Throw Back India: Glimpses of Varanasi

A couple of days before we left India, I took a day-trip to Varanasi (a.k.a Benares or Banaras). It was a work-related trip and I, perhaps unwisely, had volunteered for it. But I had my reasons.

I had wanted to see the Ganges ever since I remember myself. When I was in pre-school, I, like most kids, loved fairy tales but had a special place in my heart for fairy tales from far away lands. My mother indulged me and got me translated fairy tales from various European countries, Japan and Africa which I thought were really cool. One day she brought home a beautifully illustrated book of what I thought were Indian fairy tales. I ran across the book recently and realized that it was actually stories from the Mahabharata (one of the great Indian epics, translated from French, no less). I loved that book so much that my mom eventually grew tired of reading it to me over and over, so she recorded herself reading the stories using a tape recorder. I couldn’t read yet but this way I could play the stories on demand without her needing to be right there. I thought that was the awesomest thing ever (even the parts where my mom was struggling with the super long Indian names). The stories in the book were about kings and queens and princes and princesses and gods and goddesses and demons and the like but they also talked a lot about the mighty Ganges and I naturally wanted to see this amazing river. I blame that book and my mother for my obsession fascination with India.

So, I couldn’t imagine leaving India without seeing the Ganges. It’s one of the largest rivers in the world and is enormously important to India (and Bangladesh). Varanasi is located in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and millions of people (farmers, fishermen, traders, etc.) depend on the Ganges for their livelihoods. Many historically significant cities and towns, monuments and temples were built along the river.

The Ganges is the most sacred river to the Hindus and Varanasi is the holiest of the seven sacred cities in Hinduism. Hindus from all over the world flock to Varanasi because they believe that immersing themselves in the Ganges will wash their sins away. They also believe that dying in Varanasi will bring them salvation, so many Hindus go there to die while others take their loved ones’ remains there for cremation and immersion in the Ganges.

I had been plotting to take a trip to Varanasi the whole time we were in India but it is not a good place for those uncomfortable with death like our kids. Plus, the city is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world - crowded, bustling with activity and well, not pristine. The river, as sacred as it is, is very polluted by farming, industry, overpopulation and sewage. So while I wanted to go, I knew it was not a place we would enjoy as a family. So up until about a month before we left India, it looked like a trip to Varanasi was not happening.

Then it turned out that at work we needed an FSO go to Varanasi to visit an incarcerated U.S. citizen. I knew it was going to be only day-trip and just a couple of days before our departure from India, when I would have a million of other things to worry about but I volunteered for it because it was my last chance to see Varanasi.

I was accompanied by one of my Indian colleagues on the trip. We took a morning flight to Varanasi and got there about 10 a.m. We had to take care of business first, of course. The U.S. citizen we had to visit was actually held in a mental institution, so it was a hard and sad visit but I can’t talk more about it because I have to protect the person’s privacy.

By the time we finished the work visit, it was noon, so we went to have lunch at the Suria Hotel, which came recommended by another Indian colleague. The colleague who accompanied me on the trip had never been to Varanasi before either. We both wanted to go to the Ganges and just walk around but our driver had other plans. He knew a guide (they always do) and insisted that we use him, so we did.

We had only a couple of hours before we had to be at the airport for our flight back to Delhi, so in hindsight, having a guide was not a bad idea. We wouldn’t have seen as much without him but of course, like every guide, he had to insist that we go see his uncle’s sarees . He said the family owned a saree factory. The Benarsi sarees are famous, so we obliged but that cut into our already short sight-seeing time. Plus the uncle’s prices were really high, so we didn’t buy anything but it was neat to go to the guy’s home and look at beautiful sarees.

Here are some scenes I captured in a hurry during my very short time in Varanasi:

A typical intersection

A heavy load

Delivery guy

 

Lotus sellers

At the flower market

Sarees

  The fabric dye shop – those places will match any color in about 10 minutes

The wedding invitation wala (guy) – weddings are a huge business in India and so are wedding invitations. Some of them are really elaborate and expensive. They can be up in the hundreds of dollars each for the really posh weddings.

The paan wala (guy selling betel leaf)

Neighborhood market

   Sacred cows

Kids at a temple 

Our guide’s uncle’s haveli – a typical Indian family home built around a private courtyard where usually several related families and generations live.

The guide’s uncle showing off sarees made in his factory – the silks were gorgeous but the prices, way out of line.

Shy but curious

The Ganges at the Nepali Temple, one of the thousands of temples in Varanasi. I was there in late August, during the rainy season, so the river was really high. See those umbrellas – they look like they are 2/3 under water.

  The Nepali Temple in Varanasi

A lone devotee at the Ganges

The wood used for the funeral pyres at the cremation grounds.

Our guide told us photography was not allowed beyond this point at the ghats (the areas of the river bank where the cremation grounds are) out of respect for the dead. He also told us that the cremation grounds had been closed for several days because of the heavy rains. The water had been so high that the areas where the cremations take place had been under water. The water had gone down enough on the day of our visit for the cremation grounds to reopen, so there were many funeral pyres burning at the ghats and many more families waiting for their turn to cremate loved ones. Our guide took us to the structure behind the fire wood, which he said was a shelter for dying people who have nowhere else to go. It is maintained by charitable donations and doesn’t really have anything inside – no beds or any other furniture but I guess it protects the destitute from the elements until it’s their time.  We watched the burning pyres from there for a while. It was sad and sobering to see the people in there and the burning pyres but it’s very much part of daily life in Varanasi. Then it was time to go back.

In a way, Varanasi seemed like the essence of India. Pretty much everything you have heard about India, including some unbelievable and crazy things, is there but magnified. The smells, the sights and the emotions they generate are intense. Being there is a sensory overload. It’s like an India concentrate or India on steroids, if you will. Either that or I was just emotional about leaving India and that made everything in Varanasi feel so intense to me. In any case, a couple of hours was entirely not enough (though it’s definitely better than none) and I look forward to going back and spending more time in Varanasi. One day…

Throw Back India: Ravanas, Ravanas Everywhere

It’s holiday season in India. People are celebrating Dussehra, one of the most important Hindu festivals, honoring the victory of Lord Rama over the 12-headed Demon King Ravana. You can read more about the holiday here but one of the most fascinating things related to Dussehra in my opinion are these Ravana effigies people make and then burn to celebrate the victory of good over evil. I didn’t have a chance to blog about the Ravana effigies while we were in India but found them fascinating.

Last year, we went to Janakpuri, the part of Delhi, where people make the effigies and took a bunch of pictures. I thought I’d share some of them with you today. I apologize for the poor quality of the picture – they were taken with my cell phone.

The Ravana effigies are made out of paper, scrap fabric and sticks. In the beginning they look like this:

Then their creators put colored paper on top of the brown paper and yes they do go to crazy with the mustaches:

Then they add elaborate decorations on the faces:

Finally, they assemble the Ravanas and each one gets a body kinda like the one in the picture above (at the right) and 12 heads. They look really impressive. As you can see, all of this is done on the side of the road in a regular neighborhood. The effigies are made over a couple of weeks leading up to the Dussehra.

On Dussehra, Indians set hundreds and hundreds of Ravana effigies on fire. I never went out at night to see them burning (we are asked to stay away from the burning celebrations as they can and often do get out of hand and there’s a lot of other craziness going on) but here is a picture from Hindustan Times, which should give you an idea of what a burning Ravana effigy looks like. Of course, there are hundreds of them all over town, so it’s really something to behold.

Also kinda Halloween-y, no?

Image credit: Hindustan Times

The Hardest Question

So, I mentioned in my previous blog post that I was feeling a little overwhelmed and anti-social for a few days after we got back to the US. I was trying to find the source of my anxiety and I may have figured it out.

I knew people would ask me how India was and I didn’t have a good answer. Certainly not a short and sweet answer anyhow. Not because I don’t have things to say about India. On the contrary, I have too much to say and I was afraid people wouldn’t care. I think people would listen to me for about five minutes and then tune me out, which would be understandable. But I don’t have a five-minute answer because how do you condense two and a half years of impressions and happenings (and several thousand years of history) into five minutes? You can’t. Or at least, I can’t. Not yet anyhow. I can give you snippets. Lots and lots of snippets. Snippets until you are blue in the face… but who wants that?

I’ve talked to a few friends and relatives since we came back and I have shared some things but I am careful not to spill too much too fast, lest I overwhelm them. Because India can be overwhelming in many ways. And I didn’t want to be that person, who wouldn’t shut up about their last post. Although it’s very tempting and I want to talk about India, a lot. But not everyone is willing, ready or able to listen. So I have to be patient and pace myself and spare my listeners.

I remember years ago when I first came to the US, people would hear my accent and ask me where I was from. I’d say Bulgaria and they would often ask about it. Most people didn’t know anything about Bulgaria. So, I’d tell them. Over time, I noticed that many of these people were just being social. They didn’t really want to know that much about Bulgaria or they just couldn’t relate. So eventually, I came up with “an elevator pitch about Bulgaria.” I usually say it’s in the Balkans (sandwiched between Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Romania and the Black Sea), that it has four seasons and that you can go skiing there in the winter and to the seaside in the summer. That it has fascinating though mostly sad history, that it’s beautiful and that the food is delicious (similar to Greek or Turkish food but better). I usually end there because that’s about the amount of information most people can handle. Anything more can be dicey. Unless the person asks for more information, of course.

I need to come up with something similar about our time in India, which will be tough because India’s so big and diverse and full of contradictions. Plus, my impressions are still quite fresh and raw. I am still processing some of them, trying to make sense of them. If I talk about India and our time there, I want to do it justice. I don’t want to make it look better or worse than it was but I also don’t want to offend anyone. I’ll keep you posted on the “elevator pitch” about our time in India. Until then, I have a bunch of unwritten blog posts swirling in my head and I feel like I can’t move on until I write them.  I need to get them off my chest, which will hopefully help me clear my head, put closure on our time in India and clean the slate for Ethiopia. My plan is to write several Retroactive India blog posts over the next few weeks so stay tuned…

Back in the US

So we are back. We have been back for a while actually – Paul and Nia for about a month now and Max and I for almost two weeks. Paul and Nia had to come back earlier, so she could start school in Falls Church. My parents really wanted to see the kids and had been asking us to stop in Bulgaria on the way back from India, so they could spend time with all of us. We couldn’t leave India any earlier because of regulations and such and it didn’t make sense for Nia to miss school but we compromised and I went to Bulgaria with Max for a couple of weeks.

So I spent a few nice lazy days in Bulgaria doing pretty much nothing, which was just what the doctor ordered after the craziness of packing out and leaving India. Max earned both of our keep by helping my father with some important projects…




… ran around in the rain…



…visited some Roman ruins…

… said a tearful good-bye to this Indian drink:



… also known as 99% of Max’s diet for the last 2+ years. He used to drink 5 bottles of this thing a day, so we were the product’s best customers, probably. I am sure the people at Mother Dairy (the manufacturer) are scratching their heads right about now trying to figure out what happened with their demand. Here he is with the very last bottle:


One day, after the end of the hefty stash of said strawberry lassi (which I had smuggled into Bulgaria to nurse my son’s addiction a few days longer) I found Max desperately rummaging through our backpack (where historically there had always been a bottle or several of his favorite thing. I asked him what he was looking for. “Delhi milk,” he said, his voice trembling a little. When I told him there was no more “Delhi milk,” he thought for a moment, then said excitedly, “Let’s go back to Delhi then!” I had to tell him that going back to Delhi was not an option any more because other people were now living in our house there. He was heartbroken and proceeded to tearfully sing the song “No More Delhi Milk” to his toys for a half an hour. Then he was better. His diet is still pretty limited though. He’s still eats no meat whatsoever and lives mostly on bagels, pretzels and orange juice.

Occasionally, he’d eat macaroni and cheese, rice or ramen noodles but that’s about it. We tried really hard to get him to eat fresh fruits and vegetables from parents garden - peaches, nectarines, figs, tomatoes, papers, etc – he said no to all. So that’s work in progress. But I digress…

While we were in Bulgaria we also hung out with my best friend from college and her family, which was wonderful:

 
Finally, we made it to the US, also known as a “huge awesome playground with lots of cool toys and a pool,” according to Max. Just before we took off from Frankfurt to Washington, Max made the following important observation: “The men are loading our bags in the butt of the plane!”

So what have been up to since we got here? Well, at first, I didn’t want to do anything. I felt discombobulated and overwhelmed and did not want to leave our cave at Oakwood but slowly I’ve started getting out and doing the things we used to enjoy before India:

1. Checking out all the playgrounds and sandboxes in the D.C. metro area,
2. Eating our favorite foods - Baja Fresh, Chipotle, District Taco, Qdoba and the like,
3. Living our new rule of thumb: No meal is complete until you are in a food coma!
4. Food shopping at Safeway, Shoppers and Costco and realizing that as much as I missed meat in India (mostly turkey and beef), I am completely grossed out by how much meat we Americans consume,
5. Eating fresh fruits and vegetables without having to bleach the hell out of them,
6. Drinking water from the tap,
7. Shopping at TJMaxxx, Marshalls, and Ross – not very classy, I know but loooooving the prices and the awesome stuff,
8. Enjoying Amazon Prime in the US, where you often get your stuff the same day!
9. Freezing my butt off – it’s been in the 60s F here in the last few days and I have been wearing fleece jackets and such. I think Delhi has made a complete cold sissy out of me,
10. Slowly reconnecting with friends and family,
11. Unpacking our UAB, which came yesterday and I realized that it’s too cold for half of the clothes we shipped. Dang!
12. Spending my Home Leave (27 days of leave mandated by Congress, so diplomats going from one foreign post to another can reconnect with America) at Falls Church. So exotic, I know but the timing of our departure from Delhi killed our plans to travel around the country and show the kids some National Parks. Hopefully, next time.

So, life’s good. Having stayed in Oakwood, Falls Church before we left for India and now again makes it seem like we never left. We know we did, of course and I like to think we are better for it. As a matter of fact, I have been reminiscing quite a bit about our time in India. There are a bunch of blog posts that I wanted to write, while we were there (mostly about trips we took) but didn’t get to it. Here’s hoping I will write some of those before my training starts Oct. 20.

Packed out!

Whew! We are done! We have packed all of our stuff and it is sitting somewhere in a warehouse in Delhi waiting for the paperwork to be done before it goes to the U.S. and Ethiopia.

It should have taken three days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) to pack us but it took four. Why, you ask. Well, there were a couple of glitches. We had our pre-pack-out survey two weeks ago and the guy from the packing company said we were going to be OK (meaning we will fit within the 7,200 lb we have for house hold effects also known as HHE). We were not so sure because we have been there before and we didn’t want to have to worry about it in the last minute like last time, so we came up with a plan. We had four large and heavy items (two sofa sleepers, our bed and a kitchen island), which we requested be packed last, so that if we are over the limit, we can quickly move them to our storage shipment instead. Good plan, right? Simple. Well, it didn’t quite work that way.

We did repeat to the packing supervisor at least five times on the first day of our pack-out that we want the four large items set aside and packed last. He wasn’t worried. He didn’t think we had much stuff and said again and again that we would be under the weight limit.

On day two of our pack-out, when the packers started loading things in the shipping crates I saw them loading parts of the sofas and the bed. Those crates were nailed shut, sealed and sent to a warehouse that night. At the end of the day, I told the supervisor again that there was a reason we wanted those four items set aside and that I am nervous about fitting in the weight limit. He said we would be OK.

In the afternoon of day three it became obvious that we were not OK. We were at 7, 200 already and the kitchen, the bathrooms and the storage room hadn’t been packed yet.

I hated to be all, “We told you so!” but we did tell him and he didn’t listen, so we weren’t going to pay for whatever was over the 7,200 lb, when it could very easily have been avoided. We told the packing company supervisor that we weren’t paying for what was over the HHE limit and that we wanted the four large items pulled from the already sealed crates and added to the storage shipment. He wasn’t thrilled but it was kinda their fault, so they had to come back on Saturday (day four) and fix it.

The problem was that when they told us we would be done in three days, we went ahead and scheduled vet appointments for our cats and dentist appointments on Saturday for everyone to get our teeth cleaned before we leave India. This being our last Saturday in India, there was no way to move those appointments. So the movers had to come in the afternoon and finish the pack-out. They had some more packing to do too, so it took them about eight hours on Saturday to get it all done. It did work out in the end but it could have been smoother.

What did I learn for next time? That we have to insist to the point of obnoxiousness if want something done a certain way – otherwise everyone ends up wasting their time. Oh, and for the second time in a row that pre-pack-out estimates can be way off, so don’t put too much weight in them (no pun intended), ha!

But otherwise the packers seemed good at their job. It looked like they were careful about packing our things. We’ll really know when we unpack those things, whenever that may be (especially for the things going in storage). Last time the packers hadn’t packed our bed well and we got it with some unsightly dings. Here’s hoping that won’t be the case this time.

A few pictures from the pack-out:

Our UAB (unaccompanied air baggage). We tried not to put too much in it even though we had 900 lbs (two FSOs with one child each [250 lb+ 200 lb] x 2=900 lbs) to U.S. We will get substantially less to Ethiopia because Paul’s next assignment is D.C. based, so he probably won’t get UAB at all. We didn’t want to ship stuff to the U.S. and then not be able to take to Ethiopia.

Loading our HHE into the crates.

Nailing the HHE crates shut.

Putting the Embassy seals on our HHE crates. Buh-Bye, stuff! See you in a few months in Ethiopia!

Wrapping Things Up

First, an update on our tandem bidding situation. Paul recently got a Washington, D.C.–based job, which we are told he would be able to do out of Addis Ababa, my next post. We don’t have all the details about his job yet but are majorly relieved that we may actually be together!

Otherwise, our summer has been as hectic as ever. Before we knew it, we found ourselves with less than a month left in India. Someone definitely hit the fast-forward button on us. I am not ready to go. I haven’t seen enough of India, I haven’t experienced enough, I haven’t tasted enough, and I certainly haven’t shopped enough (and there’s not enough time left to rectify that.) So thinking about leaving is hard for me. Though I have to say some of us are readier than others.

In any case, we have been down-sizing. We sold our car, which is great because we won’t have to worry about having someone else sell it for us after we leave but now we don’t have a car, which is a pain in the hiney and is really getting in the way of my shopping.

We had a sale last weekend and it was nuts. I have been pretty good of getting rid of things throughout our tour – especially kids clothes, shoes, toys and books. I gave tons of stuff to our household help as well as other people’s help, and friends and neighbors, with kids younger than ours. We also made a donation of clothes and books to a school in Uttar Pradesh.

What we hadn’t been good about  was getting rid of my and Paul’s older clothes and some housey-things that we had been lugging around since before we left Florida. We  decided to do a sale a couple of months ago and spent the time since combing through our stuff deciding what we truly need. There were a lot of things that we brought to India but never used. I realized that I had clothes, which sat unworn in space bags under our beds since we came here. Those were clothes that I love but had unfortunately “outgrown.” India has not been good for my waistline and I need to do something about it but there was no point in sitting on a bunch of those clothes for leaner times, which should come but may not.

Then there were a bunch of tools – drills and saws, sanders, and all kinds of other crazy stuff you accumulate when you own a home, which we didn’t use any longer, since we are really not supposed to do house maintenance on the government housing we get to live in.

Last but not least, there were boxes and bags of paper – documents about things we no longer own, tax records, school records, bills paid and all kinds of other stuff that we didn’t need to keep anymore.

All of that stuff was dead weight, which is not ideal to keep under any circumstances but when you have a home and some storage, you get lazy and don’t worry about hanging on to stuff like that. Now, however, we are getting ready to leave post. We have two shipments out of Delhi but only one into Addis Ababa because Paul’s job is D.C.-based and he won’t get a weight allowance for Addis. So we had a monster shred weekend (and we are still shredding) and we sold a bunch of stuff last weekend. And it feels good – cathartic and liberating in a way but also a little sad to go through all your old things, reminisce about the good (and not so good) old times but find a way let go and move on…

For our sale we worked with a lady, who had helped some of our friends lighten their loads before. She has a list of folks outside the embassy community, who I guess are very interested in things embassy folks have because let me tell you when the sale started, it was out of control. It was supposed to be an auction but for the first hour or so it was utter chaos. We had an issue with folks getting in on the Embassy Enclave and the lady who helped us with the sale was trying to work it out with the security guards, while I was trying to keep customers at bay. It was impossible. Everyone wanted everything all at once and it was insane to try to do it in an orderly fashion. The electronics went very fast – we had a bunch of things we weren’t using any more – a surround sound system, a laptop, a tablet, several cameras, a GPS and a few other things. People snapped those up in no time. Then went the books. A couple of people were all over the books and bought them all in two big lots. The toys, kids clothes and bedding were also hot and so were the tools. We had a couple of older tents  and a few lawn chairs that went fairly quickly too. I had to bargain really hard for some things but others totally surprised me. We got $12 for a zip-lock bag of old nail polish! People also bid like crazy on lots of odds and ends that I thought we’d have a hard time getting rid of. Men’s clothes were popular too – I am guessing that’s because most of our buyers were men. Women’s clothes, not so much. I did sell most of my “outgrown” clothes but I practically gave them away because people were just not that interested. I guess they didn’t like my style. We weren’t able to sell most of our old shoes though. I think it was the timing. By the time we got to them, it was late and most of the buyers had left. We are also left with a few 110 V appliances but that’s OK. Those didn’t absolutely have to go. All in all, we are very happy with the sale – we lightened our weight considerably and made a few rupees in the process.

Now, we can focus on the rest of the pre-departure stuff. Our tickets have been purchased (we are told). Our furniture inspection is today. Our pre-packout survey and the pack-out itself have been scheduled. Everyone except me is up-to-date on their vaccinations. I have one more shot to go. Housing in Virginia is reserved. Nia is signed up for school in Falls Church for the first semester. We still need to sign her up for school in Ethiopia for the second semester. We still have our check-out lists to fight with but we’ll get there.

Just thinking about all that makes me tired but we have one last trip in India ahead of us. We are going to Ladakh (up in the Himalayas) in mid-August and we are beyond excited.

India Fashion Week

Last week was India Fashion Week. A few friends and I went and had an awesome time. It was pretty neat to go around, chat with some of the designers and look at their newest creations. We didn’t buy anything because the prices were, well, designer prices but it was still fantastic to browse through the gorgeous clothes.

We had invitations for one of the fashion shows, which featured two Indian designers – Anupama Dayal and Vineet Bahl. The space was kinda dark and flash photography was not allowed but I did manage to take a few half-way decent pictures without flash:

 
The fashion show was fascinating and I could have sat there for hours but it was over before I knew it.

My friends and I milled around the fair grounds for a while, hung out at one of the cafes and watched designers, models, buyers, photographers and design students parade back and forth.

It was a lovely way to mix things up and see/do something different with friends.