Bombay Letters 3, March 1998

Date: March 17, 1998

Subject: I got your letters

Dad and Mom,

Today is 3/17.  In the mail I received the letter from my employer which you sent and also a card to each child and to Anita and me.  I also got letter 1 and letter 2.  Thanks for sending them.

Last Friday was a Hindu holiday called Holi.  Part of the celebration involves throwing handfuls of BRIGHT (pink, purple, green, red, blue, etc.) powder on everybody around you.  If we had gone out in public in certain crowded places, we would have had colors thrown on us.  Also, people throw water balloons filled with colored water.  Some people actually get hurt doing this though mostly it is good “fun.”  Since I had Friday off, we went to a hill station about two and a half hours drive from our home.  I will describe our interesting and very Indian week‑end in an upcoming e‑mail to the whole family.  It irritates the kids that they do not have regular access to e‑mail yet.  It would not help to come to my office in the evening, since the lines are hopelessly jammed (not the office’s lines but e‑mail access in general!)  I am working to get us connected but like so many things here IT TAKES TIME!!!

Finally, could you save our letters?  I am keeping a journal of sorts, plus when I start e‑mailing from my own computer I will have that record too.  Still, it would be helpful if you could save (just to a disk) a copy of these messages so they could all be located for sure at least in one safe location and then, after two years here I’ll have enough to use for my memoirs.  I’ll give you a half priced, autographed copy.

What a deal!!

love,

Gary

Date: March 18, 1998

Subject: Nice to hear from you

Hi John and Karen,

So good hearing from you.  When I get my own computer at home connected to the Web, I will include your address as part of a group mailing from me. Until then, I hope you don’t mind reading the forwarded email from mom and dad.  India is really amazing.  Except for the times we are not enjoying it, we are really enjoying it!  And actually everyone is doing well with the normal expected illnesses (something I forgot to tell mom and dad: Aaron got an amoeba, but was successfully treated…see, you do get some new and original information here and so can’t complain that all you get from me is old, second hand, or forwarded!)

Regards,

Gary

Date:   March 18, 1998

Subject:   At the Hill Station

Dear Family,

Hope this finds everyone well.  Thanks, Dad, for sending these messages on.   I am now applying for Internet access at our permanent home here, the apartment where we will be moving possibly this week‑end (3/20‑21).  Also, thanks  to all who have discovered my work e‑mail address which I don’t know off the top of my head but which my father knows.

This past week‑end we  took a little vacation.  It was a three day week-end due to the Hindu  festival of Holi.  We  spent two nights at Matheran, a hill station about two and a half hours drive from Bombay.  We hired a car and driver to get there.  Matheran is one of the places from where the British ruled India when it got too hot in the lowlands such as Bombay.  We actually wore jackets up there in the evening.  The drive up the mountain was exciting and filled with breath taking views.  The narrow road, often without hardly any guard rail, had to sometimes accommodate two cars.  And we thought that going up would be the exciting part.  You should have been there going down! (Please brakes, don’t give  out!!)

There are no cars allowed in Matheran so we were deposited in the parking area where the car was immediately swarmed by about 30 friendly Indians, two of whom, after long negations with our driver, carried our luggage 1.8 kilometers to the hotel for about the equivalent of two dollars each.  We watched our luggage bob down the trail on the heads of these folks and didn’t see it again until we got to the hotel.  We rode to the hotel on horses.  The kids loved  it.  The dad DID NOT!!.  Bloody horses!  Nita went up in a rickshaw which she vowed never to do again as it was both pulled and pushed uphill by a couple of profusely sweating guys.  It made her feel like a heavy burden.

The price of the week‑end included food, so when we were ensconced in our rooms we had lunch served.  As we sat outside on the covered porch eating some pretty good Indian food, our server stood in the yard waving a stick to keep the monkeys away.  No kidding!  There are scads of monkeys at Matheran, and so long as you don’t have food, they leave you alone.  Actually they are cute and we have a lot of monkey pictures, moms nursing and grooming their young, etc.  Our hotel was the only one with a pool, a treat for the kids.  This place was a “resort” by Indian standards.

We were the only Anglos at the hotel and among the very few in the whole area.  The other guests were middle to upper-middle class Indians.  We were sort of treated like VIP.  In fact, on our last evening there, one of the  managers asked if I would like to hand out prizes won earlier that day in some games the resort sponsored.  Let me tell you, it’s a big deal having someone from where I work stay at your resort!!  Aaron just laughed and laughed at the thought of me being a VIP.  I did too!

One of the highlights for me was making some Indian friends.  We met and spent time with a lawyer and his wife (our age) from Pune, a town about four hours west of Bombay, and a nice Parsee couple from Bombay.  They will be some good friends for us, I think.  They took us around and went shopping with us and made sure we paid the right price.  As Americans in India, the target is not on our person but on our WALLET!!  During the day we hiked all over the place.  We loved the breathtakingly dramatic views, plentiful since this hill station sort of rises up abruptly from the  surrounding area and is surrounded somewhat by other abruptly rising  hills.  I think we were up about 2500 feet.

Suppers were served Indian time which means 9:30 or 10:00 at night.  We are looking forward to Pepcid arriving in our consumable shipment; sort of tough eating yummy curries (masala is the local term) and spicy things that late and then going to bed!  We poop out around 10:00, but most Indians stay up late and wake up a bit later; most stores don’t even open till 10:00 in the morning.  Saturday evening we rode some more BLOODY HORSES to Sunset point where we watched the sun set, naturally.  We had a nice time and it accomplished just what a vacation is supposed to: help you get away from it all while making you anxious to get back home, which Bombay is starting to become for us

A  few brief things:  the kids are doing well in school.  They all have  friends, and are involved in various activities.  Aaron is even on the phone with friends in the evening: a good sign.  Nita has applied for a temporary job (two months) as the Office Director’s secretary while the actual one is on R & R.  We’ll see.  She also goes to some local expatriate lady’s club meetings and this week has been involved with workers setting up our new apartment.  She stays busy.  We  have had a bit of sickness here and there but we have a great, US  trained internist who provides medical care for the American staff, and we  haven’t gotten anything that isn’t treatable and only mildly uncomfortable.

Love to all,

Gary