A Winter in India

We still haven’t sorted out where all we will be traveling in March. But what we do know is that our Fulbrights end on February 26 (as Hank has said, we will go back to being Half-brights). And we have to be out of our apartment on February 28. We will be sorry to leave 55 Babar Road, Bengali Market. This has been a real haven, quiet, calm and in a nice neighborhood. The landlord (“Mr. Saxena”) and landlady (“Nimi”) live downstairs and have been wonderful to us. One night while Lee was here, we were all included in a family party: their two daughters, sons-in-law, and grandsons plus uncles, aunts and cousins from all over Delhi, plus London and Singapore, who had gathered for the wedding (later this week) of one of our landlady’s nephews. Fantastic array of foods, cooked in a tent that was put up out on the back courtyard. Mr. Saxena has tried to teach Dave the rules of cricket, but cricket remains one of lifes imponderables.

As we are getting ready to leave, we put together some pictures of the place, and here are some domestic details of our life here. The photos from top to bottom are roughly from the front to the back of the flat.

Top left photo shows the living room. There is a nice knotted rug on the floor, and very nice furniture, which was all made in the furniture workshop run by our landlord. The floor lamp you see is hand carved. Next to that, on the little table, is the electric heater that got us through the “winter”. The beautiful quilt on the couch is hand made by Mom (aka Grandma Decker). Where it looks bright at the left edge of the photo is the front of the house. The whole front wall is single-pane glass, with a double door leading out to the balcony where many of the pictures you have seen have been taken from.

The living room has a wide opening onto the room that we have used as our home office (top right photo). You can see the laptop, the bookcases, the clutter, and a nice batik painting that we bought from the Association of Deaf Women. You can also see the white marble floor, that feels really good again now that winter is over and its 80 degrees here in the mid afternoon.

Next to the office is the kitchen. One photo is Pam drying some dishes, but what the photo really shows is the two-burner gas stove on which we have done our cooking, and down below the countertop is the big propane bottle that runs it. The photo to the right shows the kitchen sink. There is a hot and cold spigot above the sink, and a third spigot to the left that we haven’t figured out what its for. It’s up high, so maybe it’s for filling really tall pails? Underneath is a fourth spigot that runs directly into the drain in the floor. As far as we have seen, every kitchen and every bathroom in India have drains directly in the floor, and each has a spigot above it. As you can see the sink empties into a hose that goes down the drain in the floor. To the left of the sink are the two dishpans that we use for washing the dishes. One is for hot soapy water and the other for bleach. The bleach also gets used on all fruits, vegetables and meat that we buy, before it gets put in the refrigerator. We have noticed that after that treatment, fresh stuff stays useable for much longer than it does at home; maybe I will start the same treatment after we are back in Maine. All water that we drink, or even use for brushing our teeth, is bottled mineral water that has been "ozonized" (sterlized with ozone).

The photo under the one of the sink shows the “geyser” (pronounced “geezer”). This is the hot water tank. It’s about a ten-gallon tank, heated by electricity, but only when you turn on the switch. This geyser is located on the outside wall, up here on the second story, with one pipe running 25 feet to the kitchen sink, and another pipe running six feet to the bathroom (the window you see in the photo). The geyser is plugged into an electric outlet in the bathroom, and the wire runs through a hole in the wall. It takes about 15 or 20 minutes to heat up. Our power here is 220 volts, most of the time, except during municipal load shedding, when it sometimes is only at 110 and half of our outlets work, and sometimes it is off altogether. There is a second geyser in the other bathroom. Once you get into the routine of remembering to turn on the switch, its actually quite convenient and we are sure it uses less electricity than the American style central hot water heater that runs enough to keep a lot of water at a constant hot. Another thing you can notice in this photo is the gray streaks on the outside walls. All of these 1920s buildings in Lutyens Delhi are made of brick, stuccoed over and painted. The monsoon rains drive so much water into the stucco that mildew happens, and many places don’t look as good as they would without these streaks of mildew.

Next photo on the left is our buddy the lizard. We think he (?) may be a chameleon because he is different colors at different times. Either that or we have two or three different lizards. He is about six inches long and has really cool suction pad toes so he can, and does, walk on anything. We think he is a big factor in this apartment being completely bug-free (the lizard and the coal-tar phenol that the cleaning lady washes all the floors with seven days a week).

Bottom right photo is the dining room; more nice furniture. Maybe you can see the outlet that the table lamp plugs into. Like every outlet here, it has an on-off switch, and you have to remember to turn the outlet on, not just plug something in, if you want power to it. Dave is going through his files trying to sort out what can be thrown out and what has to go in a suitcase. Everyone who has visited has been kind enough to haul things back to the U.S. for us. Robbie, and now Lee, each took a whole suitcase! Now somehow the contents of this six-room apartment have to fit into 4 suitcases! We got it all here in 5 suitcases, but somehow it has all expanded due to some quirk in the laws of physics.

And finally, the bottom left photo is our bedroom and more beautiful furniture. Where it looks light at the right of the photo is the back of the flat, another wall of single-pane glass with a door out to a balcony where we hang the laundry up to dry. There is a second bedroom, a washing machine in a little alcove between the dining room and our bedroom, and two bathrooms that you don’t see pictures of.

This has been a really good home away from home.