This week is the last week of the second tutorial, so Neil is already a third of the way through the course, and time seems to be racing by. This tutorial’s been a busy one and we seem to have hardly seen him over the last 2 or 3 weeks. He’s been going back into work in the afternoons, coming home at 9pm and had to work on days off and Saturdays. Fortunately, the exercise that was keeping him in work for such long hours has now finished, and he’ll be back to more normal hours this week; and he made use of all the empty hours at work by finishing off lots of other big pieces of work and starting his dissertation, so he’s well ahead of the game now. He’s got another set of exams this week and then we’re off the Mumbai for a long weekend.
This weekend has been a fairly quiet one as Neil hadn’t quite recovered from his illness this week. He went to see the doctor on Friday who gave him some more pills and told him “no spicy food for 5 days” – his constitution just can’t handle it; he says he’s got the stomach of a 12 year old girl!! He’s feeling much better already, and Fathima’s been cooking us pasta and chicken casseroles. He did manage to make it out for dinner (just steak and chips though) and cocktails at the Taj Gateway on Saturday night, however, and we cooked a roast chicken and crumble yesterday, whilst Fathima had her day off. That was the first roast we’d cooked for 4 months, and apart from some pasta, omelettes and toasties, the first proper meal we’d cooked since leaving the UK in May! Louise also found a supply of bacon in Coonoor this week, so we had bacon and eggs for breakfast. From a nearly 100% Indian diet for the last 4 months, we’ve gone almost purely Western now!
The weekend before was a long one here, as the Monday was a Muslim holiday for Eid. We decided not to go anywhere, as we’d just been to Destiny the week before and are off to Mumbai at the end of the month, and there was lots going on here anyway. We went to an Indian Independence Day party on Friday night, a party at a friend’s house on Saturday night, had a roast dinner at the RN house on Sunday, and lunch at our Sponsor Student’s house on Monday. So it was a busy social weekend of eating and drinking.
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| Party at Raghu and Pooja's House |
We’re getting used to the Indian style of parties now and make sure we eat before we go out. If you get invited round to someone’s house for dinner or a party, the invitation is usually for 9pm and the whole family is invited. Most Indian children (and adults) have a long afternoon nap, stay up all night, go to bed when their parents do, and then get up quite late in the morning. Most of the men drink spirits and mixers (usually rum or whisky and coke) at parties; a lot of women don’t drink alcohol, but some do drink and they usually drink wine, just like in the UK. Everyone drinks and drinks and drinks whilst lots of home-made snacks are passed round, often nuts, Indian nibbles, BBQd meat, pakoras etc. At about 11pm, a mat is often rolled out on the floor in the dining room and all the children eat together. After the children have eaten and everything’s been tidied up, then the adults eat at around 11.30/12pm. It’s always a huge delicious buffet of home-made curries, dal, vegetables, rice and rotis, and you’re always pressed to have 2nd, 3rd and even 4th helpings. Everyone here has a maid to help with the cooking and washing up which means that the hostess isn’t tied to the kitchen all night. And sometimes, people order the whole meal from a local restaurant, so there is very little cooking at all to do. At some parties we’ve been to, people leave pretty much as soon as they’ve eaten, but at a lot of the parties we’ve been to, they carry on drinking and dancing until the early hours. A lot of the officers here joined up together and are very old friends who haven’t seen each other for years. So Staff College is a very social year of catching up with big groups of friends. They party every single weekend and take it in turns to host their friends. As internationals here, we cut across all the cliques and groups and get invited to lots of different people’s houses, which is a great way to meet lots of new people.
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| Pooja and Raghu's Party |
There is ALWAYS dancing at Indian parties and men love dancing as much as women; usually the men all dance together and the women all dance together, but they don’t really dance in couples. The music is generally a mix of Indian Bollywood and western hits. Often shots of tequila are passed round after dinner, and that’s generally our cue to leave as we don’t usually take the girls with us, and it’s always at the back of our mind that we’ll have to be up with them at about 7am the next morning. We have taken Daisy with us once, however, and she had a great time. All the children go off and play together in one of the bedrooms or a playroom, so you hardly see any of them all night. Surprisingly, with all the drinking that takes place and the lateness of dinner, not many people seem to get ‘falling-down’ drunk – we think they must all have something to eat before they go out, just like we do.
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| Dancing at the Indian Independence Day Party |
Daisy and Ava are both doing well. Daisy has now mastered the toilet completely and her nursery is very pleased with how quickly she’s done it and how independent she is about it! Her best friend, Lujain, has now gone back to Saudi Arabia, unfortunately, but Daisy doesn’t understand that she’s gone for good, so isn’t too upset about it! Ava is now a super-fast crawler and is starting to pull herself up on the furniture, but we think it’ll be a little while yet before she’s walking on her own. She’s also getting quite mischievous, hates being told ‘No’ and tries to fight with Daisy over certain toys. And she hates being left out of anything!
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| Ava at Destiny Farm |
Well, that’s all for now. We’ll tell you all about Mumbai next time…
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