To Elton John and Songs being right.

Wow. All my angst BS. What am I seventeen? What did Gloria Estefan say after she almost died yeah died and came back? Something about getting on your feet? After she ALMOST died? Not after she moved and lived in luxury with two maids to clean her floors and do her dishes and a dude to drive her around but still she complained because she wasn’t making friends fast enough?
Yeah.

Hints and Allegations

things that totally rocked this month!

• Kids don’t have chicken pox, it was just HFMD
• I finally sacked my squirrlyass Bai who was just a jerk and all around biyotch
• Ganpati bonus, really Bai. You’re a stupid MOFO if you thought I was that gullible.

things that didn’t rock this month

• the constant crying/wallowing
• the missing my mom
• being so freaking sick of Indian food
• feeling completely and totally trapped

This sucks as an entry. But anything I try to write right now comes off so pathetically whiny and pathetic that I can barely stomach putting it down for anyone to see and read, much less bear coming back to read it at a later date. What does strike me about this time though is the mute terror that I feel now. That I am never ever going to have friends irrational kind of fear I felt when I was 10 and we had first moved to the States kind of fear coursing through me. I know on some level that this is just a childish fear and it couldn’t possibly be true. But for some reason this move has just brought out every little fear that little girl had. Even though I know that it’s’ early, that it will take time, I keep repeating to myself over and over, what if it doesn’t happen, what if you never meet people. What if they just don’t like you, loudmouthed American1. Bam! There it is!
And then of course out comes the wallowing, the United States rah rah rah! Bit! Don’t get me wrong. I’m the first one to criticize the States, but my adopted country, faults and all is the only place I will ever call home. Maybe even in the few short months that I’ve been here I’m romanticisizing what it was like there, but I think not. I swear to the great spaghetti monster in the sky I will never EVER bitch about the line at the DMV EVER again. EVER. I swear…In the States I was part of something. Here, the freaking UPites…talk about these Marathis, the Marathis talk about how they're put upon and how the Marathi manoos is all woe is freaking me! (get over yourself marathi manoos!), the Tamils talk about the Andhraites…everyone talks about everyone…and anytime a woman is raped…oh then it’s the fault of the bad old West…In a land of blame someone else, nothing can ever improve because that other will always have another to blame.
I feel like a square piece trying to fit in a round peg. It sucks.

Baby Steps

My neighbours (trying out the English English spelling out here) would come and meet and greet in the first few weeks that we were here, quickly taking a peek inside our rather empty apartment, or flat as they call it here. And I would pertly inform them that our furniture was due to arrive in mid July. I saw the look, you know that look, I’d often heart the tone in my relatives’ voice but had never been privy to the look that accompanied it…until now….it was the, “Oh you poor deluded American” look, “you have no idea how things run here”. My neighbors would smile and nod and say, “Well, they might be a few weeks later than that.” My neighbors were right of course. It turned out that the ship had arrived in Bombay harbour on time, but had no place to dock! So I guess it just sort of sat there until there was space? And then there was the unloading process, and then the stuff had to just sit there as per regulation (I don’t know why) and then it had to clear customs…in the mean time in quiet little Andheri (E)…which I’ve come to find is sort of like Staten Island is to NYC…..even to the auto rickshaw wallahas who will freaking ignore you if they even start with Andh…
>_<
It is the day that the children start school! They went to school! Nitin went to work super early and fell and shattered his ankle as if he’d taken a hammer to it..lovely! He spent that entire week in the hospital! The day he came home was the day the movers brought home our boxes upon boxes of unnecessary stuff that we had foolishly packed and brought. As the neighbours had hinted, our movers had brought our “stuff” exactly three weeks behind schedule! RIGHT ON TIME! My mother-in-law and I fiendishly worked and put the house together… Nitin, despite being a gimp did wonders by putting together some of the IKEA bed and putting away stuff in the storage space…and two months in…most boxes are emptied…
And then I hired a bai and it was good. Well not really because it turns out that having a bai is a cause of great discomfort. Not that I don’t like all this being done for me. I love that I don’t have to sweep and mop the floor, and just don’t have to do all of this house stuff anymore but just the idea of having a servant makes me queasy. I don’t know why. The hierarchy feels wrong somehow, I don’t know if I’ll get used to it. Arjun keeps asking me, “Mom, why do people have to live on the street?” I don’t know what to tell him, I don’t think there’s a right answer. And that’s how I console myself about the bai, it’s that much more money she’s making. Baby steps…