Wedensday

Things are much better. The strike is over, and Vindya is much more cheerful today. Actually, she has been having about one meltdown a day, and it seems to me that they have been getting less intense. In the rest of the time, as she gets more comfortable with me, her personality has been coming through. She is very silly and funny, and quite talkative. Granted, I have no idea what she's saying, but she finds that hilarious most of the time.

Let's all give three cheers for Susan! Not only is she taking care of Mr. Maui while I'm gone (while replacing her floors), but she dug up a contact in Hyderabad! This is a very nice Indian family. The father is a civil engineer and the mother is a doctor, and their daughter spent a year in Chaska as an exchange student. They are active in Rotary, so I played the "my dad's in Rotary card." They called yesterday morning. The mother's clinic is just about a block from the hotel - we've been past it I don't know how often. She said that she would send her driver to get us, and we agreed to meet after lunch.

When we went down for lunch I was glad to see that the chains were off the front doors and there was more traffic outside. The front desk told me that the strike wasn't over, but it was winding down. Sure enough, when the driver came to get us there were lots of people out and about.

Gaya (the mother's name) is a hematologist, and we met at her clinic/lab. We actually waited in the lab for a little bit, as they had air conditioning and extra chairs. The building looks like nothing special from the outside. The elevator is one of the old style ones, with the doors like baby gates that fold open and closed. However, the lab was modern, and everyone was very friendly.

Gaya took us down the street to the Karachi Bakery. Again, we've passed it repeatedly, but it would never have occurred to me to go in. The outside is small and dingy looking. Inside, it is very bright and modern, and packed with food. There is a bakery, but also aisles of cookies and candy from around the world, including a section of "American food." We got several things, which made Vindya happy. At one point, I was standing with a packet of ramen noodles in my hand, considering whether to buy it, and she took it away from me, put it back on the shelf, and handed me a packet of candied fruit. Gaya nodded. "She senses that there might be some nutrition in that, I think."

She needed to finish her work day, so she suggested that we walk another block or so to a mall and walk around inside for an hour. This sounded fine, so off we went. I think I'm getting used to this place - I didn't flinch at sharing the road with cars and busses. When we got to the mall, we discovered that the only store open was the grocery store. The attendant at the metal detector told me that the strikers didn't want anything except food stores open.

The grocery store was called "Spar." Signs told us it is the world's largest grocery chain, with shops on four continents. I noticed that their logo looks like Weyerhaeuser, which probably means that I've spent too much time around forest products. It was a very nice store, on two stories, with household goods (women's underwear, light fixtures) as well as a nice selection of food. I got some bananas, and some ice cream treats, and we had a nice hour.

We went back to the lab, and then Gaya took us to her house. She and her husband, Shakir, adopted their daughter, Maya, from the same organization when she was a baby. She is now a university student in Pune, studying liberal arts and business management. While Maya was in Chaska her parents visited, and several families from there have come and stayed with them. They love Chaska, and said that they consider it the best place on earth.

They were VERY helpful with Vindya. After a few minutes, she was giddy with joy. She played hide and seek with me, and followed Gaya around the kitchen, "helping" with dinner and chattering non-stop. We had a really delicious meal, and then they spent some time sitting with us, talking to Vindya. Gaya told me that they were discussing family, and explained to her that her family was me and her older sister. They also talked about how she was going with me to live in my house. She seemed happy with that, and they invited us to have dinner with them every night that we are here (if it works well), and they will continue to talk to Vindya about her new life.

We also had a helpful chat about Indian parenting. Compared to American parents, Indians are very permissive. Vindya ignores me when I say "no," but they said that is normal. She was running around their apartment grabbing things, and I was trying to stop her. Gaya said that more typically, Indian parents would have anything breakable out of reach, and teach her to control herself by example.

They actually own two apartments on the same floor. One they live in, and one is Shakir's office. He owns a consulting company. I asked if that is typical in India, or if people more typically work for businesses, and he said that it is becoming more common, and in his field is very typical.

I noticed that there were chalk designs drawn on the floor in front of their outside doors. Gaya said that every morning, she starts the day by drawing these patterns. They are not prescribed, but she said that there are a variety of typical ones, and she just draws whichever of these she feels like. A little later, she lit an oil lamp and placed in on a shelf in the kitchen with pictures and statues of different Hindu gods. She said that she does this twice a day, morning and evening. It is a little time to step aside and be thankful.

When we sat down to eat, Vidya out of nowhere started chanting. They said that she was chanting the prayer before eating, and that she, like many children, knew the first part, and then segued into "Shakti, shakti" (Peace, peace) and "om," which weren't really part of the prayer, but are frequent chants in general. I mentioned that her favorite TV show is a religious channel, where a man is sitting on a platform chanting in front of a room full of people. Sometimes the people dance or chant, and sometimes they just sit there. Vindya will watch this for hours. They were surprised, and said that the government requires these channels, and they are not usually watched by anyone except old women. They guessed that the staff at the sisuvihar watched them, and it makes her feel at home.

We discussed the process so far, and how frustrating the court is. I asked if they had ever been in court. Shakir said that 20 years or so ago, all gas cylinders belonged to the government. (Indians cook on gas stoves that run on tanks of liquid natural gas. It's kind of like propane tanks. The tanks are called cylinders.) They were allotted two of them, so that one could be in use, and the other could be at the refilling station. Somehow, the one being refilled was lost. They had to fill out forms at the refilling station, report it to the police, get more forms from them, and then go to court and have the judge issue an order permitting them to get a new tank. When Shakir arrived in court, the police told him to sit up straight and not move or speak. When his name was called, he should stand up. If the judge spoke to him, he was to say "Yes, Sir," or "No, Sir," and not one word more. The wait was long, and he crossed his legs. The police immediately came over and scolded him to sit straight. He said the judge never spoke to him at all, but issued the order. In all, getting the new tank took about two months.

We had discussed how upset Vindya might get when it was time to leave, and she wasn't happy. She said that she did not want to go with me. They asked why, and she said that she cannot sleep there, I keep making her be alone. Gaya explained that Indian children usually share a bed, and she has probably never slept alone before. I promised that I would stay with her all night (instead of until she fell asleep and then switching to avoid being kicked all night), but she still wasn't happy. She did indeed cry and wail when all the adults insisted that it was time to go. (Gaya and Shakir talked to her and tried to reason with her for a while, and told her she could come back tomorrow, but then Shakir told me to just pick her up, because sometimes, you have to just make them do what needs to be done.) Their car had no gas (none on sale the last two days), so they had borrowed a car from their neighbor to give us a ride home. This was fine, except that the driver's seat is stuck in the fully reclined position, Shakir made lots of jokes about driving while sleeping, but Vindya kept crying. About half a dozen people came out of the building to see what was going on, and they all talked to her, but she kept crying. Naturally, she cried all the way to our room at the hotel. One of the bellhops came running with chocolate which she did NOT throw away, and she was actually pretty calm by the time we got to the room.

I also got a phone call from Deb. (Naturally she called just as we were leaving Gaya and Shakir's house, when the wailing was at it's height. I asked her to call back in half and hour, and Vindya was almost asleep by that time.) She is furious that this is going so badly, and had some ideas. I don't want to go into detail about them until we see if they work, but I think that things are looking up.