South Delhi, 2nd Feb 2011
By M:
So here I am sitting in front of the laptop, five flights of stairs up from where Mum is right now. We have arrived safely in Delhi after a successful flight with Spice Jet from Chennai. Should we have taken the train? Well, we would have been on an express for three days and two nights because it’s a long way from South India. Yes, it may have saved money but Dad recited a long list of reasons why we shouldn’t go on the train such as “wasting our precious time” and we would have to listen to W whine for 2-3 days, “When will we be there?” and, “I’m bored!” To which Mum would answer like she normally does, “If you are bored, you’re boring…”
N’s house is a dusty house with a rolling back roof, two bedrooms - one for kids, one for goats (grown-ups) - and it has a balcony as big as the queen’s. We do work on the roof top (4th floor), kids’ bedroom and playroom on 3th floor, adults’ bedroom and biggest bathroom on the 2nd floor and kitchen and N’s office on the ground floor. Aeroplanes fly over every half minute to minute; we can see their lights descending to land every night from our bed. This does prevent me from getting to sleep a little bit but I’m getting used to it fast.
Before we arrived, I was planning to have my own bed (even if it was a mattress on the floor.) After 2 nights of sleeping with L and W, I have decided to stay sleeping on our double bed as L has good body heat and it is very cold at night. We have lots of quilts but we are still freezing after humid South India. The temperature at night is about 8 degrees and about 22 degrees and sunny during the day.
I am settling in rather quickly, as are L and W. N’s house may turn out to be a good place to get used to having our own space again, and we are now used to India and we can cope just fine. N’s house is not the same as our house back at home (for instance, if we need something from the kitchen, we have to run down 4 flights of stairs and our roof doesn’t come off) but it is just fine for a month.
Our street is one of the little lanes off the main shopping street in Lado Sarai, so we go shopping almost every day to buy a few things to keep meals frequent. Mum’s not allowed to forget to feed us, like when we are travelling sometimes. We had North Indian takeaway yesterday, which N added to, so we had a feast of Indian bits and pieces (chapatti, different dals, chickpeas and spinach). Mum and Dad have decided that instead of living on pasta they will eat Indian parcel food (= takeaway) some of the time: “Less cooking for us,” said Dad.
From our balcony and the roof top, we can see an old tomb (600 years old, pre-Mohgul) in a park opposite. There are boys playing cricket there. Kites (the bird sort) are skimming the trees. Boys go down the dirt track on their bikes. Buffalo pats are drying on the wall. There is a hairy buffalo and a cow tethered to the wall outside. There’s also a very important Muslim monument called the Qutab and you can see its dome. Men are cooking jelabi (jelly sweets) in big pots of hot oil. I can hear horns from the road, people talking on the road below, a cricket bat hitting a ball hard and the muezzin calling people to prayer at the local mosque. You can smell wood smoke from fires and nice cooking smells.
Lado Sarai is not a touristy place at all. We are used to being stared at but I wish I could speak a bit more Hindi so I could communicate with people here better.
Dad started his “should be” full working days either at the archives or answering work emails or preparing lectures he’s going to give in Delhi. He left us earlier to go to the archives while we carried on with our home-schooling; he should be later this afternoon though. We are working hard too, working up to longer school days! Life has got back to being not so much of a hassle, no getting up at 5 am in the morning to catch a train and no more going out to eat!!! L asked Mum last night whether we could go to the Hotel Saravana Bhavan for dosas, Mum answered “NO!”
Best wishes to you all. Talk to you all again very soon everyone. I’m going to make a Flip video to show you where we’re staying.
GOODBYE
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