Koyal is not the same as Quail

This crazy bird is one of the loudest and most prominent calls one hears around here. I finally asked Deepal what makes the sound and he tried to tell me it was a quail.. high up in the tree.. Hmm...

Turns out he was trying to translate the name Koyal  or Koel (I've seen it both ways) to an English name, and it seemed like it should be Quail. But no, it's name is just Koyal. And it's really loud and high. You can see and hear it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoOMlG1Vd_E

I've Been Converted

Here it is. The Indian toilet. Notice what's missing? Well folks, I have to admit I have been fully converted to the Indian toilet. Honestly, I've come to the conclusion that it is really much cleaner than using toilet paper. You use the water that comes out of the hose, clean yourself, wash your hands. It is potentially a much faster way to clean yourself, too. And more environment friendly, really. It does leave you a little damp, though, I must say. It's so hot here, though, that you're dry again in no time.

The odd shape of the toilet is because it doubles as a squat toilet. So you can actually stand on it and squat if you want to. Can't say I've figured that out, yet. This toilet works as sit toilet, too. There is a seat you can just barely see that comes down to sit on. Most toilets here I have seen are sit-toilets. Although, I have come up to the hole in the ground at a traveling fair. And I hear some houses only have squat toilets.

Chicken Lollipop Anyone?

I snapped this photo of a menu at a boy's school. It's their cafeteria menu.
It's a little blurry, but I think you can still read it. Currently it's 55 rupees to the dollar.
So, chicken lollipop anyone?

Pictures of Downstairs-House

This is a picture of the apartment building:

The downstairs-house is the freshly painted yellow one on the left:

The living room:

The white door in the living room opens into this room. It will be an extra bedroom/office:

The bedroom from the shared doorway to the office:

The door you can see in the bedroom leads to the kitchen:

For the kitchen picture I am standing in the front door. To my right is the living room. Straight ahead is the bedroom, and to the left you can barely make out the doorway to the bathroom. That's the house. The kitchen is very small. It's kind of like a hallway. There's a sink and a two-burner gas stove top. That's all. the house doesn't have any furniture, except for the three chairs, a table, and funny bed/couch. We even have to buy a closet. It has one, but it's very small. And its door becomes the door to the bedroom. It's quite an economical design, except the closet has to be open to shut the door to the bedroom. Oops, and I almost forgot. Here's the garden:

 The door to the garden is right next to the window in the office room. The green color you see is the result of mixing together all the left over colors from the rest of the house and using them for the outside.
The garden is being cleaned out and cut back today. Something important to do before the monsoon comes and it goes crazy.

I still don't know when we will be moving in. It has been officially cleaned, but it's still a bit dirty for my taste. And of course there's no furniture. It needs some electrical work as well, some lights, fans, and things.

What's Yours is Mine and Mine is Yours

Right now I have two homes in Mumbai. They are two apartments in the same building. One is on the 2nd/3rd floor (see Pup is not the same as Poop for an explanation) and the other is on the ground floor. When Deepal and I decided to get married he rented the apartment on the ground floor for us to live in. This apartment is not ready to be lived in yet, though. We have been busy painting it and cleaning out all the stuff left in it by the owners and previous tenant. So right now we are living with Deepal's parents in home #1, the house that he grew up in. It is a small house with one bedroom, living room, and kitchen. Deepal and his parents always felt that it was too small for 4 people. It really is. I have no where to put my things and am living out of a suitcase that just sits in the middle of the living room. And it would really be a problem when my family comes with 3 more of my suitcases in June for the wedding. So they knew when Deepal married he would move out or they would buy a bigger house. Even so, it is definitely causing some separation anxiety with his mom that we will be moving downstairs. The tradition here is that the daughter-in-law comes to live with the groom and his family in their house. And even just downstairs seems far away. Deepal's sister, for example, lives with her husband, their two kids, his parents, and his sister. Now, before all you westerners rebel at the idea, I have to say that living with the family really lightens the work load on any one person. Everyone helps watch the kids, cook, and with various chores. And for me, who is basically a helpless child here who can do almost nothing by myself, Ma and Pa have really taken care of me. They believe more seriously than I have ever encountered before that they have a new daughter. I do almost no cooking or cleaning. Just little things to help Ma sometimes. And they are very loving and welcoming. Still, I run into trouble with the cultural differences. For example, I hurt everyone's feelings if I refer to either house as not belonging to everybody. For example, to say 'Deepal's parents' house' instead of 'my' or even better, 'our house' would hurt his family's feelings. Or to refer to the house downstairs in any form of "exclusive-our (only Deepal and I)" would also hurt feelings. Both houses are equally everybody's. As illustrated when Ma asked me if someone was 'in our garden cleaning it up.' The garden is part of the downstairs house.

This clearly is very new to me, as I think any Westerner would understand. It has never been in my realm of experience to anticipate that my future-in-law's house would be as intimately mine as theirs. The yours and mine cultural difference goes for just about everything, too. I should not refer to Ma as 'Deepal's Mom' because she is equally my mom now, too. And sometimes it is difficult when Deepal refers to 'Mom' to know which one he is talking about (his or mine) because he makes no grammatical distinction between them. Actually, "Deepal's Parents' House" is offensive in two ways. 1) referring to Ma and Pa as "his" parents and not mine, and 2) referring to the house as theirs and not ours. But right now the two houses are a particularly sensitive topic because Ma is so sad that we are moving out eventually. And we have had conversations with her to assure her that we are not leaving the family, just sleeping downstairs. And between the houses it is understood that the kitchen to be used will be in the upstairs-house, so we still share meals together.

I don't help matters when I make little slip ups in my grammar or understandings of things. Just the other day when we were going through the stuff left in the downstairs-house to clean it out I came across a big bag of clothes that I thought were the previous tenant's, so I was going to get rid of them. But they were actually Ma's clothes, and Deepal was teasing me about throwing them away. In defense of my actions I said (in front of Ma) "What would Ma's clothes be doing downstairs?" She wasn't offended because she knows I'm still adjusting and whatnot, but otherwise it was an offensive statement. And then later the same night we were watching a Hindi Soap Opera with three women all talking together on a bed late at night. And I asked, "Why are they all staying together?" Another faux pas. They were sister-in-laws (something they had already told me), so 'of course' they would live together. Their husbands were brothers. There was a little tension when they answered me.

This is a pretty fundamental cultural difference. There are others, too, but this one is at the forefront right now. Although, how they ask each other for things is a big one. Probably more difficult than the yours-and-mine-difference. I'll have to talk about that one another time. 

Pup is not the same as Poop

"Pup is not the same as Poop" This is what Deepal told me today when I was complaining that the word I said in Hindi was the same as the word he was correcting me with. I couldn't hear the difference between the vowels. Every day he teaches me Hindi for an hour using the Rosetta Stone language program my brother got for me. And I vary between being a docile, willing student and a less-than-docile-willing-student. ;D And either way, he makes me laugh. So, in the spirit of Pup is not the same as Poop, here are a few more additions and corrections from Deepal after he read the blog:

* The Court Marriage was also for India because Indian law does not recognize a hindu marriage as legal, either, if both parties are not hindu.
* The line in front of the Court Office was unusually and incredibly small. Anyone from Mumbai would think we had it easy that day. (It was actually much longer when we were doing the initial paperwork.)
* The crows will most definitely enter the house. Apparently they don't enter if you're sitting in the room. But if you happen to be in another room they will fly right into the kitchen and help themselves to whatever is around. And they are smart enough to pull the lids of things, too, if they're not screw on.
* According to anyone from India, we live on the 2nd floor. The bottom floor is called the Ground Floor, and then the next one is the 1st, and ours is the 2nd. For anyone in the states, we live on the 3rd floor. 
* I could hear the difference between the vowels during the hindi lesson today. I was just being tricksy and difficult. (perhaps this is true ;)

Mr. Beeper Beeping

I found this link on youtube. It is a great recording of what Mr. Beeper sounds like. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk9u4_CjnXY

And it also shows the constant call of crows and others in the background. I am still investigating to find out what the other birds I hear are. One of them sings a song that sounds like a rendition of "Whoops there goes another rubber tree." What? You don't know that song? Actually, I didn't either till I looked it up. My mom only ever sang that part of the song, and that's all the bird sings, too. But it turns out it it's in a song about an ant by Frank Sinatra called 'High Hopes.' There you go. You learn something new everyday.

Really, I'm very grateful for the bird soundscape where I live. We're very lucky to live in a secluded part of the city with a lot of trees around. The soundscape of most of the city seems to be cars honking. My theory is that they decided to paint on the back of the big trucks "Horn Ok Please" and everyone took it as a personal invitation to honk all time. Apparently the message on the big trucks is an invitation to honk to ask them to move over. Or as a friendly reminder, "hey, I'm in your blind spot, please don't squash me." That kind of thing. But honking seems to be an incessant unconscious form of communicating "get out of my way" to anyone at all.  I will have to dedicate an entire post to mumbai traffic for you to get a better idea of it.

 In the meantime here is a picture of one of the windows of our bedroom. We live on the third floor, so we get a view of the green canopy all around. And the birds roost in the branches right outside. The hanging plants you see end up working a lot like bird feeders. After the maid waters the plants, the birds come to them and drink the water. The crows are the bravest. They will land right on the windowsill and look inside the house. They never enter according to Deepal, but if you leave food on the window they'll take it. They look right at you, too, if you're nearby. It would be easy to be
creeped out by them if you've just watched Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.Or if you naturally find birds creepy. Here's a crow come for a drink of water:

And the last picture is of the trees in front of our building. I took the picture from the upstairs walkway. I wish I'd taken it earlier because they had even more flowers before. But here you can still see a lot. These trees were like a little welcome present when I moved here because I had no idea that they flowered before and they were in full bloom. And I love flowering trees.

Mystery Solved

The first time I came to Mumbai to visit in February 2012 I often heard a strange beeping sound. It sounded like maybe some kind of alarm or something. I asked Deepal about it, and he thought maybe I was hearing the beeping coming from the railroad gate when it closes, the railroad gate being just a block away. Well, this beeping would often wake me up in the morning, and it was random and elusive enough to be rather annoying. Well, a few days ago I discovered the source of the beeping. I couldn't believe it. It was a little bird perched outside the window. And after he beeped for a little while another little bird, the female I think, joined him. So now I think the beeping is incredibly cute and I have named the pair Mr. and Mrs. Beeper Bird. Then after some research online because I wanted to show you what they look like I have discovered their 'real' name (Coppersmith Barbet) and that they were recently named the Official Bird of Mumbai, beating out the ubiquitous crow and others. So there you go. Here's a picture of Mr. Beeper himself:

Marriage #1

Well, folks Deepal and I are officially married now. ..Or May 15th, rather. I am writing this several days after the fact. Here is a picture of the Court Office where the ceremony took place:

Deepal and I came here together in February/March to do all the paperwork to set it up so we could marry on May 15th. In India, you have to put in all the paperwork at least one month before you can be legally married. I think it's to give people time to oppose the marriage. We had to wait two months because the tourist visa I have does not allow you to re-enter the country for two months once you have left it. So we came in March and filled out lots of forms and waited in line at the window like you can see those men doing. Then at the end of the process the official came out and asked for a bribe to give us the marriage date we wanted. All of this so we could come and get married in May.

Why a court marriage you ask? Because the United States does not accept a Hindu wedding as legal if both parties are not hindu. So this was for the U.S.

Here we are waiting outside the office. Filling out yet more paperwork: 

This is Deepal and I seated inside the office at a desk. We will sign the papers now: 

 

Here is Deepal and I reading the legal statement that we accept each other as our lawful spouse. Luckily for me it was in English. ;) This concluded the legal procedures. You can see the red throne chairs in the back, though. That's for the benefit of the families and new couple, and that's where we are headed next. 

 

   

Hindu wedding tradition has the bride and groom place garlands of flowers over each other as a symbol of their acceptance of each other as husband and wife. And apparently the man has to be on the right. I made the mistake of sitting in the wrong chair, and they very quickly told me to move.

An interesting side note: there is no sentimentality for these garlands once they've been used. Deepal immediately took his off two seconds afterwards and they were pretty much forgotten and thrown away.

Well, that's one wedding down.. just two more to go..
  

Saying Yes And

It's almost 3am. I leave for India tomorrow. For - ev - er. (You have to say it like the Sandlot kids.) As the countdown to my departure grew ever closer, I began to think more and more often that I should start a blog. Because I have begun to appreciate more and more what I am leaving behind. Really, I should say who. Namely all the friends and family that I will miss so much. India feels like the other side of the world... that's probably because it is actually on the other side of the world, but that's besides the point. It doesn't have to FEEL that way. I don't want to leave everybody behind. So I'm going to take you with me, as much as possible, through that handy dandy invention: blogging. Let's see how long I last at it, shall we? ;) Did I mention it's almost 3am? And I still haven't finished packing?