Our apartment in Bangalore, although supposed to be finished by the 28th, was still floorless when we touched down from Madurai. So we checked into yet another budget hotel, dumped our dirty washing into a bucket (I have become quite adept at hand washing...), and began to familiarise ourselves with yet another foreign neighbourhood.
With no home to speak of, I kind of feel like I am in purgatory – or worse, a Dr Seuss book:
I’m not quite here,
I’m not quite there,
I’m really not quite anywhere.
In Bangalore’s defence, the city is quite an easy one to live in. Subtlety is somewhat adhered to and most locals can satisfy their curiosity with a cursory glance at the lonesome white couple, rather than the outright, gaping stare you get elsewhere in India. Every so often, a street actually has a rusted street sign – a phenomenon unknown to the rest of the sub-continent - and there are a few “supermarkets” which sell identifiable products...even if they do resemble Hill Top’s IGA. The newspaper provides snippets of information about the outside world – “Gillard Favours Skilled Immigration” or “Spain trumps Paraguay” and there is an Australian TV station which shows episodes of Neighbours and Home and Away from the 1980s...
Like any newly married couple fresh from their honeymoon, we have to begun to furnish our marital abode (even if it does not yet have a floor). We trudge from one shop to the other, measuring beds and curtains and other domestic necessities. The first disagreement of our married life was over chai cups (I really, reaaaalllly wanted the ones covered in bright orange polka dots), and finding a cutlery set in a country where you eat with your hands proved most difficult.
With agonising slowness our Indian life is taking shape. Our purgatory is set to end...sometime next week, when we can move into our own place, cook our own food and begin treading the path of our respective Indian destiny – be it law or education – and actually belong somewhere. Shaun summed the situation up with surprising clarity when he said “I just want our own place. I am sick of eating out. I just want normal food...I just want two minute noodles.”
[this is good]
Hill Top has an IGA???
I've just caught up on three weeks of India in one sitting. I waved to you (down there amongst the billion or so others) as we flew over yesterday!
Adam
Posted by: Your Big Bro | 07/03/2010 at 07:27 PM