City Mouse, Country Mouse

A picture of my nephews, Kathan and Rohan...

After visiting my eldest uncle (where monkeys and peacocks walk around his front porch - unreal), we spent the late morning and early afternoon shopping for traditional women’s Indian clothes.  As much as I thought I wanted to shoot myself in the face, and as much as my opinions on colors didn’t matter – it was quite an interesting experience from a service point of view.

 Nothing like a peacock on your front porch!!!           

My cousin’s wife Krishna took us to several stores, each having their own sets of designs, colors, and styles.  The setup was really every woman’s dream.  You sit on a comfortable couch/bench in front of a huge mattress on which the salesman is kneeling.  The salesman (interesting, and quite counterintuitive, there were no saleswomen) starts laying out DOZENS of outfits – yelling at his helpy helpertons to throw him packages full of saris, cholis, Punjabi dresses, etc. and showing us all sorts of colors and styles.  After about 10 minutes, Vans and I started feeling bad for all the guys that had to refold everything!  Seems to be the norm, though – after 30 minutes of looking through dresses at one stop – Krishna flat out told the guy that she didn’t like any of the styles, got up, and left!  We were served chai, water, offered food – options which I can only assume consoled all the men dragged into these shopping trips!!!

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...            

Only a few hours away from our ancestral villages, we decided to spend the next morning and afternoon visiting Van’s extended family and taking a trip outside of the city.  It was a pleasant morning – it was certainly worth leaving at 8AM to beat the traffic, honking, and pollution which are the streets leaving Ahmedabad.  Our first stop was a small city called Nadiad, where both Van’s Uncle (Kaka) and her Mom’s Uncle (Dadu Mama) live.  I was impressed with a several things at her Uncle’s house – one of them being the solar panels he had installed on the roof to provide the home with 24 hours of hot water.  Dadu Mama’s house was your classic small city establishment – made of a hardened clay structure to keep cool in the summer months and vertically intimidating – it’s 3 floors tall but to compensate for the lack of width the steps traversing each floor were more like ladders!

            On our way to finding Dadu Mama’s house we had a funny incident which I thought in retrospect illustrated the nature of Indian hospitality.  Uncomfortable with the city and organizing directions, we had Van’s Aunt call up the phone number we had for our next visit and organize a meeting spot.  As soon as we got there, a friend of the family (or so we thought) named Vinod met us and we conversed for a good 5 minutes about how we were related to the family, who we were here to see, etc.  Surprisingly, we found it tough to truly figure out who this man was, why we couldn’t match any names together, and if we were really in the right place.  Van’s checked the number on the phone and realized we had been calling the wrong number the entire time!  This man, Vinod, had thought guests were here to visit his mother and left work to meet us (in the middle of the morning, mind you) and take us to his home!  We straightened everything out, talked a little insurance business (he was a life insurance broker), and finally our real family came out to get us at the meeting spot.  What impressed me was that Vinod was not peeved one bit – he laughed it all off, handled all the phone calls with our family to straighten out the situation, offered us chai/coffee/soft drinks, and waited with us until our family met us.  It was a true display of hospitality.

Mr. Vinod - right after Van realizes we dialed the wrong number!!!

From Nadiad, we hit the road and traveled through the real India – countryside full of rice paddies, wheat crops, roadside huts, and a children’s book full of farm animals and herders.  Surprisingly, the abundance of crop in this area were tobacco plant/leaves.  (Aside – Vans thought it was worthless for me to ask the driver every time we passed a farm what type of crop it was – I told her when the Armageddon comes and we have to go back to farming, at least I’ll know what I’m growing!).  An hour later we showed up in Dharmaj – Van’s father’s village and where her Grandma (Baa) lives.  It was a super pleasant trip – we spent a good hour catching up with her Grandma on life in the village, our travels, our lives, her life, etc. 

Van's Grandma (Baa) - super adorable!

Ba is adorable.  We talked about how Indian cities have become madness with the traffic and pollution – and how nice it was for us to get out of Ahmedabad, travel the roads, see the farms, and visit the villages.  She talked about how bored she was when she came to the US and lived at Van’s house in suburbia – nothing to do in the house except watch TV, nothing to walk to nearby, everyone driving cars to their destination, and how the only thing she would be able to look forward to is the next meal and getting to bed!  In the village, she said time and the days pass fast – there are people to see and catch up with walking by the house, news and gossip that travels around, markets and shops and temples to visit, etc.  Vans and I both related to that – it was such a cathartic experience to get out of the hot city and into the countryside where the hours while away, and you’re not setting your alarm to hit the road or looking at your watch to catch the next flight…

            …which was that evening.  We packed up, drove back into the disaster which was Ahmedabad traffic, and flew to Jaipur, Rajasthan – ancient land of the Kings, to attend one of the grandest wedding’s of our lives…