Some photos

Chanana (our housekeeper) in the kitchen with Amnon

Jesse chillin' in his room

Amnon after preparing our first Iraqi-style brunch for guests

Jordan and me

Jesse at the animal kennel where we (prematurely) bought puppy toys and pet food

Jordan, at the kennel

With some "natives" at the Kingdom of Dreams site in Gurgaon

A local grocery in our neighborhood...note how densely packed!

Scammed, delayed, missing - - Why??

We seem to be targets for poor “customer service.” This might be typical, but we only have our own experiences to impart. We ordered “custom made furniture” from one of the markets. We were *supposed* to have a dining room table, chairs, and some other pieces within a couple of weeks. The carpenter came to our apartment 3 weeks later - - he had had dengue fever, his grandmother had died, his daughter had a baby, and he hadn’t prepared any of the furniture. Our driver of the first couple of months left for his hometown in Himachal Pradesh for a week, and then never returned. (He spoke to us after 2 weeks saying that his wife was ill. No word from him after that.) Any number of workers and craftsman make appointments to come to our apartment to fix something or other and then never show. Adam has arranged multiple meetings with breeders about getting a new puppy. They make promises and don’t return calls, or they return calls and say that the puppy they had planned to bring has some genetic disease and isn’t suitable.

We muse about what might be going on. With respect to the puppies, Adam was concerned that Amnon had done too good a job negotiating down the prices, and that the breeders were dis-incented to work with us. (But why agree to a price, and then become scarce?) Another theory, not unrelated: They have a puppy for us, but then get a higher offer from someone else, and so need a fast excuse to back out at the last moment. (2 puppies we were about to get “fell ill” and were therefore not delivered.) With respect to the missing driver (and our missing first housekeeper), Amnon opined that I was at fault for making them feel too important to us and too much like family; they then conclude that they can “go missing” for a month or so and we will be eagerly awaiting them whenever they return. We have heard that erratic appearances for drivers, housekeepers, workmen are not uncommon. But that also begs the question - - isn’t this a community eager for employment? Why treat these business opportunities so cavalierly?  

FRRO Registration

I have earlier described the onerous process of getting visas for India. Once you arrive in India with the visas that we have (work, and dependent visas), you have 2 weeks to register at the FRRO bureau. (Foreign Regional Registration Office). You need a number of documents for this registration process, such as your passports, and the lease to your apartment on special “stamp paper.” (Official documents in India need to be printed on this special paper with an image of an Indian 100 rupee note at the header.) We couldn’t find our lease on stamp paper, if we ever had one, and Jesse needs to register in the FRRO Bureau. I did have a lease on standard paper, signed by the landlady and me. No no no - - the FRRO bureau requires only a lease on stamp paper. So we requested that another copy of the lease be drawn up; I scanned it, sent it to our landlady in Europe, she signed it, scanned the signed versions, sent it back to me, etc….I also notified our overseas assignment liaison that I would prefer to wait for another 4 weeks before Jesse goes to the FFRO Bureau to register, since he and Jordan had signed up to volunteer to teach English to kids in slum schools. No no no, I was told by our overseas assignment liaison; they cannot volunteer unless they have a *work* visa. I said that they would be volunteering for only 3-4 weeks; but ok, we can convert the visas if that would be required. How should we proceed? They said that the boys would have to fly back to the US to apply for work visas. Clearly an absurd suggestion for 4 weeks of volunteering in a slum school.

(Here is an image of the lease on "stamp paper" - -)

I shared my frustration with a few colleagues and other associates in India. They mused about how bureaucratic these visa-provisioning entities can be, in any country. They shared stories about how they had wanted to go to the US for a conference, and they were denied visas on some technicality. But I see a few glaring differences. First, many many people are eager to immigrate to the US, and so the visa provisioning authorities are cautious if they think that the person requesting entry is in fact interested in remaining in the US illegally. As a result, they might end up ”over-filtering” and not allowing people in with legitimate interests in doing something in the US. But does India suffer that same problem, with millions of outsiders trying to enter India illegally and remain here? Also, people coming to the US to attend a conference are generally doing this for their own betterment. In our case, we have kids that have put their own life plans on hold to come to India, and to do something good for the country. Seems to me there should be a streamlining process for people that opt to leave the “good life” in America to volunteer in the developing world….rather than additional bureaucratic obstacles.

Workers with narrow job descriptions

We are struck by how many people are employed to do narrow and limited tasks, tasks that could be aggregated and handled by fewer people. When you walk into a store, there can be a guard at the door, another person opening the door for you, and another person greeting you. It is a good thing to create more employment opportunities for more people. But there seems to be “real” work that could be done, leveraging the same number of people or even more. The same store with multiple people opening doors and greeting you might also have broken front steps and animal waste, right outside. It seems that some of the people employed unnecessarily inside the store can do more for the aesthetics outside the store. Someone at work commented that Indians place a high value on keeping the insides of their home scrupulously clean, but there is less concern about what is outside. I see that when I go on walks as well. Our relatively affluent neighborhood has debris strewn everywhere. Often it appears that people dump their household trash in neighborhood parks. And there is always a lot of the day-to-day debris too, such as bags from snack food. Jordan has commented that packaged goods (with all of their associated waste) arrived in India before the country had developed a well-planned sanitation system. I have asked people here why they don’t have trash bins in public places (which could at least eliminate the snack bag wrappers in the park). I was told that they have tried making trash bins available, but people end up stealing the trash bins.

(photos below of the park right outside our apartment; and a photo that shows some of the trash around the periphery)

Ecology in India

I have never been a stellar conservationist; I confess to not doing my part to preserve the planet’s resources. I use and probably waste lots of “stuff.” I note that in India I have become much better at preserving, re-suing, and not wasting. But a lot of this new-found sensitivity comes from my fear that once I use up item x,y, or z, I have no idea how to replace it; of if I do have an idea, I will need to travel to some distant place to do so. As I have mentioned, we don’t have Target, Staples, Costco – these big box stores where you can replenish everything. Jordan was toying with a small retractable tape measure that I brought with me….I requested that he not fool with it lest he break it, and I don’t have a clue where to buy such a thing. I still have a lot of supermarket plastic bags from NY here that I used for packing….I use them judiciously since many stores don’t provide plastic bags when you shop. My showers are brief and water-conserving; lest the hot water tank gets depleted. (There is a hot water tank associated with each of our four bathrooms; they guarantee short showers unless you don't mind cool water.)

India policy appears in general to be much more ecology-savvy than we are in the US. Public transportation runs on “compressed natural gas.” I see schools with signs outside saying that they are PVC-bag-free zones. I tried to get a bottle of water at Adam’s school; they said they don’t sell plastic bottles and that they are a plastic-bottle-free-zone. This was interesting during the really hot weeks in summer, when I wanted to grab some bottled water from the school to take on the road as I left the school on my way to work. It was over 100 degrees, and you cannot drink water here that isn’t filtered, and so if you don’t have a bottle with while you are commuting, you are sort of stuck. The ecological sensitivity is lovely, and I guess with the size of the population in India, failure to respect the environment can have awful consequences. But it also seems like it might be a bit early for some of these dramatic moves. Amnon said it was like declaring the top of an erupting volcano as a “no smoking zone.”  The pollution issue here is dire with unclean air and an unclean and undrinkable water supply. So it might still be premature to ban plastic bottles of filtered water. But I suppose you have to start somewhere...

We are accustomed at home to separating our waste products – paper, plastic, glass, and general waste. There is no such separation of household waste in India, at least not in our community. At work, there are separate trash bins for “wet waste” and “dry waste.” I don’t quite know how to interpret that…if a napkin has some moisture around the edge, is it “wet waste” or “dry waste”? Is “wet waste” supposed to be liquids that you are discarding?  One of my colleagues has advised me not to fret too much. He used to be concerned as well, but then noticed that the maintenance people that remove the garbage ultimately throw it all into a single bin. On the other hand, I see people on the roads cycling with big bales of paper, or plastic waste. So it looks like poor people are sorting through disposed trash, and identifying components that they can re-sell. It appears that India does have disposal separation, ultimately. In the US, we do it on the front end, as we sort our disposable products. In India, the sorting occurs on the back end, as people filter out the disposables that have already been discarded and extract items that have resale value.

Employing people with disabilities

I have worked for years and years in the area of accessibility; it has remained an area of focus and passion for me even when I have been formally assigned to different areas at IBM.  I am familiar with all of the arguments about why accessibility makes good business sense. We have moved beyond humanitarian arguments that suggest “it’s the right thing to do,” and we have pointed out that it is in fact important for businesses to be accessible and therefore attract talented employees that happen to have a disability. We point out that there is a talent war, and that we don’t know where the next “big ideas” will come from; we don’t want to block out large portions of potential talent and genius. We point out that we have an aging workforce, and that we need to have an accessible environment so that aging workers that have incipient “disabilities” (reduced hearing, vision, mobility) can still work productively. We point out the expense for the rest of society, if large sectors of the population are on public welfare.

A country like India turns all of these arguments upside down. It is a young country - -this from Wikipedia:

In India, more than 50% of its population is below the age of 25 and more than 65% hovers below the age of 35….It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan

So discussions about accommodating an aging workforce here clearly don’t resonate. Also, arguments about “it’s a talent war for people” don’t resonate as well as they do in the US; the population is huge, as is the population of unemployed individuals. I don’t know if the “public welfare” issues resonate either; I don’t know how much (or whether)  the government (and therefore the taxpayers) are supporting individuals that don’t work because of disability. Since we do pay social security/welfare to individuals in the US, the argument can be brought back to taxpayers….it is in their self interest to keep as many people employed and employable as possible.

So maybe, in India, the argument needs to come back to humane concerns, and “it’s the right thing to do.” But then “accessibility” needs to stand in line with a long list of social ills in India - - illiteracy, poverty, homelessness….

Perspective on population density

The press of people in India can be intense. You see it on the roads, and on the streets. Some of this might be an artifact of Delhi….people leave their villages (where poverty is even more extreme) to become laborers of some sort in Delhi, perceived as an area with more opportunity.

Some perspective on population density here…India has roughly 4 times the population of the US, and 1/3 of the land size.

India: 3,287,263 sq km           Population India: 1,139,964,932

US: 9,826,675 sq km              Population US:  310,445,000

People with disabilities

Jesse commented that he hasn’t seen anyone here with Down’s Syndrome. This launched a deeper discussion, about the fact that kids with Down’s Syndrome weren’t generally in the community when I was growing up, either. Society needs more sophistication, and money, in order to empower kids with disabilities and create an infrastructure that mainstreams them whenever possible. What happens to kids with disabilities in the many many slums, where everyone in the family is scraping to make a living? Who is there to provide special services to kids that require them? And so what happens to these kids, after all? Where are they?

Visit to village in Haryana

Click here to view these pictures larger

Household Help - reprise

We hired a new maid a few weeks ago (Chanana) – and she has been terrific. She is a wonderful and diverse cook, preparing multiple types of cuisine (Indian, Chinese, Italian). Her husband will be our driver, as soon as we get a car. (Amnon is looking at used Toyata Innovas; one of the very few vans that are sold here.) (In the interim, we are still getting around with taxis.)

Chanana works 6 days of week, which is the norm. We had some friends over for brunch last week, and we asked Chanana if she could come over for a few hours on Sunday, as overtime. She readily agreed. When I mentioned this to colleagues on Monday, they commented in return that their household help works on Sundays, too. It’s pretty amazing to me; the “bottom of the pyramid” workers not only earn a pittance; they have what most of us would consider unacceptable working conditions.

So many hours of household work are now completely removed from us. I feel like I should be swimming in free time, but somehow I am not. It occurs to me that India relieves us of daily household labor on the one hand, but adds all of this extra time to other activities. Shopping, for example, is a much more time-consuming activity; I have not seen any 24 hour supermarkets where you can swoop in and do your shopping on the way home from work. All of this is exacerbated by not having a couple of cars available to us.  And so the chores and errands that do remain for us seem to take a lot longer.

A new multinationaal Basson puppy on the horizon

We have been talking about whether we are ready to get a new puppy….acknowledging that our beloved Bibi is irreplaceable…Adam has been discussing the value of getting a puppy within the next couple of years, so that he can do the early puppy training before going off to college. We discussed getting a puppy when we get back to the US. Then we discussed getting a puppy this year, in India, which would give the boys more time with it. Then the discussions turned to what kind of puppy. Adam did deep research as to what “fits” our family style….and what emerged as the “best fit” was a white shepherd. (Is this what fits us? Is it that Bibi molded us, so that white shepherds have the most appeal? In any case…we have promised one another that we will not expect puppy #2 to be a “clone.”)  Next challenge….white shepherds aren’t bred in India. So Adam has researched breeders that import them to India. So far, we have had a couple of these “breeder reps” make promises, and then disappoint us - - not returning calls, etc. As of last promise, we are supposed to get the puppy this week. This one is a “quasi rescue” – someone in Bangalore who needs to return to Canada and can’t take his 14 week old white shepherd. So this feels a little less decadent…we are getting the breed that we want, but also giving a home to a doggie that needs one…

Tikun Olam – volunteering

Tomorrow Jesse and Jordan will begin one of their volunteer initiatives, teaching English to underprivileged children. It looks like a promising program, and it starts with a spate of tours around New Delhi. Should be interesting. One of my Indian colleagues commented that the Indian population doesn’t seem to be as immersed in volunteer initiatives as the foreigners are, and this set me wondering. It could be that the Indian middle class population is so inured to the poverty that they see around them that it seems “normal” rather than jarring; it’s just the way things are and have always been. Or perhaps life is more of a struggle even for the Indian middle class, and so they don’t have enough “spare cycles” of cash, or time, to get more involved. (I doubt this latter option even as I write it….time seems to be a gift that you get more of here, with all of the low cost options available to every middle class Indian to hire household staff and handle many of the mundane and time-consuming aspects of living.)

Wallet stolen

Alas, foreigners are supposed to be prepared for wallet snatchings in many countries, and India is pretty high on the list. I have never developed street-savvy pocketbook-holding strategies, even though I’m a NYC kid…and I have been fortunate never to have suffered penalties for my lax and trusting ways… But last weekend, Jordan had stomach cramps, and we took another trip to Fortis hospital. (Jordan is feeling much better now. He commented that if we make another trip to Fortis in the near term, they will have to put us on the payroll….) We went to a few departments (reception, radiology, etc.) I had my bag with me except for a few seconds when I got Jordan some water and left my bag on a chair outside. Really, just a few seconds. But when I went to the front desk to “check out” and make payments, my wallet wasn’t in my bag. I don’t have a clue who or how it happened. And I definitely had my wallet when I entered the hospital, as I had just paid the taxi driver. And as we all know, the issue with lost wallets is not usually the money, but the “stuff” - - my driver’s license, social security card (why on earth was I carrying THAT around, anyway?) credit cards, credit cards, credit cards…

Amnon wanted to call the police and file a police report, and New Delhi police were, once again, wonderful. They came to the hospital within minutes after we called, spoke to security, and then brought us to the police station to file a formal report.  They were professional and conscientious and once again a pleasure to deal with. The constable pre-paid the auto rickshaw that then drove us home. Really going above and beyond in their customer service. They just happen to offer a “service” that you hope you won’t need again anytime soon…

Cleaning up after your dog

I belong to a couple of listservs for expats in India. Generally we are asking each other questions about where you can take tae kwan do classes in New Delhi, or who has a maid that is looking for extra work, etc. There was an interesting thread posted by someone from the British Council, about cleaning up after your dog, which is apparently an issue here. I include the thread below.

Original Poster:

I was told off the other day for picking up my dog's poo on the street. Apparently I shouldn't do it as "we have a service for that". I feel really guilty leaving big Labrador poo all around the neighbourhood, but I wouldn't want to offend cultural norms.

Reply 1:

One thought....

Does it have anything to do with the fact that many burn dung as fuel here?  Granted, it's usually dung from cows, but perhaps..... who knows.

Maybe the guy was just having one of those days and your poo-collecting put him over the edge. Maybe he secretly felt ashamed for not picking up after his own dog, and got defensive. Who knows.

Given the absence of posts saying "that happened to me too", I gather it was a one-off thing, but certainly very entertaining.

Thank you for being so considerate as to poop-and-scoop. I wish more dog-owners did the same.


Reply #2:

There might be a service in place but whether or not it gets done is another story. I hate to say it but I have my doubts!

Maybe it's just the stigma that only low-caste people collect rubbish and clean etc. I'd personally still keep picking it up.

Reply #3

Unlike NY and other European cities, cities in India don’t have any problem with dog poo. I guess they feel since it’s so dirty already, with all these strays pooing all over anyway-some more won’t harm. On a serious note, poo is considered unclean by most Indians. They would never pick it up-not theirs, nor their pets and so they probably objected to you picking it up.

In all my years here, I have never seen anyone pick up dog poo. Very expected though, ppl pooing on the streets is common enough and no one bothers with their poo. Still wondering what service there is-I guess they mean the DMC-Delhi municipal corp which has sweepers cleaning up the markets.


AND FINALLY, from the Original Poster:

Thanks for all the replies: public and private. I think I will stand up for responsible dog owners around the world and pick up my dog poo with pride :-)

After all it's not me that has a problem with it and I am helping making Delhi a cleaner city.
 

Fixing things for the short term

I remember my dad used to say that American cars were built for obsolescence. Well, Indian ROADS appear to be built for obsolescence. My Indian colleagues have pointed out that the workers that fix the roads have developed the fine art of repairing roads that will remain intact for only a few weeks before they once again need repair. We have mused about the fact that there are more incentives to repair and then be called back to repair again, rather than doing a spectacular job the first time. These findings are substantiated by this note from our friend John, and his experience in India:

We were driving somewhere and noticed some fresh white lines on the road marking the lanes.    Then we noticed that the lines were powder – lime probably.   We said something  about how silly it was that they don’t paint the lines.  Our guide looked incredulous and said something like:  “But then the workers wouldn’t have that job to do again!” 

Leave a message after the beep

Voicemail is maddening. We don’t like leaving it, and we don’t like having a string of voicemails to listen to. The only thing worse is….no voicemail. I don’t know how technology trends evolve in different cultures, but voicemail hasn’t taken off in India. This includes colleagues, drivers, family members. So as a call recipient, when you see someone has called you, you call them back to find out what they wanted. As a caller, the “monkey is always on your back.” With voicemail, you call someone; if they aren’t there, you leave a message, and it’s off your personal “to do” list. Absent voicemail, the problem is yours, until you reach the targeted person. I think there is a pricing issue, in that the caller pays for voicemails that they are leaving, if the callee even has voicemail as an option. (not sure about this.)  And if people aren’t accustomed to leaving voicemails, they feel strange talking to an inanimate machine. I wonder if this is an intrinsic cultural characteristic that won’t change, or an evolutionary one that will change soon, albeit several years behind the west.

Medical Attention, once again

Jordan has had a sore throat, stuffed nose, and headache over the last few days. Most recent new symptom was dizziness. We might just wait this stuff out in the US, but given some of the scarier strains of disease here (dengue, malaria) we opted to go to the doctor. There are lots of private doctors around, often with storefront offices. The signs announcing their practices are often dilapidated, dirty, falling off the wall where they are posted. Not inspiring places to visit. We went instead to the Fortis hospital where Adam and I spent a week in August. They have out patient services too. Conclusion to our visit there: Jordan has sinusitis.

The experience at Fortis was again, lovely. There was a fair amount of waiting in lines, to schedule an appointment with the internist (and pay), then to schedule an appointment with the ENT (and pay), and finally to schedule blood tests and an X-ray (and pay). Jordan recently got Indian health insurance, but we didn’t have the insurance card yet and so we paid for everything with cash/credit cards. It is easy to glorify and romanticize “the way things are at home, and how much more efficient things are.” But in this case, India beats out home experiences, hands down. If we needed to go from the internist to an ENT with our home doctors, we would have needed 2 separate appointments; they wouldn’t have been consecutive. The X-rays would have required yet another appointment. Results for blood tests would come the next day; at Fortis, they gave us a username and password so that we can log on ourselves later in the day to get results. Each doctor visit, with no insurance at all, was 700 rupees ($15). A whole array of meds (antibiotics etc.) was 500 rupees ($10). I am delighted to see quality medical services so affordable. But then, they are only affordable by OUR standards, with our US salaries.  If a driver or housekeeper earns all of $200 - $250 month (and those are the GOOD salaries, for maids/drivers working for expats)…then a $40 medical bill counts for 20% of their monthly wage; not affordable at all…But there are probably more affordable clinics than Fortis, which is probably high end (in quality, and price).

High holidays away from home, Part 2

Yom Kippur was this past Friday night and Saturday. THIS time, we were armed with a map, and our driver found it, no problems. (Driving on Yom Kippur is a big no-no…but what to do when there is only one synagogue, 30 minutes away by car?)

The service was very different from what we are familiar with…what was read, and the melodies that were used. There were many Israelis present; generally expats that work at the Israeli embassy but there also seem to be a number of Israeli entrepreneurs here. Many of the Israelis, as facile Hebrew readers, were called to lead parts of the service. Amnon was called up for one of the blessings during the Torah reading, and he chanted the beautiful Iraqi melody with his beautiful voice. He was then tagged to read a large portion of the service, which he did (mercifully) in rapid fire Hebrew.

I think the service was pretty torturous for Jesse and Adam. They have rarely gone to synagogue outside of our own wonderful congregation in White Plains (Bet Am Shalom). The whole spiritual experience is bound together – you are with people you know and love, the service is familiar and predictable, and you are able to reflect on your soul and whatever else you typically do at high holy day services. I remember my first service away from the “familiar” when I did my junior year abroad in Israel. It was a grand epiphany for me….There was no spiritual power in it at all. Which was upsetting at the time: If you are truly communing with G-d, then the location shouldn’t have that much effect. Yet it does. For Jesse and Adam, a big part of the holiday experience is also being with their friends from early childhood; and hanging out outside of the service. That was not an option here; indeed, they couldn’t even leave early, since Amnon was one of the key service leaders. Well, suffering is what you are supposed to do on Yom Kippur…

Getting the security thing down…

The locks on our doors (and everyone’s doors, I believe) are different from standard locks and keys in the US, and, I think, less convenient. You need a KEY to get in from the outside, AND you need a key to open the door from the INSIDE if the door has been locked. The difficulty with this system: If you are alone in the house and you lock the door and leave the key inside, other family members coming from the outside cannot open the door even with their keys. So generally, you remove the inside key from the lock so that others coming later can open the door. But then when the doorbell rings or you need to go out, there is a mad scramble to find the keys so that you can open the door even from the inside. One solution would be to ensure that you have a hook near the door for easy key-access; and to make sure that at least one set of keys is hanging there at all times. (We haven’t done this yet) But why this system? Amnon has been planning to replace the lock with a more western lock. One of his Indian acquaintances, though,  (let’s call him Ram) said that a system that requires key access from the outside only is not a good one for India. Ram said that you need to be able to bolt people INSIDE the house without easy egress. Ram had a plumber working at his house, and happened to see his camera tucked away somewhere outside of his house. The lore here is that workmen in your apartment can take things and hide them somewhere outside of your house if they have easy, keyless entry and exit. Then, even if you do check their bags when they officially leave, they will have already extracted whatever they wanted. Yuk. This does not resonate with my polyannish-world views; nor with my world view that everyone is basically good; that people will like us when they know us; and that people that like us would never do bad things….

Is there virtue in cleaning your own house?

We are growing more accustomed to having someone come to our house each day, sweeping, washing the floors, doing the dishes. It feels like you’re in a hotel. I still struggle with the concept of that much assistance.


I have spent thousands of hours cleaning my own house, washing my own dishes, doing the laundry, cooking. Full weekends have been spent engaged in household duties, and completing all or some of these is how I have defined weekend fulfillment. That is NOT the experience here, even for very middle class folks. (I assume it is not the experience ANYWHERE, for the wealthy, unless that is what they choose to do.) If you tell your US colleagues that you spent the entire weekend on house chores, they will nod with understanding. I imagine that if you tell that to your Indian colleagues, it would appear strange…Like someone in America saying they spent the weekend grinding stones into sand, when it is easier and more time-effective to simply buy the sand outright. Is a life without these “duties” a better life? What would most of my American friends and family have done with all of that extra time? Would we have used it to solve world hunger, or to write the great American novel? When you are relieved of the mundane tasks of life, are you more likely to become your fully realized self? Should we all aspire to do less of these mundane tasks, if we can possibly afford to? (And in India, as I said, most people can afford to - - you can have a full time cook/housekeeper for $200/month, and that’s probably the inflated expat pricing - ) Should I look back at thousands of hours of house duties, and conclude that they were a waste; that I could have been doing something “bigger” to “fix the world” during that time??

Where does the water come from?

That same night that Adam was entertaining 8 or so friends from school, the water pump on our roof stopped working. We called someone over for some emergency repairs to get us through the night. (I envisioned lots of kids needing bathrooms with toilets that stopped flushing…) Amnon gave me a crash lesson on how we get our water here. The city opens the water valves for our area twice a day, from 5:30 am till 7:00 am, and from 5:30 pm till 7:00 pm. When the valves are open, water flows into an underground concrete citrine that every building has with dedicated pumps for each apartment; we need to flip a switch that will pump the water from there up to our two roof tanks. Failure to flip the switch means no water filling the roof tanks and no water for your apartment that day. Amnon has now installed an automatic timer that turns the switch on and off, so we don’t need to go up to the roof to flip the switch. On the day of the sleepover, the pump to the roof malfunctioned, which was the source of the problem. It has since been fixed.



But we are again reminded not to take for granted the infrastructure that we enjoy in the US, where you turn a faucet and water just appears; no prior effort or thought required on our parts.

C8/8, Vasant Vihar - - hosting our first kids’ hangout

This week, Adam asked whether we could host 8 or so kids from the American School at our apartment for dinner, and some of them would sleep over. We always love making our home “hangout central,” and so we agreed without hesitation. (We are not fully ready for this; still waiting for furniture to arrive, etc…but we figured we would wing it.) I have a repertoire of foods that I make when the kids have friends over, and so I planned a meal around these familiar dishes. Amnon also got some wonderful roti and paneer and other sauces at an Indian market. I opted to make “corn pashtida” (an Israeli crustless quiche) and a chocolate chip cookie cake. I went to the market to get the ingredients needed. Some of the things we consider staples in the US are just not that common here. These include cheddar cheese, and corn. Our local market has a lot of western offerings, and so it was easy to get the supplies. But since cheddar is non-standard, I paid the equivalent of $10 or so for a couple of small cheddar blocks. And another $5 or so for canned corn. It occurred to me that I am preparing an $18 quiche…a bit excessive, especially for India. I have since been told by some of my new expat acquaintances that there are Indian versions of some of these products, although the store owner is delighted to sell the expensive imports if you don’t specifically ask for the Indian versions - - and some expats probably want only the brands that they know. I am just fine with “going native.” I would happily go native with all of my recipes, but I will need to learn to “cook Indian.” As it is now, when we go to Indian markets with no western imports, I don’t know what most of the products are, or how they are used…I hope to learn…

Police Attention

Our apartment in India is lovely, and in one of the nicest sections of New Delhi. There is a lot of construction going on all over the city, as real estate prices here balloon. This includes the building next door to us, an elegant structure that is being thoroughly renovated with a dedicated construction crew that works day and night. We are generally fine with the construction noise and debris. This week, though, the crew was doing some particularly loud activities at 3:00 am or so. (Amnon said it sounded like they were cutting marble.) Amnon called the local police to ask if the workers could be asked to stop. The police asked whether he was calling to report “noise pollution.” Amnon said “yes,” impressed that they had a name and category for it. They said they would be right here. Within minutes, 2 police cars pulled up to the adjacent apartment. Amnon watched through the window. Six policemen got out of each car, and summoned down the entire construction crew. Before leaving, the police station called to ask if we were satisfied with how they resolved the problem, and whether he could release his men. The construction noise stopped, and the building went dark for the night. The next morning a policeman came to our apartment, to find out whether the rest of the night was quiet for us, and to ask whether we wanted to file a formal complaint. We did not. But we were impressed with the responsiveness of the police. Since then, the construction work next door has been starting at 7:30 am instead of 6:00 am, and we have not heard loud noise in the middle of the night.

I think we all form impressions by anecdotal experiences. If you call the police and they come quickly, you conclude that the police are responsive and efficient. This could be because we are in the Vasant Vihar neighborhood, or because they heard a western voice complaining, or because they were having a slow night. Nonetheless, we are left with a very favorable impression of New Delhi’s men in blue (actually, khaki in India- - )

Rosh Ha Shana – The Shul at 2 Humayun Road

Rosh Ha Shana, in New Delhi. A city with 10 indigenous Jewish families, plus some uncounted number of expats like ourselves. There is but one synagogue – Judah Hyam (http://jewishdelhi.org/) When I contacted them about Shabbat services, the religious leader there asked if I was ok with a service that included women as well as men as part of the “quorum” (minyan of 10); he said that if they DIDN’T include women they wouldn’t have a minyan at all. (We belong to a Reconstructionist synagogue in White Plains – Bet Am Shalom – which is fiercely egalitarian. We are just fine with a mixed minyan.) Adam and I went there for Friday night services while Amnon was in Israel last month, and they were very welcoming.
We planned to go there for Rosh HaShana. The synagogue is several miles from where we live, so we took a taxi. The driver that took Adam and I last time was unavailable, and so we arranged to go with a different driver. We gave him the address – Two Humayun Road, and some rough demographic information (near the President’s House). (While I had been there before, my non-existent sense of direction can get me lost on the easy grid of Manhattan….so my navigation skills were useless…) Street names and numbers are not easy to spot here. When the driver seemed a bit lost, Amnon emphasized that we needed TWO Humayun Road. We drove for a bit, and the driver pulled up to Humayun TOMB. (sort of sounds like “two”….) No, no, we said. Amnon then tried to convey that we wanted a temple, a temple for Jews. The taxi continued driving, and then pulled up at the ZOO. (sort of sounds like “Jew”….) At this point the boys are hysterically laughing and enjoying the whole experience far more than actually being in services. Amnon stops to ask policemen along the way, and is continuing to convey the notion of Jews, prayer, etc. But no one knows what “Jew” means…in this city of 12M or so people, 10 families don’t really stand out. (Even the highly educated people that I work with don’t know much about Jewish people. For those that didn’t spend time in the US, I am the first Jewish person they have met. ) The driver got the “prayer” part, and then took us to a Hindu Temple, and then to a Christian church. By then, it was too late for services - - (I didn’t want to walk in so late to a small congregation with our team of 5.) We will be better prepared for Yom Kippur – with mapped out directions in hand.

Jordan and Jesse arrive in New Delhi

Jordan and Jesse have arrived in New Delhi. Amnon, Adam, and I are now the “experienced ones,” advising what and where to eat, how to get around, etc. They are a bit disoriented - - jet lagged, and also working to figure out their program for the year. Already getting little stomach bugs….



I am delighted that we are (almost) all together - - eagerly awaiting Tomy’s arrival in December.