January 22, 2001 - One day with the kids.
January 22, 2001 - One day with the kids. |
A Typical Day with the Kids On my third trip to Madras, the typical day would start about 6:30 am when Mari would come knocking on my door. What makes this so interesting is this is extremely improper for a young lady. First, I am man and she is an adult woman of 13 so it is very improper for her to visit a man alone in his room. Second, I was staying in a guest house filled with male students. It is improper for her to enter the building ...even though all the man are still sleeping having stayed up most of the night. The reason is simple. Early in the morning, Mari wants to use the toilet and she does not like going to the toilet in the middle of the street... which is her only other option. Also, she can have a private shower and spend a half hour in total privacy to do her makeup. So at 6:30 in the morning, she takes over my bathroom. By about 7 Mari is ready to go get breakfast. I give her money for a "parcel" and tell her to buy parcels for Vela, Prabhu and Mumtaz. By this time, Kumar has arrived and the two go to a hotel (restaurant) to buy breakfast. I would prefer to go to the hotel myself with the kids but Mari is afraid that men will see her sitting in a public place. Mari is always so proper! |
Mari combing her hair and putting on her makeup which consists of talcum power to whiten her face and the red dot on her forehead . This was my room at Paradise lodge where I stayed my second trip which is much bigger than Broadlands or the Student Lodge. |
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After a brief while, they return and by that time Mumtaz has also arrived who also immediately takes over the bathroom for the next half hour. In Mumtaz's new house there is no shower, toilet or bathroom. The house is only a single unfurnished room for the entire family. Eventually, they are ready. If we are going someplace special, they will all wear new dresses that I bought them. At this time of the morning, no matter what, Mumtaz still looks like she is asleep. |
Breakfast might be a fermented rice pastry (eatly) or it might be a rice gruel (rice pungle). Sometime Vela orders a wheat flat bread (borata) but I discourage this since foods made with fermented rice are healthy for her. All the food is wetted with a soup which comes in a plastic bag. We all eat on the floor of my room on a straw mat in my room... though the kids would prefer to eat on the bed spilling everything on my sheets. When the kids are ready to leave, I give each of the kids 50 rupees per day for food. I always remind them that they must eat good food to become strong. If Vela still has not come, we go and wake up Vela who is a lump on the sidewalk under a sleeping blanket. Vela is always the last to go to bed and the last to get up in all of Madras. Except on Sundays, poor Mari must go off to work and Mumtaz is just as unhappy going to school. Mumtaz always finds some excuse not to go to school but we send her anyway. Sometimes she asks for pencils and stuff for school so she and I go to a local shop (which is 3 feet by 6 feet in size) and I buy school supplies for her and her school friends. |
On a Sunday, the kids and I will go to a restaurant for breakfast. Note the cold water bottle. The tin cups are washed with city tape water (unclean) and is always brought wet (unclean) to the table... so I never use any utensils from any restaurant. Mumtaz is eating Rice Pungle which is rice and millet steamed eaten with a spoon. It is eaten with a soup for wetting it. Mumtaz always asks me for a few extra rupees for flowers for her hair each morning. |
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On my first two trips, the kids and I went to the public swimming pool at the beach which is only a half mile away. It costs 15 rupees per person. I always wait out side and watch the kids through the fence so I do not waste 15 rupees (35 cents). But now that Vela and Mari are women and because Vela can no longer swim as a boy, they kids do not like the lack of privacy at the public swimming pool. (All adult women do not like the lack of privacy at the swimming pool.) While at the beach, Vela will ask me for money to ride the horses. |
The kids prefer to swim at MGR Film City. To get to the MGR Film City, we must take an autorickshaw. No busses go there. Mari's brother charges about 300 rupees for the trip and for the wait. Normally, the trip is 80 rupees each way. I found it much easier to invite Ramu inside. He loves to watch the movie stars filming their scenes but he also helps me keep an eye on the kids. Sometimes Ramu brings his two-year-old son. Ramu also joins us for lunch at a restaurants on the way back. Vela is good about selecting restaurants but having Ramu is an extra degree of safety. Normally an autorickshaw driver is reluctant to leave his machine even if it is only rented. But now when traveling Ramu, we take everything of value out of his autorickshaw and then disables the machine while it is parked. |
Somehow we all fit inside this autorickshaw. Actually it can fit two more people... though not legally. Here Mumtaz has to sit in the luggage rack along with the water bottles we bring. Ramu is the driver. |
I try to get Vela to act responsibly so I make her buy the tickets for swimming. Once she forgot and went swimming without a ticket. Since no one wrote down the starting time on the ticket, the guards made her leave after just half an hour and still pay for a full hour. Vela was mad. I have learned to let Vela solve whatever problems she creates. It usually costs me more but she learns much more. Now she does not make this mistake. I am particularly eager to have the kids go swimming. They do not get enough healthy exercise and swimming is a good way of killing the bugs that get in their hair every night. The real reason that Vela wants to go swimming at MGR Film City is the bummer car rides they have. The city purchased some Japanese bumper cars which the kids love to ride at 15 rupees a ride. Only two or three of the cars work at any day so I also must make sure that Vela does not hog all the rides all the time... which she does. Sometimes we eat at the MGR Film City but I do not trust the food there even if the kids will eat it. Vela sometimes likes to stop at a restaurant on the way back home and have a full course meal with lots of dishes (chicken, mutton, fish) or we have Madras Rice which is a huge plate or banana leaf filled with white rice plus one dozen tiny bowls with weird things to wet or season the rice. |
Usually the night before Vela and I have decided where we will go the next day. This does not matter because no matter what we decided, Vela always says she wants to go swimming at MGR Film City. On weekends when Mari and Mumtaz can go with us, they all want to go a real amusement park but these are expensive (cost 100 rupees per person just to get in) and they are far from Madras. At MGR Film City, it cost 35 rupees per child to swim in the childrens pool and 100 rupees to swim in the adults pool next door. Therefore, at those prices, the kids are almost guaranteed a private swim.
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Or some days we just go shopping. There are a number of stores near by with ready-made clothes from jeans pants to dress . If the kids want custom made clothing, we must take an autorickshaw to buy the raw material since all the shops for cloth is in another district of town.
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On a trip, sometimes Vela will immediately fall asleep or sometimes she will talk to us. And sometimes she sings to us. |
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Water!!! The most precious thing in India is pure, clean water.
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The heat allows bugs to multiply in water. But the real danger with drinking water (specially in this time of drought) is pollution in the water. The water in Triplicane is not too bad but in other parts of the city, the water can be awful, specially for growing kids. Therefore, we always buy lots of mineral water or, better yet, water treated by the reverse osmosis process. "Team" water is a good product to buy. Also, always ask for "Cold" water. That will keep you cool in the horrible heat of India. Once the kids become thirsty, we stop the autorickshaw and Vela runs to buy water at a shop like this one below.
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Coconut Water No matter where we go, we always stop for some coconut milk. This is very healthy and vendors are everywhere. The coconut is opened by a machete and drunk through straws. Afterwards, the vendor cuts open the coconut and gives you the meat, if any.
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This is good for the stomach and can cure some forms of food poisoning. |
Note the watches and the clothes I bought for the kids. |
Sit and Talk Sometimes we just stop and talk a while about what we are going to do. Remember, the kids speak Tamil and I speak English. Actually the kids speak the Tamil of the movies which includes one word of English in every sentence so I just listen for that one word of English to know what the kids are talking about. When I talk, I pantomime everything. Even so, Vela frequently has translate for the other kids. |
So, I am very strict with them... but when they order more food they they can eat, I end up eating what they cannot finish. |
Vela knows a wide variety of places to eat. Once she took me to a dark room hidden in an alley were we sat down with dozens of strangers on common benches and we were feed a single standardized meal in record time. It was the Indian version of fast food but it include a very full rice meal with dozens of side dishes all served on a banana leaf from common pots while sitting elbow to elbow with total strangers. All of the food is very spicy and hot. I crave food where you can actually taste the food. Breakfast is the only time I can since I eat the Eatlee (fermented rich do bread) is good without any sauce. Note: the hot sauces is necessary to kill the worms and other parasites which are in most of the food. None of the food is refrigerated and most plants are fertilized with human waste. So be careful. |
When we return to my room, I take an afternoon nap. Sometimes we all take naps but more than likely Vela will want to go to the movies. In the afternoons on certain days of the fortnight, all shops close. The schedule changes each day of the fortnight. Because Madras is almost on the equator at sea level, it is very hot in the afternoon and most shops have no activity from 1 pm to 6 pm. When it turns dark and everyone comes out. Most shopping for everything but food is done from 6 pm to 9 pm in the night. I like to have dinner at Maharaja restaurant to watch the other tourists and to show off the kids. I have the kids trained to order fruit juice which has "no ice, no sugar, and no water" in it. This is very expensive. For dinner, I prefer Masala Dosa which is a fermented rich pancake with potato salad inside. Rice meals are normally had only for lunch. One safe food that you can buy is an omelet but you must know where to get an omelet. No Hindu hotel (restaurant) will serve it because that is sinful. |
In the evening, we go shopping or go to Porlakacch which is an industrial trade fair which has amusement rides. The kids like to go other place by themselves ("outside rounding going!") or go to another movie. Only Mari goes to bed early because she works. Mari sometimes comes to my room at lunch with a roll of film from her camera for me to develop. In the back alleys there are many one-hour film developing shops which are not too expensive. If we go shopping during the day, it is for clothes. In the evening, we go shopping for trunks and locks and other useful things that the kids need. |
In The Evening... After the shops close, people begin laying out there sleeping mats on the street and prepare for the night.. which still is very warm. Here Mumtaz father is getting ready to go to sleep while traffic is still madly rushing by. (Photo by Mari) |
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I tell the kids never to waste food. You
would think that since the kids are very short on food much of the time
that they would be very good about not wasting food. This is not the case.