February 23, 2008 - Tamil Nadu, India

The George Foundation – Shanti Bhavan

I never realized how dependent I am on revolving my life around the joys of food until I got restricted from doing it. I curse the gods of food poisoning. I suppose it’s good that my stomach realizes a bad thing immediately, and therefore immediately tries to shunt it out by whatever means possible. In terms of social etiquette, however, this characteristic leaves something to be desired. Fortunately it was just Evy and I at lunch, and when we had to hunt down an emergency hole-in-the-ground toilet, only the rickshaw driver had an idea that something might be wrong. It’s interesting how a hole in the ground (with a bucket and a tap for flushing purposes), surrounded by a flimsy shack and complete with a suitable stench and the odd insect, seems to assume the properties of heaven when you have a need for it.

What really bothers me about the whole episode is that we bought chocolate, crackers, cashews and various other exciting edibles to liven up our daily curry fare, and my stomach refuses to so much as think of the possibility. My mind is confused. Normally I would have consumed an excessive quantity of some or all of the above-mentioned items, now it doesn’t know what to do with itself. It keeps thinking tauntingly of those delicious food objects, and my stomach is flat out refusing. Maybe it’s a good lesson for it…

Our trip to Hosur today, also known in our minds as ‘closest tiny-town-with-internet-café’, was particularly interesting today. My food poisoning incident was not the only thing that livened it up. First of all, we got off to a later start than planned because Sports Day ran later than planned, which made our skit about Canada start and end later than planned, which meant we couldn’t catch our Rickshaw when planned.

Sports day began at the ungodly hour of 6:30 this morning. We rolled out of bed at approximately 6:25, I grabbed my camera and video camera, and we walked up to the field.

*Side Note -We currently have a third roommate, Katie, because supposedly the Nigerian minister of health is coming and they needed her room for him. We’ve started holding side-bets as to who it will actually end up being (somehow our experience with Indians so far has been an unintentional exaggeration of qualifications). The most recent theory was that it’ll end up being an American college student on his way to Rwanda. Part of that was confirmed yesterday, he is indeed coming from America and he is not the minister, but we’ll see who it actually turns out to be! Also, where the intended day of arrival was originally rumoured to be yesterday (Friday), it’s now supposedly tomorrow (Sunday). The original Katie return-to-own-room day was supposed to be Monday, now it’s looking more like Thursday. I would compare this display of mentality (that we’ve already found throughout many of our Indian experiences) to the mentality one sees in Mexico and Cuba – if it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. We’ve adapted to it quickly, it’s only really annoying when it regards something important – like getting to a train/plane on time or actually receiving airline tickets that were supposedly mailed.

Anyway, retracting from that major side tangent and back to Sports Day. We went up to the soccer field (before you delude yourself with visions of grass, remember that this is India, and to have the bare minimum of water for the plants already existent on the campus they recycle sewage water without completely removing the smell – the soccer field is a lovely large field, but it’s made of reddish packed down earth, no greenery). The drummer was drumming, the march about to begin. I whipped out the video camera to capture some footage - no battery. I’d accidentally left it on since the last time I used it. Damn. We made our way to the centre of the sidelines, where a lovely little booth had been created for the guests of honour, which apparently included us. We sat in the comfy plastic garden chairs, separated from the children and other teachers by a waist-height wooden fence. I got out my still camera. No battery. Sometimes you’d think that by this point I’d have learned to recharge the batteries the night before an event I know I’m interested in recording. Oh well. My Blue team kicked ass, but came in second behind Evy’s Purple team. She always had all the luck, but considering the Blue team was forecast to come in last by the majority of the school, I think we did pretty well!

After sports day, the Canadians (Evy & I + Jacques & Micheline from Montreal) put on a performance about Canada. We’d fortunately received more warning than usual of our impending production (we got a whole day, rather than 2 minutes!) and so had prepared a little skit infused presentation. (No one is really interested in sitting through a long talk about resources in Saskatchewan on a beautiful sunny day in January.)

We began the presentation with everything going on in English and French - we pondered having imitation sign language as well, and spent many amusing minutes trying to figure out how it might be done, but then figured that it might be a little too non-p.c. because the kids wouldn’t understand that we were mocking the pomposity of the typical Canadian governmental ceremony.

One of our links ended up being our imitations of the wildlife across Canada. Evy does a particularly nice beaver impression, and Jacques of a bear (I was a moose), but what the kids loved were the Canada Geese. We realized that there are Canada Geese all over Canada, so at each stop in each province/territory (we traveled by airplane (’Ladies & Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs…’), train (’All Aboard!’), car (’Dad, are we there yet?! Evy’s poking me!’), dogsled (’Mush Mush’) and snowmobile (my fur cap came in handy)) - we imitated Canada geese, loudly and with great flapping vigour. The school has been ringing with the sounds of kids imitating Canada Geese periodically ever since. I think if nothing else, they’ll remember that!

The post-food poisoning incident in Hosur was our bank debacle. For some reason we’re having major difficulties with our bank & visa cards at the local banks. We hadn’t realized it would be an issue because by happenstance we seem to have gone to banks that worked for us in the past two cities. In Hosur however, our unfortunate Rickshaw driver took us to 8 banks, and past 3 closed ones. Each bank entailed a wait in the line up (often with a rifle-carrying security guard… who needs a rifle to guard an atm, anyway?!), and then a painful experimenting of each and every bank and visa card, always resulting in the same message ‘invalid card’. Finally, at the Christian Syrian Bank, it recognized me. ‘Welcome, Madeleine I Grant’. We asked for the money, it made auspicious noises, and then a lovely screen came up - ‘I need to be serviced’. So much for that. We decided to try one last one, IndusInd, only because it was three doors down and we were giving up and on our way home. Perhaps sensing our desperation, it worked. There are now officially two banks that work for us in India - Citibank, and IndusInd. The State bank, the common ICIC bank, and a multitude of others do not. We now realize that rather than a quick bank stop, we need to plan at least 2 hours of leeway for all banking purposes, ’cause who knows what might happen.