Tailors

Anyone who has been to India will be familiar with the sight of little men (always men) sitting by the side of the street with sewing machines and will have been told that if you find the right person, they will whip up exquisite garments or copy your favourite trousers in a matter of minutes for peanuts.

I have never had a great deal of success with tailors. I lack the ability to explain what I want, the patience to go back for innumerable fittings and alterations and the will to haggle. In Thailand, I never found the fabric I wanted and resorted to buying cotton in England and taking it back to Thailand to get things made.

I had, for some time, been planning to go to Nehru Place, fabric centre of Delhi, purchase some linen and have some trousers made up. The months trickled past and a trip to England approached. Jigsaw beckoned. How much easier to buy trousers there and, I reasoned, I could then get them copied in India if I needed to. The shopping spree during my two month holiday in Europe resulted in (among many, many other things) three pairs of linen trousers and a pair of designer jeans which I think are too tight. All four pair of trousers were too long and as I was keen to start wearing them, I took them to an (Indian) tailor in London. The tailor pinned the trousers and then quoted me 15 pounds a pair to take them up. I declined.

So, back in India, I went to the local tailor in Jorbagh market who operates outside the convenience store. As he had no fitting room, he didn't seem to be very useful and proved even less so when he said he didn't do hemming in any event. I wasn't quite sure why but as I didn't think undressing and trying on trousers was altogether appropriate in the middle of the street, I didn't argue.

A friend recommended a tailor in Khan Market. At 11am, I arrived to find that it hadn't opened. I stood outside for about ten minutes until someone suggested I would find the tailor at the back entrance of the shop. I went in to the hole in the wall where a tailor was sitting at his Singer cross legged on the floor and the boss was attending to a suit.

"Could you hem some trousers for me please?" I asked, not unreasonably I thought.

"No, no hemming" the boss answered.

"What do you mean you don't hem trousers, you are a tailor?" I retorted, again, not unreasonably although somewhat irascibly.

"Why are you being so rude?" said boss man.

"Why won't you hem my trousers?" I asked.

"Not enough money".

"Listen, I am a foreigner. You could tell me it costs 100 rupees per pair and I would pay it".

"I do that for my clients for free".

"Well, I am willing to pay".

"No hemming".

"But I might have three suits for you to make tomorrow. How do you know I couldn't become a valuable client?"

"Do you have three suits?"

"That's not the point. I...." I trailed off. Clearly, I was getting nowhere. The Indians, famed for their entrepreneurial vision, apparently become totally blinkered when it comes to hemming.

Having failed to get a recommendation of a tailor who would hem in the market and who was also open, I returned home defeated. I told Laxmi of my woes and she said she would pin the trousers for me and get them taken up near her house. Two days later, she returned with four pairs of trousers, perfectly tailored. Cost? 20 rupees (25p) per pair. I don't think I can begin to extract a moral here.

Road Rage

I am someone for whom one of the great benefits of expat life is that I have a driver. While confident driving in London (perhaps wrongly), the thought of driving in Asia petrifies me.

In Thailand, Jamie drove at weekends once we mastered our routes and much of the stress of driving was relieved by the fact that everywhere has valet parking or huge underground carparks. The principal threat came from the corrupt traffic police who, sensing easy game, would regularly pull over foreigners and issue tickets on spurious reasons. A popular topic of conversation among expats was how much you could bargain the price of the tickets down.

In China, foreigners are not allowed to drive without obtaining a licence. This can be done the hard way by passing an excessively complicated driving test full of convoluted rules which are never actually observed; or the easy way by obtaining a fake licence or bribing an official to give you one. The insurance to drive as a foreigner, is, however, prohibitive and when we took pity on our driver and let him off at weekends, we took taxis which in Shanghai, are cheap and plentiful and whose drivers are, for the most part, very good at not fiddling the meter for foreigners. Even I mastered taxi Chinese and would happily jump into them, prompting Eliot to ask while waiting for a bus in London, why we didn't just take a taxi.

It is an often reported fact that nowhere in the world are there as many fatalities on the road as in India. It does not take more than a couple of outings on the road before you accept this as an article of faith and wonder why, in fact, the death tole is so low, especially as seatbelts are never worn and there are usually far too many people in each vehicle with several children bouncing around, unsecured in the front and back. I once saw a rickshaw taking 11 children to school (at most they are supposed to carry four people).

Jamie and I spend most of our journeys when Jamie is driving, trying to work out what the road rules are supposed to be. Nowhere is this more puzzling than when going over a roundabout. New Delhi, beautifully laid out by Edwin Lutyens, features a huge amount of roundabouts. It is probably twinned with Milton Keynes. One of our friends, frustrated by trying to do business in India has made a list of 'things India does well' to encourage him when he is feeling down. Top of the list is roundabouts. They are plentiful and always (in New Delhi at least) adorned with beautifully kept flowers and trees. Unfortunately, something the Indians do not do well is navigate them.

When do you have right of way on an Indian roundabout? Essentially, when you are in front. Do not give way, do not pass go (absolutely no chance of that if you do give way), do not collect £200. Side mirrors on vehicles seem to be there purely for decoration in much the same way as the stickers and models of gods and saints which adorn the taxis. Occasionally check your rear mirror but when push comes to shove literally, if you are a nose ahead, you are king of the road. Size no issue. Of course, there is an exception to every rule and it must be said that buses are a law unto themselves. Crammed with people, some more out than in, the buses pick up speed only when they are in danger of being passed by a larger vehicle and on corners which they take at maximum pace careless of the cyclists and rickshaws who are batted to the side like the flies the passengers are swatting.

On one extraordinary occasion, Jamie and I had taken to the road with the kids early in the morning. Delhi does not do early mornings. We were driving down a main road with no more than two other cars in sight. Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the two cars started to weave violently across the road, and like a guided missile seeking out a fast moving small target, smashed into the other car and careered off the road. In an astonishing piece of good fortune he happened to find the only stretch of road in Delhi with a soft verge. Most roads are lined with concrete barriers, shops, cows and people but this time, the driver was lucky and he drew to a gentle halt in a ditch. We waited long enough to make sure everyone was alright but not long enough to find out what on earth had happened to make the driver lose control.

Yesterday we were driving home and Jamie suddenly hit the horn long and loud. I was just about to berate him for excessive use of horn when I did a double take. A rickshaw was driving straight at us going the wrong way up a dual carriageway. I have also seen a guy in a disabled cart (a cross between a bicycle and a wheelchair) going the wrong way up the road straight into oncoming traffic.

A further road hazard (more for them than for us) are the small children selling flowers or magazines or simply begging. They weave in and out of the traffic lights , sometimes performing break dancing type acrobatic routines, and mostly, manage to scamper out of the way when the lights change. I feel sure though that some of them never make it back to the kerb. Cows and stray dogs are also obstacles to be negotiated. If you are unlucky enough to encounter an elephant on a busy road, you get stuck for some time.

Everywhere you drive, there are road signs warning that "speed thrill but also kills". They are unheeded. Nowhere in the world have I had so many near misses. (and in fact, one prang ) Sharp intakes of breath accompany each swerve in front of the car by cheeky rickshaw drivers. Jamie drives along with his hand permanently on the horn in true Indian fashion on a one man mission to teach the Indians to drive. Thank goodness we have a driver.

Have the big rain

When we lived in Thailand, our driver who was a giant of a man,; gentle when sober but who would return from the weekends with black eyes and reeking of alcohol, did not speak much English. Every time there was a downpour, he would trot out one of his best sentences: "have the big rain", a remark which has entered into our family phrase book.

Returning to India from a holiday in Europe during which we experienced the coldest July day recorded in Hungary since records began and the hottest day in London this summer, we are now in the full throes of the monsoon.

My first thought is how on earth did Jamie and I persuade ourselves that backpacking around India during the monsoon was a good thing to do. In the hot season, the sun was burning but the skies were blue and it cooled down a little in the evenings. Now, you break a sweat just putting your head around the door. The trip from the house to the car is a death trap as you skate your way over the flooded marble (no drain) which has suddenly turned into the Delhi equivalent of the Somerset House ice rink.

The brooding clouds grow in intensity and the oppressive humidity rises accordingly until at last, it is nearly dark and then someone upstairs lets out the plug and the water pours down . It cascades onto the rooves and through the rooves; flooding our study; flooding our staircase and flooding the upstairs living room. Every day there is a new patch of mold, a new pool of water. Every day, the laundry smells of damp because it is not quite dry. With each downpour, the internet disconnects and the oven and cooker start conducting current and giving their users nasty electric shocks. The water tanks are filling with debris and the water is coming out yellow we now have yellow towels, sheets and bedding.

What this means in practical terms is that the army of useless labourers is back. Yesterday, six men perched under the house overhang as the rain apparently prevented them from doing anything. Only the plumber appears to have been active. Somehow, he managed to turn the water supply off and forget to turn it on again so we were without water today. Other than the rain that is.

Have the Big Rain.

There's a rat in the kitchen - or - It's raining ants

When Jamie and I were deliberating as to whether or not India would be a conducive place to live, Jamie reminded me how hard India could be. Well, we reasoned, we would have money this time around; we wouldn't be taking buses and rickshaws everywhere, we would have a driver; we would have AC; we would have a nice house to escape Delhi in.

"Just how hard to you think it will be on a day to day basis?" I asked. "I can handle India if I can escape from it. I can handle the odd power cut. But I can't handle finding rats and cockroaches in the kitchen every day".

We arrived in Delhi in the cool season. Beyond the unusually hardy mosquito and the odd fly, our house was blissfully insect free. In fact, Delhi was fairly insect free. As it heated up, our house, particularly the back courtyard, became infested with flies. You could see hundreds of them on the plants and sitting on the floor or crawling over the drying laundry. The air in my walk to the market was so thick with flies that I fantasied about an Australian cork hat. Hotter still and the mosquitoes came out although they are not as bad as they will be during the rainy season.

Now the temperature daily reaches 45 degrees. It is too hot for the flies and the courtyard is no longer a fly carnival. It is plainly also getting rather hot for the rats. Jamie and I were sitting watching television when a small grey rat (or possibly a mouse) shot across the living room and under the door to the hall. When there was no repetition of this the following night, I decided it must have been a one off but the day after when I was sitting alone in the house, the rat came right up to me and under the sofa I was sitting on. I ran upstairs to bed.

A day later and I went into the bathroom to get the children's bath going only to find a gigantic cockroach taking a walk on the sink. Opening the kitchen cupboards has become an exercise in conquering fear as more often than not, a small cockroach runs for cover as it is disturbed by daylight. And then, there are the ants.

We have small ants in the cupboards and enormous ants on the floor. I was sitting typing an email when suddenly there was a loud splat. A huge, fat, black ant was crawling across my computer. Splat, another one. I looked up. Where were these ants coming from? They appeared to be falling from the ceiling. I still don't know their source. I think it's the air conditioning unit overhead.

I have called pest control.

Now the difference between Jamie and me or between the Ingrams and Heywoods should you care to extrapolate, is that Jamie would have called this blog 'frangipani, mangoes and geckos'. The rats would have been an afterthought if indeed worth a mention at all. His blog would have been about the fact that our two frangipani trees are in bloom and that there are dozens of fat green mangoes hanging off the beautiful tree in the garden. A portly gecko in the living room is doing his best to combat the mosquitoes. Our area of Delhi is filled with trees groaning under purple, orange and yellow blossoms. The boys are learning to swim. We are in India.

Happy Holi

Holi, the spring festival, that marks the end of the clement weather co-incided with Easter this year. On the day of the festival, India takes to the streets to play Holi which involves showering people with water, powdered paint and, I'd been warned, much worse things. Apparently, one of the reasons for this is that spring is considered to be the season when everyone gets sick so showering people with water is supposed to cleanse them of sickness.

"Don't go out of your house on Holi" warned the lugubrious man who owns the hand made paper shop in Jorbagh market. This man knows everything about me. He knows all my family. He knows when my mother is coming back to Delhi and which airline she is flying. In fact, he has an odd knowledge of flights in general and always informs me as to whether the flights from London have arrived on schedule that day. A man then who clearly knows what he is about. "Why not?" I asked. "It is madness, complete madness. Everyone is throwing everything. You will be targetted as a foreigner and don't accept milk from anyone". "I beg your pardon?" "No milk. Everywhere, people will be offering you milk. This milk has bhang (marijuana) in it". "OK, well I don't generally accept milk from strangers so I'm not going to break the habit of a lifetime on Holi".

I asked around as to whether or not the man was exaggerating. A couple of the foreigners I asked said they had heard terrible tales of Holi in Old Delhi. The Indians almost universally agreed with Mr Paper Seller.

Duly warned, we prepared to hunker down for Holi. Jamie and Nikki and Ben who were staying had other ideas. They decided to venture out. One thing everyone was agreed on was that you needed to wear clothes you were prepared to throw away and cover your hair (girls). Armed with water pistols, Jamie, Nikk, Ben and Eliot set out. I stayed behind with Toby. An hour or two later, four very happy, very coloured people returned.

Apparently, in upmarket Jorbagh, they had struggled to find people to play Holi with. They had purchased coloured powder and pink spray and set out to find targets and be targetted. Although they passed plenty of technicolour people, they remained unscathed and eventually resorted to covering eachother to show willing. Finally, they turned into a lower rent housing area to find a group of people. They started spraying them with water and paint only to receive somewhat horrified stares. Eventually, the locals approached, dipped their hands in the powder paint, gently daubed them on the face and then gave them a hug. All much more genteel than we had been led to believe.

Euphoria

Jamie launched Virgin Mobile in India at the beginning of the month and has had to take part in a large number of office parties around India. The first, the main launch party, involved Sir Richard Branson jumping down several hundred feet of the Oberoi Towers hotel in Mumbai and taking part in a live Bollywood movie. The Delhi party which I attended was, in keeping with the difference between the two cities, a more subdued affair.

In a hotel on the outskirts of town, we rolled up to a red carpet theme extending to red carpet interviews complete with paparazzi and then rolled in to a 1970s hotel function room. Dingily lit and brownly carpeted, it felt much like the disco at Sandbanks I went to thinking myself somewhat of a rebel aged 10 when on holiday with my friend Max and his family. Strangely, half way through the evening, we were joined by a couple who might have been from Sandbanks who were on holiday in India, had managed to end up staying in this rather out of the way hotel and wanted to join the party.

The air of excitement among some of the employees surely could not just have been about the party or the opening of the business. Big things were expected and Jamie said that apparently a really popular Indian band would be playing. As the name of the band "Euphoria" was announced, screams broke out from the audience. One of the girls ran up to Jamie saying "Oh my God, this is the best night of my life, this is my favourite band!". "Don't worry" said Jamie, who assured me that things had improved since the days when we took buses to the accompaniement of songs sung so high that a few notes higher and only dogs would be able to hear; "Indian pop music is quite good to dance to".

To great fanfare the band walked on. An ageing rocker with black curly hair down to his waist; a rather studious looking guitarist in little round glasses, and the lead singer himself wearing jeans, leather jacket, white string vest and clearly older than me. To applause, the singer took off the jacket to reveal biceps that told of long hours at the gym but with a layer of fat which suggested that even the work outs were failing to halt the march of time on his body. The band began to play not the cheery Hindi pop music we expected but hard rock at top volume. Somewhat stunned, we watched as Virgin Mobile Delhi took to the dance floor. Fist pumping, jumping, head banging. It was all there.

Leaving the crowd a little later, we were talking to one of Jamie's colleagues. "Are they really one of the biggest bands in India?". "Oh yes, I particularly like their Sufi music". "Sufi Music???". "Yes, they started out as a Sufi band and then started to sing in English. The lead singer is a surgeon by profession". Somewhat sceptically, we eyed the guys on stage thumping their way through the latest tune. A few songs later, however, (were they never going to take a break?) the music did tone down and became quite pleasant. Half an hour on and they had moved on to covers of 'Another Brick in the Wall' and 'We will rock you'. The hall's promise of a 1970s wedding was fulfilled.

If you would like more information about Euphoria, check out: http://www.dhoom.com/

Things that go bump in the night

It is occasionally possible to forget that in our relatively civilised house, we are in the middle of Delhi. Unfortunately, those times do not include between dusk and dawn.

On my first trip to India, I travelled without the benefit of ear plugs. The result was that I slept on alternate nights. Every other night, I would lie awake plagued by mosquitoes, heat, the cacophony of rickshaw horns and, most frequently, the howling of stray dogs.

So far, it's been too cold for mosquitoes and heat; we are sufficiently off the main road for the horns to be unremarkable but the dogs are a different story. Everywhere in Delhi, there are mangy, pathetic looking dogs stretched out on pavements napping in the sun who look at you reproachfully but unenergetically if you presume to go near enough to disturb their slumber. At night, fuelled by a long day of inactivity, they all seem to band together to discuss their takeover of the city and the noise is infuriating. Even the earplugs don't entirely drown them out.

When we first moved in, still new to the sounds of the city, I was very puzzled to hear what I was sure was the sound of marching bands. Every morning around 5.30am, I would wake up to the sounds of souza, drummers drumming and pipers piping. Did Delhi really go on the march each morning? I was rather worried I was imaging it and took a few days to pluck up courage to mention it to Jamie who appeared not to have noticed it. It was only when I found out that Republic Day was about to happen that I realised what I could hear was early morning rehearsal. Fortunately, post event, the morning marches have ceased although every now and again, I feel sure I can hear them at it.

Once the morning marching stopped, wedding season began. Periodically, we are roused from our post prandial stupour by the astounding hullabaloo of the ramshackle wedding bands who march up the streets in their once white uniforms and red tinsel lined turbans. I assume they are paid by the bridal party to leave as soon as they arrive at their destination.

The last of the major sleep disturbers (if you leave out the children) are the peacocks who are rapidly losing their charm. The dawn chorus sounds like cats being strangled. They make so much noise that they invariably wake up Toby who can then be heard on the monitor saying "cats say miaow, miaow, Eliot, can you hear the cats?". Poor Eliot, woken up by his brother rather than the peacocks can never resist the opportunity of correcting the offender "No Toby, not cats, peacocks".

Water

When we arrived in Delhi, we were staying in a guest house which, despite costing more around £100 per night, was little more than a glorified backpacker hotel. Hot water arrived only if the guest house staff had remembered to turn a tap on outside the rooms. If they had, you could stand under a dripping tea bag with one hand on the taps as boiling water came out for a few minutes and then got progressively colder as the small immersion heater supply got used up. If you were quick, there was enough water for two showers. Toby was bathing in a bucket before sunset in order to catch the last of the day's warmth in the unheated rooms (see above).

We were very much looking forward to moving into our house with permanent hot water and our own towels. On our first night in the house, our first night in our own bed for two months and after a day battling mountains of dust left by the builders, I started to run the bath for the children. No hot water. We filled the bath up a few inches using boiled water. Time for us to go to bed and by now we were very cold and very dirty. Jamie and I eyed the small immersion heater doubtfully. "That's not going to do two showers worth" I said, ever optimistic. "Well, let's see if we have hot water in our bathroom" he said. He turned the tap on. Sure enough, no hot water. By the time we had fiddled around with the taps, there was no water anywhere except in the kitchen. We couldn't even flush the loos.

The landlord was called in the next morning by an angry and unwashed me. He called the plumber and after they had fiddled around for a while, I was called in to verify that not only was there water but it was hot. I was told to switch on a pump on the first floor balcony which would pump water around the house and also told to switch on an overflow alarm outside in the ground floor courtyard and switch everything off again once the alarm went off. I was told I needed to do this for a maximum of 20 minutes each day. I took a shower immediately but by the evening, despite having switched the pump on, there was no water of any kind. I could hear that the pump wasn't working.

Landlord and plumber arrived next morning to fix the pump. By the evening, no water although I could hear the pump working away. I had switched it on for 20 minutes in the morning but the alarm hadn't gone off and worried I would flood the house, I'd switched it off again.

The landlord was called again. He promised to come over again with the plumber. The next day, he guided my use of the pump. Ah yes, as we had 8 builders living in the back of our house, we were probably using rather a lot of water so maybe 20 minutes wasn't enough. Also, had he mentioned that the timing of the pumping was crucial? No, that apparently crucial information had not been passed on. It transpires that municipal water is delivered twice a day in the morning and the early evening. If you pump all the morning water up, you can't pump again until after the evening delivery.

Fully informed, we now do have running water. The pressure is lousy and the immersion tank only allows the bath to be filled to a depth of three inches (I have no idea how the landlord thought anyone was going to fill the enormous sunken bath he had been planning to put into the master bathroom before we stopped him). I think the pressure will improve once it gets hotter as the water will already be hot by the time it gets to the shower without the use of the immersion heater so we can mix in more cold. By then, we are told, it will be impossible to take a cool shower and the water will be too hot to use. Wonderful.