Homecoming

Hyderabad to Manipal: 24 hours, multiple forms of transport.  Arrived 4.30pm Saturday to a whirlwind round of meet and greets; as yet a blur of unfamiliar names.  Escorted to our new home, A9, and I am beginning to feel more like Charles and Camilla in Brian's earlier story, than anonymous us in Australia.  We are constantly attended to by multiple maintenance men, tradesmen, drivers always in tandem with security men, supervisors, managers, cooks, procurement officers, and the heirarchy of academia.  (The pointed use of the word men is not politically incorrect.  They are all men.) And that's just the on campus list.  Step outside and we are in a medium sized not quite typical Indian city.  Manipal is a suburb of Udupi, and admittedly it's the posh end of town, but Udupi is relatively ordered and clean.  It's hot, but the air is clear and it's really not too dusty.  The absence of constant touts is a relief.

As I begin to write, it is Wednesday midday, and it's the first time I've been by myself ... in our own home.  Brian has gone to his office, about 500 metres away in Academic Block (AB) 1.  My life as 'The Professor's Wife' has begun.  So what does that look like? I really have no clue!  Maybe an atypical example, but today the list includes labelling the powerpoints and light switches.  Truly!  How many degrees does it take hit the right switch first time? Considering we have quite a few between us, the answer is clearly, a lot. However it takes less to identify and label them.  Brian left me with it.  Time elapsed - 1 hour.

Next I tried taking a plate of muffins next door to the Director's wife.  That was the easy part - mostly as she wasn't home.  It was the shopping and baking yesterday that broke me.  We left home together.  Brian deposited me with the Joint Director for a walk over to their Faculty Development Program.  Click into 'academic' mode.  Comfort level rising.  By 11am I was on my way downtown for grocery shopping.

Now grocery and kitchen shopping is really something that gladdens my heart, but at 12.15pm after three 'supermarkets' and two piecemeal bags of 'stuff' I deposited myself at the Swati Sagar Pure Vegetarian Restaurant, for my 12.30 lunch with Brian. With no transport and no idea, I was losing heart, so I had a plan.  Of course, I had a plan!  Leave bags with him and circle the other possibilities for list items.  First foray, vegetables. This was going fine, gohbi, alu, pyaj, anda, bringal ... until, "Do you have carrots? Gajar?"

"No. No carrots, ma'am. Maybe tomorrow."

'What? No carrots?'  Carrots are the main ingredient of my signature muffins. My baking plan lay in tatters on the floor. 

Defeated, I returned Brian. 

He heeds the call to action. "What do you need?  I'll get them for you."

Five minutes later I'm on the back of a motorbike, on the road to Udupi Syndicate Circle aka roundabout.  This is where Shatish, the owner of our vegetarian restaurant, shops for his kitchen, and he's offered to take me on a carrot rescue.  Carrots, coriander, cucumber and lettuce, a stop for cinnamon, and I'm back.

"You need tulsi, ma'am?  I bring from my garden.  How soon you need?  You wait? Ten minutes?"

A bag of basil, surely half his garden, arrives with a huge smile from my motorcyle knight and the grateful relief of my peaceful warrior who has come through with a solution.  He puts me in an auto and sends me home.  It's about 3 pm. Time elapsed - 4 hours.  Now I can start baking.  Ever the optomist.

Before I'd even unpacked the groceries, three, no wait here comes another, four men arrive to replace a perfectly functional water filter in the kitchen.  Two hours and multiple on the wall, off the wall, take it apart, put it together scenarios, I have my kitchen to myself and the same water filter on the wall!

So nothing is straight forward as I try to negotiate my way in and around A9 Kailis Quarters, Manipal University Campus.  We have a spare room, three toilets, four basins and two showers.  The downstairs shower has a wet room all to itself.  We have two basins in the dining room.  The other plumbing is dispersed around the house.  The office is on the roof level with the yoga deck, soon to be outfitted with artifical grass.  The kitchen has a walk in pantry (that which I have been exhausting myself trying to stock) and a black granite bench top.  Now this is interesting, because I'd been considering having my 'home' kitchen renovated with ... a black granite bench top.  Hmmm? Maybe not.  It's pretty unforgiving.  Maybe why no one here has crockery or glassware, but rather Corelleware and stainless steel mugs, bowls, platters ...

And now to 'the help'; multiple maintenance men, a garderner with sari clad labourers, who also double as house cleaners.  Not sure which one is supposed to be our half hour a day lady yet, but I hope she starts soon, as the dust gets in everywhere, and I've had to rethink my mantra, 'I don't do floors!'. Then of course there is the caretaker and the ever present campus security.  Add to this list the campus catering staff, Chefs on Wheels, who seem to be at my beck and call. 

Our initial meeting with them was about 8pm on our first night.  We'd just made it back from a foray into town, as the head chef, Yogeesha, and another pulled up on a motorbike to invite us to eat in the student dining hall until we got settled in.  This was followed up by a Monday morning meeting to arrange a shopping trip to Udupi 'CBD' for kitchen requirements.  I was allocated a chaperone,  Vishvanath, who was to escort me to Harsa Appliance Store, Big Bazaar and then a drive by of the grocery stores that would fulfil our requirements.

At 2pm let the games begin.  Brian decided he was coming too, and just as well. (See Shopping Rule No 3: Bring a decoy.). I collected Vishvanath, who turns out to be the Procurement Officer, from the Campus Kitchen Office, and we walked back to A9. There was the now usual ensemble of people at our house, and Brian was conducting - well Hinglish charading.  Our 2pm car arrived at 2.30pm.  A Campus Security vehicle, equipped with a driver, security guard and an array of lights and markings. Brian, Vishvanath and me in the back and we're off to Udupi.  An appliance store like no other, Harsia was our first stop.  An over abundance of retail assistants plus the manager, 'helped' us to fill the vehicle with everything from a gas cooktop to a teapot, as we parted with the grand total of Rs/ 34000 ($600).  In the end we had no less than nine attendants, and all men!  I'm sure they thought I was a crazy white fussy foreign woman but they couldn't quite get our insistence on stainless steel, not plastic, and plain not floral. 

With the crush does come the service though.  Brian wanted a printer so they went and brought two, plus another saleman, from another store.  At the next stop, Big Bazaar, Vishvanath pushed the trolley and carried things for me.  He even got into the swing of it, helping me look for bowls and cooling racks.  Final stop, and the floor covering man was upset that he couldn't supply the matting Brian wanted, there and then.  Not like the two week wait for anything in Australia!

Deliveries, maintenance, installation all happen in organised chaos, perplexing as it must spin the opposite way here in the northern hemisphere.  For example, three tradesman appeared one morning at 11am.  Brian had put in a request at just 9.30am, and here they were with my 'Big size, ma'am' oven, already.

So to my first attempt at baking the famous K* Muffins in India, in a microwave convection oven.  Seven out of ten substituted ingredients, ensured something that tasted Indian but didn't much resemble the picture.  Second attempt, five of ten substitutes, and score from Brian, an impartial five out of ten.  Get that man a cravat!

When in India ... one must have a pressure cooker for the staple food - pulses.  Pressure cookers live in my memory as a scary 80's device for the corporate power woman to save time cooking dinner after working 9 til 5.  They hissed and steamed and threatened to explode, and often did.  After much convincing I agreed to purchase one.  I scrutinised the instructions, and felt prepared physically and emotionally.  I don't think the manufacturers had induction hotplates in mind when they wrote the book.  I waited for the continuous hiss of steam and was showered by a tumeric fountain of scalding dal.  Next!!!  Our industrial bottle of gas arrived at 6.30pm, accompanied by three installers.  Great.  Something I'm familiar with.  Just beware of thin bottomed saucepans, even if they are stainless steel.  However, the silver lining is stove top coffee ... if I can just find some beans.

Add to this highlight package, the two days I spent as an invited guest at the Faculty Development Program, meetings with the Directors, campus tour ... and a day at the beach, and that's the first week.  Smile and breathe.