Hi all! I’m hosting a playdate with 2 sweet little girls of Catalan-German-Belgium-English pedigree : Maya (another! But this is the land of Mayas and our big M causes much happiness when folk find out she has an Indian name) and Zoe. They’re around L’s age and are happy to play after 4 months or so on the road and are en route from Barcelona to Sydney overland (via Tibet) and sea in a campervan. The kids are all playing lego and computer games, watching the puppies in the rubbish tip over the back wall, making story books and dens together and eating cucumber and biscuits – it all feels deeply, happily familiar. Sadly I think they are leaving tomorrow.
The children’s need for other children is palpable. We’ve found Mohan and his baby sister in the temple yesterday. They are priest’s children and appear to spend lots of time just hanging out and playing around the temple yard. The boys smiled at each other and launched into elaborate running and chasing games almost immediately, with me feeling rather nervous that this was not appropriate behaviour in sacred space but everyone assured us that it was okay – kids come to meet each other and play there and use it as a sort of playground and I remember Louis saying they were good places to play. Mohan taught M all sorts of Hindi words (I’m struggling with it but both of the girls, L especially, seem to pick it up with much less effort).
The day before, we’d found another little boy for W to hang out with – recognising a McClaran buggy being pushed up the ghat, and met a Danish/English couple holidaying with their 3 and a half year old son, Taylor, and baby daughter. M amazed that we could just meet a family on the street and go out with them for dinner and afterwards to the puppet/dancing show at the restored haveli opposite – but nice to be so spontaneous and it meant that the boys could wrestle and biff. Big sisters get a bit peeved with constant wrestling and biffing, even if it is normal 4 year old boy stuff.
W: We found another Zoe and another Maya, Spanish ones. They’re very nice and the bigger one is Maya. Yesterday I played with Mohan and we runned round and round and round the temple and we laughed at the statue’s bare bottom. Do you know we sawed a puppet who could take his head off and balance it on his legs?!! Do you know, there were ladies with fire on their head? Do you know, there was a lady with 10 pots on her head who could do dancing on glass?
3 weeks in and things still feel quite ‘holiday-ish’ to me - living in a beautiful ‘palace’ (all hotels/guest houses round here are described as palaces, and claim royal connections), having the odd meal out in amazing locations (edge of the lake, looking out over the Lake Palace, where Sarkosy and Carla Bruni were partying), going to the German Bakery for peanut butter rolls (M rehab food; we were explaining the concept of PlumpyNut for malnourished children to her) and having gone ‘boating’ with them this afternoon (a turn round Lake Pichola in a precariously balanced pleasure-craft with compulsory life jackets – surely a first in India? The lake is so calm, with a deep green algal bloom and the odd commorant).
But in other ways we’ve shifted into work mode. Wolfdad is out on the research trail – currently on a mad dash to Ahmedabad over the weekend with 2 sleeper nights either side – looking at Swaminarayan temples there – and over the last week, he’s tried to pack in as many of the things he’s wanted to see around the Udaipur area as possible. The plan is to move onto Mount Abu at the end of the week, though the papers report in ‘this unseasonal cold spell’, temperatures there have ‘plummeted’ to sub-freezing which is a bit discouraging…
It’s quite an intense time with the kids especially when WD is away – waking up in the same room; attempting to keep them clean and healthy (they resist showers as the water is SOO cold); negotiating food (we’re still on a fairly limited repertoire but cornflakes and milk based banana porridge here for breakfast has made them very happy); ‘school’ (L’s made a comic based on Rama stories’, M’s just done a PowerPoint presentation on diarrhoea and W has a Christmas card production line going on with a load of glitter glue…); then afternoons we catch auto-rickshaws or go on dusty, stressful (bearing in mind the narrowness of the roads, the density and unpredictability of the traffic) walks to go on outings (the park, a toy train, museums, temples or palaces, a café or bookshop) or try to find provisions (shampoo, antibiotics, bananas) or barter for bangles (Wolfdad and I am constantly reminded of that Harry Enfield sketch – they definitely see us coming - and L particularly needs re-education in how to shop); we play games (Ludo is a new fave and I’ve taught them all Cheat), reply to emails (thanks everyone), write the blog and our journals and read books. No telly (we’ve tried Hindi cartoons and given up) and our DVD drive doesn’t seem to like the DVDs we’ve brought all this way, but we’ve all got slightly obsessed with Comfy Cakes – which is a sad admission to any of you who are familiar with this game (part of Purble Place) on their computer. You have to assemble cakes to order along a production line. W is a Grandmaster aged 4 and has to be time limited otherwise he would play all day.
For the children, I think they definitely feel a long way from home even when we try to establish mini ‘homes’ as we go. M has been quite homesick this week and is drawing an elaborate ‘Rabbit World’, I think as a way of dealing with it (they take trains to Lyme Regis..). But she feels much, much better physically and I watch her independently and confidently interacting with people and doing things like buying herself chai and think, wow! L is doing much better than I’d have anticipated adjusting at this stage (has just declared to me she doesn’t miss anything) and W feels more grown-up day by day (he’s wandering around the room talking to a rabbit...maybe we've all gone down the rabbit hole?) Love to you all, x
L: I found a message on the mirrow it said I miss home by M. lots of fun from email. We made some freads they were called maya and zoe. Our freand ship led up to staying up late doing a hut for a stray dog with puppies. Our hut is neliy finished. Well we went to a bouting trip. Our freands are Spanish. They went to india on a carer van all the way. We played a game of mind sweeper.
Today we went on a outing and I bought some bangles. I chose some blue and gold patened bangles. (Self-typed and uncorrected! But please don’t worry, they’re not actually playing with the feral dogs!)
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