event starts at their bedtime and goes until 10pm AND they have school tomorrow).  Then I moved on to the next round of small talk with the father, when he strongly encouraged me to "Eat.  EAT".  Sigh.

As a side note, Bill and I are doing great with our New Year's Resolutions and are eating very "low-carb" at the moment.  South Indian food does not give many low-carb choices: rice is a staple here.  By staple I mean that on a buffet there will be multiple rice dishes.  This buffet was vegetarian, so I made the best choices I could:  "salad" (which is really slices of cucumber, carrot, and tomato), mixed vegetables (cooked in oil and spices), and Dal Makhani.  Makhani is the Hindi word for "buttery", and Dal Makhani is full of butter and cream...not found on many approved diets, but hey, I was hungry (I didn't have time to eat before leaving home).

I took my small helpings and proceeded to eat, and proclaim how good everything was (which was true) to Wife & Father.  I had finished my dal when Father came over again...he insisted that I have more.  Without waiting for me to politely decline, he,( himself, Father of the host, most senior man there) went over to the buffet, grabbed the serving spoon, filled it up with dal, grabbed a napkin to hold under it and walked across the room to serve ME!  That was a first.  I can't imagine the look on my face watching him walk toward me with a big spoon full of dal.  I must have looked  something like this:

Once finished, the wife took my plate, not one of the servers (whose sole job was to take empty plates).  Wow, talk about uncomfortable.  I apparently have very high status: the Boss's Wife!

Go figure

So Forbes magazine has come out with a ranking of the friendliest countries, and HSBC has recently done a survey about which countries are the best for expats.  Wouldn't you know...India came in dead last.  Here's a little excerpt:

The least friendly country for expats, according to the Forbes formula, was the United Arab Emirates. And among the countries most challenging for expats overall were Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia and India, according to this year’s HSBC survey results. India ranked in last place for the second year in a row.
“India is simply a minefield of relentless mental, emotional and practical daily challenges for most non-Indians,” according to Denmark native Pia Mollback-Verbic, the director of a Mumbai-based qualitative market research firm who relocated there via the U.S. in 2007. “It’s nothing less than a riddling obstacle course, which only can be navigated with a healthy dose of humor, expansive capacity for patience, and tolerance for the illogical.”

Amen my friend.  Amen.

Here's the full article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethgreenfield/2012/01/06/the-worlds-friendliest-countries-2/

The Plan

Will we hear the distant chuckling of God laughing?...time will tell.  Either way, our plan is to return to the US in June.  The girls finish school on the 12th of June, and we'll leave sometime after that.  I've already gotten into my head, so there's no more 'stocking up' of anything, and the question "do I like this enough to bring/ship home?" curbs my purchases.  Clock is ticking...

Can you guess?

The 4 of us went out to lunch today and as we were leaving the restaurant, I noticed that the only other cars in the parking lot were 2 Mercedes, a Range Rover, and a BMW.  Where was this fancy schmancy meal?  That's right...Quiznos.  

Sewing in the Subcontinent

I live in India, and have for the past ~2.5 years.  When my sewing mojo started to extend beyond making curtains and chair covers for the house, I had to start searching for fashion fabric.  You'd think that since so many garments you buy in the US and elsewhere are "Made in India", it should be easy to find fabric here.  Ha ha...if only that were true.  What I can find easily is "Dress Materials".  Dress materials are used to make Salwar Kameez, which is sometimes called a Punjabi suit.  When you buy Dress Materials you get 2 coordinating fabrics, one piece is 2.5m for the top and the other 2.25-2.5m for the bottoms and a coordinating scarf or dupatta.  Here is an example:

So an Indian lady would purchase their dress materials and bring all three pieces to a tailor who would then stitch up an outfit (made to measure).  In this way, ladies can customize their outfits, sleeve lengths, necklines, etc etc.  While it is nice for me to find such lovely fabrics, usually crepe or cottons, I am often hesitant to make a purchase because often I won't like one of the coordinating fabrics.  I should mention that combinations for tops and bottoms can often be quite clashing, ugly, bold, and I'd hate to be left with an entire piece of fabric 2m+ in length that I don't like.  That being said, I have found a few shops where I can have good luck with finding printed fabric by the meter.  Plain cotton or poplin can be found in any Matching Center, which is a shop that sells (guess what?) plain cotton or poplin so that ladies can get pants/salwars, etc made to match an existing top.  Here is me browsing in one:

  

Finding sewing supplies was initially a challenge, but a trip to General Bazaar changed all of that.  This is the main street at General Bazaar:

 

I went with non-sewing girlfriends who wanted to stop at the "Scarf Guy's" shop. This is his tiny shop:

His main business is cloth for saree blouses as well as ready-made petticoats (that go under a saree and hols the whole thing up).  He keeps his huge stash of scarves and petticoats in his storeroom which is a small garage off the adjacent alley.  This is it:

Scarves...I think I bought that one!

Crepe by the meter!  Lets check my list!

So not only did Mr. "Scarf Guy" surprise me by having gorgeous crepes and satin in his storeroom, but he also directed me to my new favorite shop in the whole city.  I must clarify that the term "shop" is a rather loose definition.  A hole in the wall walk up counter with stuff, stuff, and more stuff stacked to the ceiling is a much better description.  Here are photos (If I had stood on the sidewalk, I could have fit the whole shop into one camera frame:

Needles, Pins, Scissors, this that and the other piled high

Lots and lots of boxes of thread!

The owner, Mr. Prakash, speaks very good English and lights up whenever I come in.  Granted, I spend more in his shop per visit than he would typically earn in an entire day, if not 2 or 3 days. He sells "tailoring materials" - wholesale.  That's right, in the country where things are cheap anyway, I found a place to pay even LESS!  Here I pay less than 10 cents (US) for a 300m spool of polyester thread. 16" Invisible zippers: 15 cents, and the same for regular 16" zippers.  Short zippers are 11 cents.  Needless to say I buy tons and tons whenever I go since they are about $1.50-$2 at home.  For the price I pay, I do have to dig through large bags of zippers picking out the ones I want, and they are quite often dusty or even dirty.  Mr. Prakash allows me to wash my hands with his bucket of drinking water when I leave the store.  What a gentleman!  

Apart from zippers and thread, I also buy interfacing by the meter as well as my preferred muslin material.  Mr. Prakash's main clientele are local tailors who send their errand boys over with swatches of fabric in order to buy matching thread.  These local tailors stitch up menswear as well as ladies wear.  So anything you'd need to make a man's suit (apart from the exterior fabric) he sells.  That means suit linings, and pocket material.  I had never given much thought about trouser pockets before, but this "pocket material" is, at 50 cents a meter, my diamond in the rough.  It is a plain cotton that is quite soft once washed, and works wonderfully for muslins.

Searching for just the right thread color

Sewing in the subcontinent is always an adventure, nothing comes easy, but it can come cheap.  Incredible India!

 

Indian Summer

I wake up early.  The school bus comes at 7:35, so I wake up at 6:20.  At night I leave the doors to the terrace and the roof open to see if perhaps the house could somehow cool down during the night.  In the morning I go around and close those doors back up.  This morning, I went to close the terrace door and thought "Wow, it's cool and almost refreshing today."  Then I looked at my trusty LL Bean thermometer I have sitting in the shade outside...it said 95'F.  When 95'F is cool and refreshing...it is summer in Hyderabad.

The Grapes of Guilt

Somehow I have over 10kg (22.2lbs) of black seedless grapes in my kitchen.  I'm not entirely sure how this came about but I certainly could have prevented it.  It started on Wednesday afternoon when I sent Prasad, our driver, out to buy some black seedless grapes.  I gave him 200 Rs or ~4 $USD to buy grapes: definitely seedless, preferably black.  January & February are grape season here in Hyderabad.  You will often see pushcarts on the side of the roads piled high with grapes for sale.  Prasad left on his motorcycle, to return less than an hour later with a bag full of grapes.  "80 Rs/kg Ma'am, so I bought 2.5kg" = 200Rs.   Great.  Super.  Yay, grapes!

Thursday, I was in the car doing some errands.  Prasad's phone kept ringing.  Unusual.  He answered the phone...even more unusual.   A discussion took place (not to mention on speakerphone-granted in Telugu)...very VERY unusual.   Finally Prasad started to tell me:
P: "Yesterday Ma'am, when you sent me to get grapes....I went to different shops before finding grapes.  So I talked to that guy (some person at some shop) and he said it is end of season.  In few weeks, no more grapes.  So he went to market today to get wholesale grapes.  60Rs/kg! Yesterday we paid 80Rs/kg"
Me: Ok, that's a good price (mild furrowing of brow....why is he talking about this and taking calls about this??)
P: He has them now.
Me: Oh...(what is going on...can he stop talking, so I can continue reading my book?)  (The car is the only place I read... and sometimes it is very difficult with the bumpy roads)
P:  Silence...

[Hours pass...Shopping occurs....]

A few more phone calls occured which sounded to me like discussion/back and forth, and always ending by Prasad's "Ok, Ok ok".

Finally, heading toward home, Prasad breached the subject again:

P: "Ma'am, I have talked to that guy and he has increased the price.  He is saying 70 Rs/kg.  for 10kg."
Me:  "Do we have to get all 10kg?"
P: "Yes......... If you want...If we have time we could go to Kondapur and see (the grapes)"
Me:  (thoughts churning "he's put SO much effort into these grapes...that is a good price...the girls do love them...I can give some to friends, and neighbors, 10kg isn't really that much...etc etc etc.)  "Ok, that's fine. Lets go."

Short drive.  Grapes inspected.  Verified to be seedless.  Money changed hands.  Car makes U-turn to head towards home.

And so, I now possess a ridiculous amount of black seedless grapes:  the newly acquired 10kg in addition to the 2.5kg Prasad brought me yesterday.

Got Grapes???  Need Grapes???