Half-way

Notable achievements in the past 6 months include:

Eating street food (and not getting sick)

 

Working at the offices of the biggest new temple project in India

Chasing a runaway train in Kolkata (and catching it)

Expanding my bengali vocabulary

Learning a new style of dance - Kathak

Surviving the rainy season

Another Earthquake

Wow really? Another earthquake? (First one here) Maybe my mama and Jaya bought it back with them from Chch.

I was sitting on the bed. Ishaan was playing on the floor. NOt sure what mama and Jaya were doing but Jaya felt it first.

"Earthquake" he said. We didn't believe him. He's just imagining things because he's been in shaky Christchurch for so long.

"No really, look at the water dispenser, the water is shaking"

Suddenly I felt the bed wobbling! I stood up and went into the lounge to look at the water dispenser and Jaya was right. The photo frames on the walls suddenly started to shake and rattle and mama and I stood in the doorway and looked at each other. It didn't stop - in fact it was slowly getting bigger and with every second it kept going, we got more scared. And then we realised we're on the third floor of a brick building, which meant if it got even bigger and more dangerous, we were in the worst place to be. I grabbed my cellphone on the bed and dragged Ishaan out the door and down the stairs, following closely behind mama and Jaya.

Before we reached the 2nd floor, it stopped. We slowed our steps and waited.. and then headed back up to the apartment. The following half hour saw us searching the internet for information, chatting to Mandakini on the phone about the excitement and answering a few emails that were going around the community about this sudden movement in the earth.

Here's the stats:

Yay Mama and Jaya are back!!

They got back late last night about 10.30pm. Jaya had grown a couple of inches and is now most certainly taller than me. Managed to catch a photo of Jaya with his "long" hair before he shaved up.

 Love having them both back :)

The Dynasty Dancers

For those of you that knew I was once in a dance group called The Dynasty Dancers (aka Dinos), then here's a magnificent and incredible promotional clip of what they do. I'm not in it, however these girls are amazing and fierce women, who I miss lots and love even more. Well worth a watch.

The DYNASTY Dancers Show Reel from Mark Marchand - m3 on Vimeo.

Back home

So after the snake incident, I decided to move back to my parents place. Hey, they're both in NZ right now and the place is empty so why not right. I had pretty much moved all the kitchen stuff over anyways for Ishaans birthday so it seemed to make sense to just shift completely.

I didn't move everything in one lot, like when we moved to the apartment in the first place. I've kind of been taking small trips every few days and slowly moving back. Sri Balaram and his wife aren't back until the end of the month anyway so I have time. I have actually moved everything.. except my clothes. They're all still folded up in the cupboards and I'm too scared to take them out in case the snake decided they would be a nice place to hang out. So I've been rotating the three skirts I had at mums, as well as wearing her saris and refusing to go back to the other apartment.

Ishaan had left his mark on the walls too (don't we all know that! I should just stop giving him markers and pens as ammunition!) so I got the painter in to clean the place up a bit. Looks much better.

Its nice being back at my parents place too. Its much larger than the old place, and feels a little more homely somehow. Plus their balcony is way bigger and lots more space for Ishaan to make chalk drawings, watch the sunset and enjoy a good cuppa....

Snake in the bed

Disclaimer* There is no photo to accompany this post.

Yes its just as the title suggests, I found a snake in our bed. This is how the story goes...

6am. Ishaan and I had just woke up. I get him brushing his teeth and in the shower, and return back to the bedroom to change the sheets. My mattress is on the ground - no bed - and I yank the white sheet up and un-tucked from the mattress. A few things fall from the sheet - Ishaan's monkey, my pillow and what I thought was a ribbon or piece of rope.

Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, the "rope" started to move!! I looked at it and it stopped. I thought I was going crazy... until it started moving again. Yes - a brown snake, approx 30cm long, slithered its way to the top of the mattress and then underneath. I never saw it again.

That afternoon I got back from work and the maid had put new sheets on the bed and swept and mopped the floor in the bedroom so she either found it, or it is in among my clothes and in my sheets again.

Wait.. so this means that we slept ALL NIGHT with a SNAKE IN OUR BED!! How did it even get in there? Was it poisonous? Why didn't it slither all over us? Oh no, maybe it did!!

Proud to say I didn't even scream.

Ishaan's party

Tried to keep it low key this year, no pass the parcel or pin the tail on the donkey, just kids hanging out having fun. I wanted to keep the guest list low as well, considering the apartments around here aren't all that big. But when you live in a community like this, its hard to do that, most of the kids all play together in one big group. So I just let Ishaan come up with his own invite list (22 kids total EEEK!) and figured what the hell.. lets do it.

He wanted to dress up like Hanuman for his party this year. In case you don't know, Hanuman is the monkey God, he is part of the story "The Ramayan" which is kind of like a Hindu fairytale (more about that at the bottom of the page). Anyway Hanuman is Ishaans favorite - being a monkey and all - so I figured the Ramayan would be a good theme for the kids to dress up.

Started at 4pm, and soon my parents house was inundated with kids, 17 total. I had bought bows and arrows made out of bamboo from a guy in Navadwip - 10 bows all together - and the kids loved it. I thought it'd be a boys thing, but even some of the girls were shooting and aiming at the little cardboard target hanging up. I'd also made a plywood cutout of Ram and Sita, and the kids could put their faces in the holes to get photos taken.

Kept the food to a minimum, being that it was after lunch but before dinner so didn't have a full meal. I made cupcakes, muffins, pizza rolls, and little cups of jellies that were a huge hit! A cake also of course - I'd spent all evening the night before decorating it - it was a Hanuman cake!

Lots of fun, balloons, streamers, party hats, chaos, noise and everything else in between. Ishaan enjoyed himself thoroughly and wouldn't stop talking about his party all evening.

His presents included:
2 colouring books
4 kurtas (the long tops the boys wear here)
2 t-shirts
4 (yes, FOUR!) plastic bows with total 12 arrows and 4 cardboard targets
a mini pool table
a brass mug
a wooden flute
brass cymbals
3 dvds
2 books
a photo frame
a picture of Hanuman
lego

The Ramayana tells the story of a battle between the Hindu god Vishnu, and a demon called Ravana. None of the gods could fight Ravana because of a promise they had foolishly made earlier, and Ravana was messing with everyone and nobody could stop him. So Vishnu decided to be reborn as a man, and then he would not be a god and he would be able to fight Ravana.

So Vishnu was born as Prince Rama. Rama was supposed to be king when his father died, but at the last minute, due to some bribery from Rama's stepmother - his father made Rama's brother king instead and banished Rama to the forest for 14 years. 

Rama and his other brother Lakshmana and Rama's wife Sita went away to live a simple life in the forest. But when they were living in the forest, the demon Ravana's sister fell in love with Rama and tried to get Rama to leave Sita and come live with her. When Rama said no, Ravana's sister attacked him, but Rama and his brother Lakshmana fought her off.


The demon went back to her brother Ravana on the island of Lanka and complained to him that Rama had been mean to her and had attacked her. This made Ravana extremely angry. Ravana's sister also mentioned Sita's beauty and thought she would make a beautiful queen for her brother. Ravana decided to go to the forest to see Sita for himself.


When Ravana got to the forest, he saw Sita was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and decided to steal her for his own. He tricked Rama and Laksmana into leaving Sita alone, and disguised as a hermit and forest-dweller, snatched Sita and took her back to Lanka with him. Sita was very upset to be taken from her Rama and cried for him every day.


Rama and his brother Laksmana needed help to rescue Sita. They went to see the king of the monkeys, Hanuman, who had the magic power to make himself bigger and smaller, and to be able to leap huge distances. Hanuman sent search parties in all directions to search for Sita, and he himself led the Southern search party. They reached the southern most shores of India and Hanuman leapt across the ocean to the island of Lanka to look for Sita. There he found her, and told her Rama would soon be on his way to rescue her and kill Ravana. Sita was very happy to hear this. 


Suddenly Ravana caught Hanuman and set his tail on fire! Hanuman managed to escape Ravana and ran all through the city of Lanka, setting everything on fire! He caused terror and panic in the demons and servants of Ravana. 

Hanuman went back to the forest and got Rama and Lakshmana, and they all went back with the whole monkey army to attack the island of Lanka. The monkeys made a bridge over to the island. There was a terrible battle, but finally Rama killed the demon Ravana.

Rama finally could go rescue his wife Sita! The were reunited and went back to Rama's kingdom of Ayodhya where he was welcomed back with big celebrations (Diwali) and crowned king. They lived happily ever after.