Dancing our way through the traffic

The past couple of days that I've gone to collect Maya from nursery, I've found her half way up a palm tree. It's quite a small palm tree, but even so. Anyway, she seemed very happy up there so I left her to it while I chatted to the other kids. It turned out they'd been taking it in turns to climb the tree and the other little girls seemed quite impressed by Maya's tenacity to cling on. I was too - a palm tree is hardly the easiest tree to climb!

Life in Bangalore continues with its constant store of adventures, frustrations, delights and offerings in all its spicy and colourful guises. It occurred to me this morning that things we once would have baulked at are now part and parcel of our lives here. Maya, for example, is now a dab hand at hailing an auto- rickshaw. She sticks out her little arm on the roadside, waves it up and down and hey-presto, the yellow beast appears. As for me, I no longer fear my life may end prematurely every time I cross a road. In heavy traffic, you just have to step into it like everyone else, and trust that cars / trucks / cows / rickshaws are moving slowly enough not to mow you down. If I have both the girls with me, I have become very adept at having Lily in the sling on my front and hoisting Maya on to one hip when I want to cross a road. It's funny how accustomed we've become to this now - we approach a road crossing and Maya and I have an unspoken agreement at this point: without words, she reaches up her arms to me and up she comes. I know we're an unusual sight but again, this is something we're coming to accept.

Whilst talking about traffic, I'd like to share an experience that happened to us in the second week here. I didn't want to mention it straight after it happened as didn't want concerned grannies / aunties etc etc worrying! Maya, Lily and I were in a rickshaw going down 100 Feet Road, probably the busiest road in the area. We were hurtling along and I suddenly realised we were about to pass the turning (on the other side of the road) for our street so told the rickshaw driver where I wanted to go. Now, this is where I would have expected him to have continued and made a u-turn a bit later to come back to my road. But no, what he did was very suddenly and very violently turn the wheel at a right angle into the oncoming traffic without so much as a glance to see how many cars were coming our way. Hundreds of deafening honks later, it transpired that because he'd turned the wheel so rapidly it had got stuck. So there we were, on a massively busy road, stuck in the middle of it with hundreds of cars coming for us at breakneck speed. I don't normally get that scared by crazy drivers, after all I've had to endure my own driving for the past ten years. But this got my heart rate going, I can tell you. In the end, the driver had to get out of the rickshaw and push it to safety through the crazed oncoming traffic. This kind of experience, I'm sorry to say, now happens at least a few times a week and none of us bat an eyelid!

Flicking through Time Out Bangalore the other day, this is what one writer has to say about the traffic here which I thought summed it up pretty well:

... the one unambiguous message that Bangalore seems to send out nowadays with its new calligraphy of things bigger than you - flyovers, magic boxes, impregnable glass-and-metal vaults and faraway sky - is that you're a person when you drive a car, and all others can fuck off.

Scuse his French, but it's true. This ain't a city for pedestrians.

So, whilst the traffic here dances to a rather agressive tune, dancing of another kind entirely is going on at our little apartment. Today is World Dance Day which I think is very apt because in the past week, Maya has taken to dancing in a big way. Every day starts the same way now: With Mummy groggily dragging herself out bed, with Daddy getting the breakfast ready, with Lily burbling and chuckling and trying to crawl (she's sooo close!) and with Maya rolling out the yoga mat and asking for the music to begin! Music selected, she then jives, wiggles, struts and bops her naked little body up and down the length of the yoga mat. It is so, so brilliant to watch. Depending on her mood, sometimes she wants to dance with one of us, sometimes she wants her partner to be her own shadow on the wall and other times she just wants to dance alone. Her movements have definitely taken on an Indian feel now, with arms outstretched and hands turning in circular motions. I think this is as a result of the Kathak dance performance we went to last week and also the dancing which she does at nursery.

The photo above was taken a few days ago in the midst of one of Maya's energetic bounces, making her curls fly! Anyway, happy world dance day one and all and make sure you put the radio on at some point today and enjoy a bit of a boogie. It's good for the soul, even (or especially) if it's just in the kitchen!

A trip down memory lane

I constantly refer to ‘my last time in India’. This is my fourth time here, but the second and third trips were just short ones when I worked at the travel company Cox & Kings. So what I am referring to is my first trip, the long one in 2000 when I came to India, fell in love with the country and stayed almost a year. If you just want to read about Maya’s exploits and adventures, then skip this entry, because this blog is going to be a blatant slice of self-indulgent nostalgia than anything else!

So…let’s turn the clocks back to 1999 and the location to the hilly University city of Durham where a twenty-one year old girl called Becks has just graduated in Anthropology. Because of the often conservative nature of Durham’s students, many of its graduates have bagged high-paying jobs at city firms and are already comparing their starting salaries before even drawing a line under their Durham days. Becks is slightly shocked by this and knows she wants none of it. But what does she want? She is whiling away one afternoon in the computer room when she sees a slip of paper on the floor. Picking it up she reads a website address and idly, she clicks on to it. It is for voluntary teaching projects in India…Six months later she is sitting on a plane being catapulted Eastwards. So yes, it was on a whim that I first decided to come to India, but of course there was also a great deal of thought and preparation in those six months. Let’s say it was a reaction to what I was experiencing around me at the time. But let’s also be honest here – it was gap year take two, but I’m utterly unrepentant about that. The things that my eyes were opened to on that trip will stay with me forever.

Here are a few things that I did in 2000 that I couldn’t / wouldn’t entertain the notion of doing this time round:

- Driving a rickshaw on a busy main road in Delhi, just because the rickshaw driver said I could and I thought it would be fun. (This from a girl who took 5 attempts to pass her driving test. Was I INSANE??)

- Walking 2 miles from the airport to the train station at 3 am with my rucksack just so I could save a few quid on the taxi fare.

- Smoking a spliff on a beach which it turned out was laced with something far stronger than marijuana. I then had to endure a terrifying 3 hour journey back to my hut, just 200 metres along the beach because I kept thinking I’d gone into rewind mode. Cripes, as my mother would say!

- Travelling overland from Ladakh to Chennai (very top of the country to very bottom – approximately 3000 kms) in 2 days to catch my flight back home.

- Scaling the gates of the Taj Mahal at 5 in the morning to get a sneaky peak before the crowds descended.

- In Calcutta, rising at the crack of dawn (mind you, no difference there!) and going to eat breakfast with the Missionary of Charity nuns before my daily voluntary work of helping young disabled children.

- Routinely taking bus journeys which lasted over twenty hours.

- Jumping on the back of an insalubrious character’s Enfield and tearing through Rajasthani towns and villages (This may sound like Andy but it wasn’t! Incidentally, he was also in India then, but it wasn’t yet our time to meet…)

Many of these experiences smack of having no responsibilities whatsoever. Reading back through these, I think I’m far more of a law-abiding citizen than I was nine years ago. But I am also a mother. A humungous difference! But to turn all this on its head, here are some of the things I can do now that I wouldn’t have been able to have done back then:

- Meeting and talking to so many people, virtually every time I walk out of my front door, who are absolutely fascinated by Maya and Lily

- Being in a position to hire someone to help out so that I can write and write to my heart’s content

- Resting safe in the knowledge that I have met my soulmate and am mother to two amazing little girls, all of whom make me a very lucky and very happy lady! And this, despite the occasional nostalgic moment of my India 2000 trip, I would not change for THE WORLD.

MY blog, not yours!

(NB – Sorry to those of you whose emails I haven’t replied to. Please keep ‘em coming…We’ve just got internet sorted at home so will have more of a chance to respond in the coming days.)

Sorry to keep banging on about nursery, but it is a source of constant angst and difficulty, both for Maya and myself. The child I take at the beginning of the day is not the same child I pick up at lunchtime. Let me give you a snapshot first of ‘lunchtime Maya’: she is grinning from ear to ear, running around happily, hugely proud of her daily artwork and blowing kisses at kids, teachers and helpers. And ‘morning Maya’: she bares her teeth and snarls at everyone (I’m not kidding), thrashes her arm out when people approach and begs me to stay with her. You see my dilemma? When I pick her up I fall into the daily trap of thinking phew, we’ve turned a corner. She seems genuinely happy. But then the same thing happens the next morning. I’m flummoxed. Any suggestions?

Because of the morning theatricals, the principal yesterday drew me to one side and asked me if I liked being in India.

‘Yes,’ I reply enthusiastically. ‘I love it.’

She looks incredulous. ‘Really? But what does Maya think about it?’

Good question, and definitely not one with a straightforward answer. What does Maya think about it? The little lady reminded me yesterday that this is ‘my blog, not yours!’, which draws to light once again that I am just her scribe and I know that if she could write, she would doubtless be correcting me as I go along. What I’m trying to say is that it’s impossible for me to really truly know what Maya is going through, I can only make guesses, knowing her as I do. But, in her mummy’s humble opinion, here are a few things that I think Maya thinks about being here:

• That it’s brilliant she gets to eat so much sugar, watch so many dvd’s and go to bed late
• That it is absolutely detestable that so many people pinch her cheeks, call her ‘baby’ and treat her as public property
• That the sun is far hotter and brighter than what she is used to
• That her new hobby, swimming, makes her very happy
• That apart from Anya, she can’t remember or pronounce any names of the kids she goes to nursery with
• That she misses her nursery from England and certain friends and family a great deal

This final point is the most important one, and when I find myself becoming short-tempered because the whining record is on replay, this is what I need to keep remembering. This is hard for Maya. She walks around with her little toy mobile phone and makes phone calls to Auntie Nu-Nu, Osric and Cousin Daisy to mention a few and there have been many occasions when she has asked to ‘go to the other nursery later’ or see so-and-so later. She is only two – she doesn’t have the vocabulary to truly express how much she misses people and places. But it is evident from certain things she says and certain behaviour.

But, but, but…because it’s far better to end the blog on a positive note…there is so much she is experiencing here on a daily basis that Maya will keep inside and will become part of her; some very special experiences. Take two incidents just last night - we witnessed dramatic thunder, lightening and monsoon rains, the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen. There was a powercut and Maya and I huddled by the dim light of the window with chai and biscuits watching the rain coming down in thick sheets and flooding the roads (Picture no.1 above, Maya watching the rain and being very excited by it). Secondly, later in the evening we went out to watch a Kathak dance performance (An Indian classical dance which, at 1000 years old, is one of the ‘younger’ forms of Indian dance!). There were just two dancers, one male and one female (pictures no.2 & 3) and Maya’s eyes were so wide she barely blinked througout. She had never seen such costumes, such makeup and probably such beauty and grace and her pleasure and awe were palpable. These are the experiences that make it so worthwhile being here.

Our Big Little Girl

Deepa, the twenty-eight year old lady who has just started helping out at home, is truly a starlet. She has a constant smile on her face and as well as looking after Lily and cleaning, she is teaching me some Kannada and also how to cook dal-a-la-Deepa. I think that has to be one of my favourite foods of all time – a very simple but oh-so-tasty dal and rice. DeLICious. I wish Maya would agree with me…mealtimes are still tricky and she’s so cautious of anything having the slightest bit of spice in it that she announces that something is spicy before even trying it – even plain old orange juice! Thankfully though I am filling her up with pasta, dried apricots, figs, dates, raisins and cashews, all of which she is quite happy with for the time being.

But back to Deepa, she is with us for about three hours in the morning while Maya is at nursery and of that time, I am able to get about one and a half hours of writing time in. I cannot express what an enormous luxury this is. For months (actually, years – we’re talking pre-Maya days when I last had time to write properly), I have been snatching five minutes here, ten minutes there, half an hour if I’m lucky. But finally, finally I have some interrupted time to sit, think and tap away. I feel very, very lucky. The timing also could not have been better as I am feeling very inspired by this latest novel idea. So far, so good and it’s flowing like water. The other good news is that I feel far more confident about writing a novel than I did last time when I spent that year at our rural hideaway in Suffolk. I’m not saying I didn’t believe in the last novel too, but this time round I have a very useful creating writing course under my belt and have also read some very inspiring books, the most recent being ‘Runaway’ by Alice Munro, a collection of stunning short stories which I cannot recommend enough.

On another note, children here seem to be called ‘baby’ up to an age which far exceeds babyhood. I remember when I first heard Maya being addressed so at nursery, she received this greeting with a look of indignation. I know it’s completely normal for children her age (at least in England, anyway) to want to seem older and to be ‘big girls’ and ‘big boys’ and she is, quite simply, very unhappy about being called baby by all the helpers at nursery and other adults that cross our paths. When I went to collect Maya yesterday I was told by the principal that after she called Maya ‘baby’, she swung round and practically shouted at her ‘I’M NOT A BABY, I’M A BIG GIRL!’ Priceless - I can just imagine it.

I have to agree with Maya on that one. She’s been out of nappies at night for a couple of weeks now (hooray!)…and look at today’s photo of her. Is that the face of a baby? When did she get so big? When did she start to talk so much? Not only will this blog be a record for Maya to read one day, but it’s also important for me, for us, to frame her experiences in India with words instead of pictures inside. Because one day our lovely daughter really will be a big girl and we’ll be able to look back at these days in Bangalore and remember and smile.

Maya's Melodies

The sun is shining again at full strength and I constantly marvel at the Indian women who breeze gracefully past in their sari’s, cool as cucumbers, when I am reduced to a fried, frizzy, fraught, frazzled mess with sweat pouring down crevices I didn’t even know existed. But there we have it.

We had a breakthrough at nursery this morning. It started much the same way as other mornings, with Maya looking forward to it but bursting into tears upon arrival and begging me to stay. There is a little girl called Anya who Maya seems to quite like. She is Indian but was born in America and her family have just moved back from San Francisco and she’s a sweet little girl, also prone to crying when her Mother leaves. Anyway, I said to Maya that I would stay with her until Anya arrived, not thinking for a second this would make any difference. ‘Okay,’ chirps Maya. And sure enough, Anya arrived and Maya released her grip of me and headed inside with her friend with barely a look back at me. I was, in a word, speechless! But what a joy not to have to leave her so unhappy.

And this brings me to my next point – that both Andy and I have noticed in the past week that something very small but perceptible has shifted in Maya. She is definitely happier and more settled. In fact, she has started singing again. To backtrack a little – Maya used to sing and sing and sing. Back in Godmanchester, it was very common for her to sing away to herself for well over an hour after going to bed. And during the day, she walked round singing all kinds of things: nursery rhymes, songs she makes up and others that we play on the cd player or laptop. She is a veritable little juke box and it’s wonderful to listen to. Since arriving in Bangalore she has been singing far less but – and this is very unobservant of her parents – we didn’t quite realise how little she’d been singing until her juke box started up again. In the past week our house has been full of music and this is another indication of her feeling more contented.

Not only have we been listening to Maya’s new repertoire of nursery songs but we have double musical happiness as Andy has bought a guitar! We left dear old Pepe the guitar back in Godmanchester, being looked after by a friend (how’s he getting on Fiona?), but decided that having a strum in the evening was a must for these long, warm evenings. So now, for those passing by our apartment, the sound of a lovely little voice be heard, singing about monkeys jumping on beds and all kinds of other weird and wonderful things, interspersed with the strains of Pink Floyd, Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Marley.

Ps – If you feel like reading one of my very short stories (seriously, it’s short – it’ll take about two minutes to read), it’s just been published on The Pygmy Giant website. Go to http://www.thepygmygiant.wordpress.com/If it’s not on the homepage click on previous stories

Creepy crawlies and things that go splat in the night

We have had the most amazing weather today – thick cloud cover and barely a scrap of sun seeping through all day! I know, I know, it sounds crazy doesn’t it, that I should be shunning blue skies and all day sunshine for a bit of Britain-style cloud. Last night the intense heat was punctuated by the first monsoon rains we’ve experienced since being in India and I must admit that the cooler weather this has brought today is much welcomed by myself and also Maya I’m sure, who often announces as we leave the house in the morning ‘I can’t like the sun’. Oh dear…wrong country to not like the sun, Maya.

But to explain the title of this blog – our apartment, as well as being home to our Family, is also playing host to thousands of ants since last week. They are nasty little buggers, for not only do they munch their way through the dates, cereal, biscuits, Bombay mix, bananas, mangoes, cardboard and just about everything else, but they also bite. And they hurt! After returning from a weekend away, we also found our bedside water glasses swimming with dozens of them, all dead, so I only wish more of them would go ahead and commit suicide because they’re making our lives jolly difficult. Maya now heads up the ant police team and can often be scouring the floor for the little critters. Andy and I are trying hard to moderate our language (but often failing) when the latest trail is uncovered.

From ants to creatures of another kind, we returned last night from a glorious two days at a place called Georgia Sunshine Village in the middle of palm fields and forest between Bangalore and Mysore. Maya called it the jungle and it certainly felt like being in the jungle because the trees and land around our small cottage were fantastically alive with frogs, bats, lizards the length of Maya’s arm, butterflies, squirrels, long-legged spiders, hundreds of varieties of birds and even monkeys.

The sounds from our cottage (temperamental, clanking old fan aside) were incredible – we heard squeaking, squawking, trilling, whooping, hissing, croaking and so much more. Possibly one of the most curious sounds to be heard was when we’d be eating our dinner peacefully, only to be interrupted by the most enormous SPLAT sound (yes, you could well ask, what on earth is a splat sound, but I guess you know what I mean…) which made us jump out of our seats. We became very used to this over the course of the weekend as it happened frequently (though only at night time) and our wonderful hosts, Georgia and Leonard Hatherell (and no they’re not American as their names and hotel name may suggest, they’re Indian through and through) explained that it’s a type of fly hurling itself against the wall. So, another insect with suicidal tendencies.

Georgia Sunshine Village was a small slice of paradise and Maya spent the whole weekend swinging in hammocks (there’s my girl – many of my important life decisions have been made in hammocks – seriously…must be something to do with the swinging motion…), experiencing new trees, plants, flowers and creatures and - probably most importantly - swimming. The pool was a godsend because it was pretty darn hot (29 degrees at night to give you an idea) and we are delighted that since we’ve been in India, Maya has become a little fish. The temperature of the water and the air outside have definitely helped her confidence with water (We tried several times to get her swimming in the Cam last summer like her mummy and daddy but she wasn’t having any of it), as have the arm bands. The look of sheer and utter delight on her face when she realises she is buoyant and can do her own thing in the pool is fantastic. Maya also tried her hand at fishing with bamboo rods for sandfish, though I must say she was less than impressed with this activity and kept getting freaked out by the dogs barking at the naughty monkeys creating havoc in the trees above us. Her daddy stubbornly persevered however, refusing to leave the river until he had caught a fish (which, I’m pleased to say, he did! Two in fact.)

I cannot express what a welcome break it was from the chaos of Bangalore. It wasn’t cheap but worth every penny and I have a feeling Georgia and Leonard may be seeing us again. Back home, we have the same old nursery problems (Maya still cries every morning which is awful for her but I’m persevering) and also our first day with the new Ayah we’ve employed, a very lovely lady called Deepa, a mother of two herself. More of Deepa in another blog….The final thing to tell you about on the creepy crawly note is that when I was unpacking our weekend bags last night I discovered we’d brought a family of spiders back from the jungle with us which gave me quite a fright. However, if spiders eat ants (I think they do, don’t they??) then I’ll give them board and lodging any day!

Nursery Blues

Maya’s blog goes out of date quicker than it takes for clothes to dry out here – and that’s pretty rapido, believe you me. I thought that Maya was starting to warm to her nursery but my silly, romantic notions of her wonderful hours spent under a mango tree were zapped towards the end of last week when she announced she didn’t want to go. I thought by the time she got there, she’d be fine but no, her expressions of discontent grew and grew until she was in a tearful state by the time we’d gone through the gate. All the teachers and the principal assured me she’d been absolutely fine each day, it was just the initial five minutes she wasn’t all that happy. And of course there were all the assurances that I’d be called if she didn’t cheer up.

I think we’ve been very lucky up till now, never having any problems with Maya at nursery in England and she was never tearful upon being left there. By the time her session that day was over she was calm but subdued and in hindsight, I don’t think it was the right thing to do, leaving her there when she was clearly not happy. I hoped it was just a blip but the following day, as we approached in the rickshaw poor Maya started howling uncontrollably, saying ‘I can’t want to go to nursery! I can’t wanna go!’ She literally would not even walk through the gate so that was that, there was no way I was going to push it again. I definitely don’t want to give her nursery phobia.

Again, this morning when I mentioned nursery a look of pure fear crossed her face and she said she wasn’t going. Resignedly, I called the principal to say Maya wouldn’t be coming back and she suggested that if Maya was willing, I come in with her and stay as long as I wanted. When I put this to Maya, reluctantly she agreed. It was quite an eye opener, I must admit and I think I now see part of the problem which, I am fairly sure, will not be solved simply by switching nurseries. Similarly to her zoo experience, Maya often finds herself the centre of attention amongst both helpers and children. She just wants to blend in but can’t easily do this. This is one problem, the other being that kids are ‘handled’ slightly differently in India from what we’re used to. I need to be a bit careful what I say here, and I want to stress that there is no right or wrong way, it’s just a cultural difference. But from what I observed, the kids were yanked around quite a bit, NOT in an unkind way but – let me give an example – rather than a helper taking a child’s hand and leading them gently to the sink to wash their hands, instead the child’s wrist is firmly encircled and they are tugged off. It’s the kind of action that would raise serious eyebrows back in England but here it is completely normal. And just because Maya’s mother spent the first 45 minutes with her, doesn’t mean that their behaviour would change in any way. This is just the way things are done. They definitely care about the kids and it’s definitely a creative, fun environment. But coming from England where children can barely be so much as touched these days without arms being thrown up, it’s just a…erm….different way of going about things.

I was really, really glad to have witnessed this though to understand more where Maya’s anxieties concerning nursery have stemmed from. Maya doesn’t like being man-handled in this way or being fawned over. As I’ve mentioned countless times, she likes and needs her personal space. The staff must think I am a ridiculous, over-protective mother but I really don’t care about that and I told them that Maya was a sensitive, independent little girl and they need to respect her space if she’s to be happy. Lots of head nodding ensued and who knows if they’ll take note, but the fact is, I’ll know if they don’t as Maya’s desire to stay away from nursery will continue and ultimately, she’ll have to stop going. It’s going to be very much a case of taking one day at a time but I’m pleased to say that when I went to pick her up at the end of the morning, she was in good spirits and even said she wanted to go back tomorrow.

Maya’s needs come first. 100%. As well as wanting her to have fun and to interact with other children, I dearly hope that things get better for her on the nursery front for another, entirely selfish reason: this is that the thought of having to entertain her (Lily’s so much easier) for the entire day is completely daunting. That probably sounds a bit pathetic, but I’m just being honest. It’s not something that’s ever been an issue before but here in the heat, where a) we can’t do much outside between 10am and 5pm b)we can’t go too far in a rickshaw because of the pollution, c) we risk our lives each time we cross the roads (I’ve got used to it, but I’m really not kidding) and d) I am sometimes very under-slept (yes, that old demon still raises it’s head) and insomnia does not mix well with 35 degrees heat and two dependent children. Oh yes, there’s an e) too – I’m chomping at the bit to start my novel! I’ve been writing bits and pieces here and there in grabbed ten minute slots. But anyway, enough ranting and moaning. I’m pretty tired today so not feeling fully positive but it will all be absolutely fine, I know it will. As soon as Maya feels more settled, that will help my own peace of mind. So fingers crossed for tomorrow and let’s hope the mention of nursery doesn’t send her hot-footing to her bedroom followed by sobs and door slamming. She is such a teenager already!

New sight at the zoo: Family

(NB: for more photos of Lily, scroll down to the Lily Blog)

Maya has seen her first Indian elephant – hooray! Today we went to Banavghatta National Park an hour south of Bangalore and I must confess I was expecting to see some elephants in the semi-wild at least. This was not to be – we found the whole zoo experience pretty disturbing and I’m sorry to say that it’ll be the first and last time we visit one whilst here. However, by no means were all the animals kept in miserable conditions (though sadly I can’t say this for the elephants) and Maya was really very excited about our visit and being surrounded by so many creatures she constantly reads about in her story books.

Not to dwell too much on the park experience itself, the irony that our family, particularly the girls, were being gawked at just as much (if not more) than any monkey or macaw was not lost on us. I was quite surprised how much attention we attracted as we were so close to Bangalore, the silicon valley of India where white faces are commonplace. But as my husband pointed out, this kind of park attracted people from far and wide and certainly not just Bangalore.

Whilst Lily slumbered in the baby carrier, we walked round looking at all the animals and as we did so, dozens (and I mean dozens) of people approached us, took photos, pinched Maya’s cheeks, boinged her curls, made extraordinary kissing sounds at her and generally got in her face. Now let me explain something – Maya is a little girl who likes her space. She can be gorgeously affectionate when she wants to be but this is nearly always with people she knows well. She is not an exhibitionist and she often doesn’t even like us taking photos of her, so imagine this scenario: Maya is minding her own business, watching a fat hippo waddling round its enclosure and suddenly she is descended upon by a large group of twenty-something males with an assortment of camera phones and normal cameras, all jostling to stand beside her, their arm around her whilst their friends take pictures. I know it’s all perfectly innocent BUT somehow there is something very unpleasant about this.

Some good advice given us was that if somebody comes over and asks to take a photo of your child, you reply that if the child agrees to this, then it’s okay. In other words, the camera-wielder must ask the permission of the child, yes, even if they are only two years old. We have found this to be very helpful, as this normally results in one of three things:1)This puts people off and they saunter off 2) Maya could be in one of her rare photo moods and gives a swift, obliging pout or the far more common number 3) whereby Maya swiftly morphs from sweet, golden haired child to fierce looking devil-child. If fire could come out of her mouth at this stage, I think it would. She has hit several people when they’ve been too full on with her or pinched her cheek just that little bit too hard. To be honest, I can’t say I can blame her. I remember hating having my photo taken as a kid, and that was without dozens of people even clamouring around me.
I know it’s just a cultural difference and as I said before, no harm is intended. Perhaps Maya will get used to it. On the other hand, if she doesn’t and actually the opposite is true and she hates such undesired attention more and more as time goes on, I just hope her temper doesn’t get the better of her and she doesn’t bite some poor person’s hand off.

Wherever I lay my hat (or hang the nappies) that's our home

I haven’t yet described to you our new home. It was a close call between this place and another apartment which was within a tower block but had lots of amenities including children’s play park and swimming pool. For a while we thought we’d go for the other place, for Maya’s sake, and we even gave the agent the green light on it. However, it didn’t sit right with either Andy or myself and when we swapped over to this little apartment, we felt far happier about it. No surly security guards, no arduous journeys up and down lifts all day and no people watching over your shoulder the whole time (it probably wouldn’t really have been like that, but there were huge amounts of people packed into a small space in the tower block).

This also means we had to kiss goodbye to the pool and the play area but hey, who needs a kids’ play park when we are living right next to one of Bangalore’s much coveted green spaces (actually yellow is a better way to describe it but I’m sure the monsoon will help turn it green). I say coveted because there ain’t much open space in this city these days. Bangalore must have been truly stunning at one point – it’s still known as ‘the garden city’ and although all those poor old gardens have been churned up and paved over, many of the roads (busy thoroughfares included) remain tree-lined and you’re never more than a stone’s throw from a beautiful old banyan or bright red and purple may blossom tree (Maya’s nursery is even situated bang smack under a mango tree – how great is that?). Because so little open space remains, from about 5am each morning, our park fills up with dozens and dozens of strollers, power walkers, people meditating, doing yoga, breathing exercises…It is an amazing sight. This continues until the strength of the sun becomes too much and then the park is virtually empty until evening time. This is when we hit it, because each and every night, there is a small central area where lots of parents and their children go to gossip, wheel around on small trikes and play ball games. The locals seem fascinated by us and our offspring (though absolutely nobody believes Maya and Lily are girls) and we’ve met some very friendly people. I’m sure the park will become a regular feature of our time here, particularly as Maya is now the proud owner of a plastic yellow Disney scooter. It is truly hideous but Maya loves it and that is the important thing.

Other things in our area are a chai stall at the end of our road (fantastic, but we’ll get teeth rot if we go there too often), a gym on the other side of the road that allegedly provides Bollywood stars with their fitness regime and blurts out loud music from 6am to 10pm each day, a café called Cocoa Sweet which, as the name suggests is full of sugary goodies, and a mangy old dog and her two pups.

As for the house itself, well we have more room than we had before, put it that way. This is partly because we have far fewer possessions here but I’m pretty sure the floor space is greater than what we had in Godmanchester, so this is good news for Maya and her scooter. We have a small kitchen (no change there), a lovely big open plan lounge / eating area, two good-sized ensuite bedrooms and a small puja room (the blessing room where locals would place icons of the various Hindu deities; I’m afraid we’ve filled it with smelly shoes though – no offence intended). We hired all the furniture from a big warehouse supplying second hand furniture – that was a fiasco in itself – it was a crazy hot day and Maya decided to climb all over what must have been pre-colonial furniture and came out with black dust and grime smothered all over her. We’ve got a funny old assortment, a bit rough around the edges but it’s absolutely fine. We’ve even got a washing machine (installed by a charming man who was genuinely passionate about washing machines but he also wanted to talk about Jesus with me for half an hour after the installation) – a big bonus as it can wash the nappies. No launderettes will accept soiled nappies (fair enough) and ‘fraid I draw the line at doing them myself! (Fiona, you are one of a kind!!)

Our ‘security guard’ (basically, every office / shop / apartment block has a guard) is a sweet, skinny man called Amar and he’s always around to help out. He lives in the basement (seriously) with his lovely wife who has started to do some cleaning for us every few days. This is an enormous help – the floors are white marble effect and get filthy dirty within seconds of letting the girls loose on them and yes, I know, I know, I could do it myself but I don’t need to go over the arguments of why we’re getting help: to provide employment and because we can afford it (although I’ve done just that – am I trying to convince myself?!) Another local character is the nameless, faceless man who lives outside mine and Andy’s bedroom and starts his day (and ours, thanks very much) with a loud and violent hock. For those of you unfamiliar with hocking, this is gathering all the phlegm in to the back of one’s throat in a swift, guttural motion and spitting it out as far as it can go. Our neighbour obviously has a lot of phlegm to clear as this can continue for up to ten minutes. Yum yum.

One final thing which I haven’t mentioned is that the fan dials are too high for Maya to reach – HOORAY! This means they are under the control of the grown-ups (boring thinks Maya no doubt) and we can all stay wonderfully, mercifully cool.
So, we’re getting settled and the walls are starting to fill up with Maya’s beautiful creations from nursery which is helping give the place colour and life. All we need now is some visitors – there’s plenty of room here so if you don’t mind sleeping beneath strung-up nappies (clean ones of course!) then go and book those flights!

Where Daddy Goes

While Maya whizzes through the flat on her scooter wearing nothing but her pink sunhat and demanding a plaster (she has developed a strange fetish for wearing plasters on her arm), I gather up my work things, put on my sandals and slip out the door bound for the office. (Yes, I’m lucky enough to be able to walk to work AND wear hippy sandals.)

My work is both rewarding and challenging. And working in India, is also head thumpingly frustrating. I am here to ensure that the ‘implementation phase’ of the programme goes ahead as planned over the next 6 months. That is, to provide sanitation infrastructure into four slums – installing a mix of community toilet blocks, small-scale wastewater treatment plants, low-cost small-bore sewerage networks and individual household latrines. I came here in January to plan all this work for the next 4 years and work out the sums – how much could we do with the alloted funds (supplied by the UK’s Department for International Development) and in what timescale. The programme has a target of reaching nearly half a million people within 4 years from now, but the idea is that we undertake a ‘pilot phase’ which we’re in now, which should identify a way forward for rolling out this infrastructure to 40 other slums throughout the city.

I’m both daunted and extremely excited about this work. On a personal level, this is a dream job for me, getting involved in the urban slum context which is the basis of my earlier thesis and research work at Cranfield University.
The people are wonderful too. There are 5 others in the office who have bent over backwards to help us get ourselves settled into private accommodations, and sort things out like rental agreements, mobile phones, broadband, furniture hire, local bank account to name a few. And of course nothing is straightforward here! You need to provide your state identity papers just to get a gas cylinder into your home for cooking!!

Working in the slums has also been amazing – and humbling. We recently had a meeting with the manual pit emptiers – the untouchables in Indian society who probably have the worst job on the planet – emptying shit from a pit latrine with just a bucket and a bottle of the hardest spirits to numb the senses. (“I only drink when I’m working” said one with conviction). Most of these areas are far away from the city sewers so have to rely on ‘on-site’ sanitation – in other words, digging a pit to store their shit until it fills up and then they get it emptied. We’re trying to devise a manual pump that can be used to pump the shit out of the pit neatly into a tank on the back of a small truck – doing away with the unsanitary practice of getting covered in the stuff, whilst injecting some dignity into their job which is actually a valuable public service – one that the local government should be doing.

I fear I’m ranting now, so will leave it there. More of my updates to follow... nicely infused between Maya's magical world.

Hindi Dancing and Japanese Clocks

Maya’s bedtime has been pushed back to 8 or 8.30pm as she now sleeps for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. She’s very chuffed at being allowed to stay up later than Lily, who still goes to bed around 7, and can often be found swaggering about her room and the corridor long after we’ve said goodnight to her. The other night, way past her bedtime, she asked me to take her nappy off as she needed the loo. As she was sitting there, a sweet, sleepy look on her face she said in a soft voice ‘Mummy, I’m so proud of you.’ I couldn’t believe it – it was so adorable it almost brought a tear to my eye! Of course, the reason she said this was because Andy and I are constantly telling her the same and no more so than in the past couple of days since she has started her new nursery.

When I first dropped her off, she looked me straight in the eye and said with a fiercely determined little voice ‘Mummy, I not crying.’ So yes, I was extremely proud of the little lady. It certainly helped that another poor wee soul was in the throes of a dramatic sobbing fit, clinging to his mother for dear life. Terrible though this is to admit, Maya has always observed such scenes with voyeuristic interest, partly because she’s pleased it’s not her and also partly, I’m sure, to pick up tips for her own next histrionic meltdown. On her first day, I returned after one hour to check up on her – no problems so out I crept and left her there for the full three hours. Maya was full of beans when I went to collect her, clutching a beautiful bright cardboard cut out of a kimono-clad Japanese lady holding a movable-hands clock. She seemed genuinely happy and I heaved a big old sigh of relief.

This morning was not quite so simple. Despite the fact Maya had been looking forward to returning to nursery, when we got there she decided after all that she didn’t want to be there. After many tears and a great deal of guilt on my part, I decided to stand for a short while outside where I was out of sight to see if she would soon calm down. And calm she did, after just a few minutes. I called the school an hour later to see how she was getting on and was reassured that she was in good spirits (perhaps they weren’t telling the truth, but you have to trust, don’t you?). Sure enough, at 1pm she came running out to greet me holding her latest creation (a cardboard traffic light pen holder no less!) and today was told by the principal how much Maya had enjoyed the Hindi dancing. (There’s my girl - I knew all those dancing sessions to i-tunes mixes around the sitting room would have to pay off one day!!) When we got back home, I asked Maya to show me the dancing she’d done at nursery and she gave a brilliant little hip-wiggling flourish – we’ll get her an extra part in a Bollywood movie before no time at all!!

So far, so good on the nursery front. The staff seem genuinely interested and kind and there’s lots of space both in and outside. Next step is to find somebody reliable and trustworthy to look after Lily in the mornings so I can do some voluntary work and also write….my next novel!! I’ve been waiting for my theme for months and this morning, quite literally, it came to me and I now am ridiculously over-excited and longing to begin…Watch this space.

Sugar and spice and all things salty

Finally, we have moved into our apartment and slowly, we are learning to move to the tunes of India’s rhythms with a little less awkwardness and trepidation. I can honestly say that Maya is dealing with this huge change to her life with infinite energy, acceptance and a wonderful sense of adventure. When I told her we were moving from our temporary accommodation, she looked at me, chewed this information over, nodded her head and said ‘Okay’. I’m not saying there haven’t been ‘moments’. But the volatile emotions of any two year old constantly throw up moments, and considering we are far from everything Maya has known to date, she is coping amazingly. Better, I might add, than her Mummy who is having to re-programme her personal hard drive in ways that I never had to when I was last in India a) because I didn’t have children back then so only had myself to look after and b) possibly because I was less aware back in 2000 of my place on this earth.
I know this is a blog for Maya, not for me, but I hope you don’t mind me releasing a little steam to describe to you what I mean by this re-programming adjustment I’m going through.
I’ve talked about food already, but to briefly return to this theme…Anyone who knows me well will know that I’m pretty particular about food, especially what goes into my little ones’ mouths. They’ve had a very healthy diet so far – lots of fresh, organic vegetables, no E numbers, lots of super healthy food like quinoa and aduki beans and home made hummus. Okay, okay, perhaps I’ve gone over the top at times, but to me it’s simple – it’s the kind of food I like, so of course I’ll feed my children the same. Fast forward to Bangalore and Maya has digested more artificial flavourings and utter rubbish and sugar in the past two weeks than she has in her entire life. We have a fridge and two hob cooker at the new place so theoretically this should make things easier…but I can’t find the ingredients I want! Today I was delighted to find some cheddar cheese and wholewheat pasta but when I cooked it for Maya, she stared at me sceptically and before even trying it said it was too spicy. She has every right to be sceptical though as I’ve tried this tack with other foods she likes, only to discover too late that the tuna she has eaten for example is, in fact, very salty, very spicy tuna. As far as drinks go, yes I’m still trying to deal with the sugar overload in the juice cartons but when we’re out and I see apple juice on the menu I am so overjoyed I order two large ones, only for my heart to sink when it turns up an even more lurid colour than a green highlighter pen. Sigh.
‘Nuff said about food and drink. Rebecca’s Re-programming # 2: Malls and supermarkets. I hate these places with a passion I really cannot articulate. I can’t stand being in confined spaces with tons of other people fighting for air and aisle and queueing space. I very, very rarely go into either supermarkets or shopping centres in England and if I do, I purposely don’t wear my glasses or contact lenses so I can’t really see that much anyway and get out as fast as I can. Yep, call me neurotic, call my crazy, but this is the way it is! So, here I am in India and I’ve realised a couple of things pretty fast. 1) If I want to get my children food that they will eat I need to patronise supermarkets and 2) It is very, very hot here. I have always been an outdoors person but it is too hot to be outside with the girls for any length of time between around 10am and 4.30pm. Malls have air conditioning. And bookshops. And play areas. Last time in India, I don’t remember ever being overly bothered by the heat. This time, remember I am carrying one sweaty baby on my chest and have another sweaty toddler’s hand in mine and all I can think of during the day is getting inside, somehow, anyhow, anywhere! Groan, I think I am going to have to ‘get over’ supermarkets and malls!
Rebecca’s re-programming # 3: Recyling and rubbish. Yes, I really am one of those people who pulls off the plastic part of an envelope so I can separate into the recycling bin and the normal bin. Sad, isn’t it? There is no recycling here and I balk every time I throw a tin can, cereal box, beer bottle or vegetable peelings into the normal bin. Either I am going to have to go on a serious mission to find out if there is in fact some recycling going on in the city or just ‘get over’ it again, otherwise I shall be a nervous rubbish wreck after 6 months!
Rebecca’s re-programming # 4: Hygiene. Let’s be honest, I’ve never been the tidiest person in the world and when it came to cleaning the house, I could find a hundred reasons why other things were more important. I have to be fanatical about cleanliness now, cleaning the girls hands with water, soap and disinfectant gel whenever I remember. Before meals, after meals, between meals. Basically, the entire time. The dust and the grime of Bangalore is intense and Maya in particular spends a lot of time picking things up off the ground and putting her hands in her mouth. This is not pleasant in a place where ‘flying turds’ are common (people defecating in plastic bags and hurling them indiscriminately away from them).
Right, I’ll get off my soap box of neuroses now. As I have said, these are issues that I need to make peace with one way or another. I don’t want Maya’s first memory to be of an overwrought, stressed out Mummy hyperventilating at a roadside café because she has been bought a drink with a few E numbers in it. I need to keep a little perspective here. They’ve had an amazing start and they’re hardly going to starve. And let’s face it, a few E numbers never killed a kid, did they? Besides, I don’t want to give the impression that I’m stressed all the time! I never wish we weren’t here and when things are difficult I remember that we are in India and there are so many things I love about this place. This is a country where women wear jasmine in their hair so that the sweet scent follows them all day. This is a country where people wear clothes of every colour of the rainbow. This is a country where dusk paints the streets in gentle shades and the parks fill with hundreds of people enjoying respite from the heat. I could go on and on, but for now, this is the country that we are going to spend the next six months in and grow accustomed to all its frustrating but fascinating ways.

Yoga mat-melting heat and frayed nerves

This is how hot it is: today the bottom of the yoga mat melted and stuck to the floor. Inside. And we're talking about an apartment with numerous fans in it. Speaking of fans, Maya has got in to the habit of repeatedly turning off all the fans that I have turned on. Nope, the equation of fans on = less hot = less stressful has not yet sunk in.

As you may have picked up on, nerves have been somewhat frayed today. We went to a nursery to register Maya this morning (more of that later) and the plan had been to continue on to the one good childrens' play park in the area. But after paying the registration, I realised I had only enough money to get us home in a rickshaw, despite having put plenty of cash in my purse. I then remembered having seen Maya play around with it earlier and had forgotten to double check before leaving home. So no park for Maya. I'd been promising her this, so she wasn't happy.

Back at home, after Lily had had a quick nap, I decided we'd go out for juice and then to the bookshop where we'd left her little backpack last week. But after organising the girls and on the point of finally leaving the house, I realised the key had vanished. Lily had to come out of the baby carrier, a full scale, sweaty search ensued (sans fans - thanks Mayita) but no sign of the keys. Eventually, I gave up on the idea, turned on some cartoons with jarring voices whilst I could continue looking. By the time it got to lunch, I had had it with keys and decided to leave the house nonetheless and go to a nearby cafe for the aforementioned juice and sandwiches. But the cafe was closed. So we trundled through the cloying heat to another little place.

"Hi, do you do sandwiches?"
"Yes Madam, we do."
Bingo.
"Great, what do you have?"
"The trouble is Madam that the man who is making the sandwiches isn't here."
"Ah. Could you make them?"
"Yes, Madam I could..."
Fantastic.
"...but the trouble is we are not having any ingredients right now."
"Nothing?"
Dinesh has a think (yes, I have learnt his name)..."Ah!" His eyes ignite, "We are having a burger!"
"We can have a burger?"
"Yes Madam, a burger in a sandwich."

This was not my day. Back at home, a botched pasta-job lunch later, Maya didn't want to have a lie down and when she eventually relented, Lily woke up. When the heat of the afternoon had slightly subsided, I decided to give the nearby juice bar another go (we went the other day and I'd thought it may be quite a regularly visited place for us). Closed again. I was informed by the next door gym that it was closed for a while.
"For how long?"
"Maybe two weeks..." Ok, not a disaster. "...Or maybe two months, " they add. Groan. Yup, most definitely one of those days.

Maya did not want to go to bed this evening. She kept wandering out of her room saying she needed the loo, she had a runny nose, she wanted to look for the keys (where have you hidden them, you little scoundrel?!), she wanted a cuddle....Now she's eventually gone down, I sincerely hope she gets some decent kip. If this heat is hard for me, then it's got to be even harder for a sensitive-skinned, sensitive-dispositioned little two year old. People keep helpfully informing us that we've come to Bangalore for the wrong 6 months. Yup, thanks for that. It's getting hotter and hotter and soon this heat will break and instead of intense sunshine we'll have...intense rain!

Anyway, I shall quit my moaning now and focus on a positive turn of events. Next week, Maya will start at a Montessori nursery school. I went round a few nurseries yesterday and after we had left each one, I was met with noisy sobbing by the little one. It didn't take long to figure out that she couldn't understand why we were going to these lovely places with toys and games and children and then leaving them so soon. In between the visits she said "Want to go to school! Want to go to school!" Bless her. I had planned to see several more in the coming days but forget it if it's going to have that effect on Maya. So we opted for my favourite one - one that, in fact, when we were shown around Maya walked straight up to the group of children and sat down with them! Amazing. She is clearly longing to be with other kids her own age again. Nearly all nurseries close down for the summer but many, this one included, puts on a summer camp for one of the two months of the summer holiday. So off Maya will go next monday with her satchell and her snacks and her sunhat! I really hope she'll be ok.

Tomorrow we are moving so if I don't write for a while it's not because I've lost the plot and no longer have the will to write (at least, I hope not!) - it'll be because we're getting internet sorted at the new place. Plenty more challenges ahead of us, such as no bath for the girls (I know we've improvised enough in the past with tubs and sinks and buckets but having a bath here was a serious bonus) and having to acquire bits and pieces for the flat, but plenty to look forward to aswell. I just hope the dial for the fans is out of Maya's sweaty little reach.