The Birthday Party #13

The boys are making me a birthday cake and because they are boys, wire cutters, banging, the Internet, and homemade candles are involved.  I think you can get candles in India judging by all of the shrines I’ve seen but, well, that would be easy.

Taj is taking a cooking class in school and thinks he is a chef. Every time I turn around he’s throwing something into an already cooking pan.  He keeps coming home with nasty things and he tries to make me eat them while he watches.

This whole birthday is an excuse to eat sugar and play with matches. He has done both tonight and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to put an end to this phase before something goes up in flames.

I am running out of options and he seems to have gotten me this time because they all stare while I eat a big slice of the birthday cookie/cake.   In addition to being disgusting, it’s raw.

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“Little Bill” #12

My cousin “Little Bill” is coming in next week from Dubai where he lives and works and when I see him I’m going to break rules eight and nine in the Indian Customs Rule Book.

Rule Eight – No loud screaming and squealing like a banshee unless it’s for the sake of religious worship.  I’m sure that I’m going to shriek and squeal to finally be in this place with him after so many setbacks, so many phone calls, so many false starts.

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Bad Wife #10

For the past month, I have been on the “Bad Wife” list at Robin’s job.  Never mind that I moved my whole family across the world for him.  I closed up a life of 20 years in Los Angeles, helped to rent our house, sold three cars, and arranged dental and medical care for the whole family in a foreign country.  The thing that makes me a disgrace in the eyes of the Indians Robin works with, supervises, and is supervised by, is that he doesn’t bring his lunch to work, packed at home, in stackable containers called Tiffin Boxes, like most of the Indians at his job do.  Inside these containers should be three different dishes, some sauces, homemade pickle. Maybe, and fresh, still warm, chapattis.

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Trip to the Hospital #9

We took Taj to the hospital the other day.  He was getting thinner and quieter with every trip to the toilet.  It was past time for an expert opinion.

It was Day 11 of the yearly Ganesh Festival, the culmination of celebrations and worship that had rocked the town for days.  Lord Ganesh is the Indian god who is half boy and half elephant.  He is thought to remove obstacles and is very popular in Hinduism.

There was a hush over the city as teams of women, men, and children, with idols of Ganesh perched on shoulders, in rickshaws and trucks, headed across the road to Lake Powai for the Immersion.

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New Mom #7

My friends and family think I’m very brave to be here, to move to India, a place I’ve never been, a country I don’t know, on the other side of the world.  What they don’t know is how brave it would have been not to be here at all.

My Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis came during the Writers’ Strike and just before Christmas.  I was sad all of the time.  Prone to tears for no discernible reason and fragile beyond belief.  I didn’t know whether I was depressed as a result of the MS or just heart-broken by the sad news.

In an instant, I became too big for my life in LA and too small for it at the same time.  I was clumsy and invisible, suffocating and alone, plagued by irony and pain… at a loss for everything.  I felt like “scab” writers, desperate for ratings, were writing the story of my life.  How long could it be before I got amnesia or met an unknown evil twin?

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A First Letter Home #5

Dear Family and Friends,                                                             30 August 2009

So far, India is warm, colorful, and beautiful.  There is chaos and confusion, wealth, and poverty all intermingled in a brew of vibrant garments and backfiring vehicles.

It’s now more than two weeks and we are settled in some ways and in other ways, the shock has worn off and we are now stunned.

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Leaving London #4

Heathrow airport was jam-packed with people going to India and to the Middle East.  I already felt like a foreigner.  When a woman in a full black Burka passed, Taj’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.  Her veil was mask-like and adorned with silver jewels.  To him she looked like a Ninja.  To me, she looked like yet another person in a faster line than ours.

In total, we had eight very heavy suitcases, three carry-ons, one car seat, two rolling backpacks and one regular backpack.  There was also a rolling cooler which contained my medication, a ham sandwich, cold cuts, two kinds of cheese and an Elmo “booboo” pack.  Not to mention three grouchy kids, a leather cowboy hat, one guitar and me.

I was in my new teal, floor length cotton Target dress.  My mother-in-law washed and pressed for it me before we left as an act of love and perhaps a peace offering.  Both of us were too stubborn to apologize for the God-awful fight we’d had a few days back so we were making small gestures to try and repair the damage.

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Brad Pitt and Mumbai Beggars #3

When we first got to India and my kids were obsessed about one stray dog after the next, I gave them a little lecture.  “For every dog you see, there are hundreds of people, many are children, who aren’t in school, who don’t have toys and clothes or beds to sleep in.  Don’t forget about them, don’t overlook them.”

My then 14-year-old son Addae said, “Mom, it’s just that we feel like we know what to do when we see a dog with a hurt paw or that’s hungry.  It’s not that we don’t care about the people, it’s just that we don’t know what to do.”

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Family Meeting #2

Many of our friends and family don’t know what to make of our move to India. For 20 years, we lived in the same neighborhood in Los Angeles. We raised our three sons in that house and even birthed the last one on the bathroom floor (but that’s another story.) Our friends and family are trying to figure out why now, why Mumbai, and in many ways, it is still a mystery to us.

The short answer is that Robin, my husband of 23 years, who describes himself as devilishly attractive, stunningly handsome, smart, sexy, charming, witty, and modest, works for a company that was purchased by Reliance, a huge Indian conglomerate that owns a start-up in Mumbai. The company does the same digital restoration Robin did in Southern California, on a mammoth scale. In an attempt to ensure job security, he put his name in the hat to move to India and head the operation here. He liked the idea of helping build a company from the ground up and we were both excited about the prospect of traveling to a new country with our family.

I haven’t ruled out the possibility that we are collectively suffering a mid-life crisis and we decided to move away from everything we built in the last two decades in a desperate attempt to revive a boring and static life. It is also very possible that we have lost our minds.

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