Whitefield Road, Bangalore

3:30 AM - wide awake. Get up, brush teeth, pee, head back to bed to try to sleep again. 7:30 AM now, waking up to make coffee and oatmeal for breakfast - bad idea, forgot Mehnoush doesn't ever eat in the morning. Oh well, I tried to be nice, and had a double bowl myself!

Darn it - I’ve been connecting in to work quite a bit the past two days, even though I’m supposed to be on vacation here now. Mehnoush is busy at her job so I’m here alone in the day; she just told me last night that she’ll have to work both days this weekend. I may try to find a local birdwatching club or something so that I can do the things that would bore her to death since she is busy. And I can wear all my camera equipment in its geeky hang-on-the-belt holster without her commenting on it too! Oh well, I guess I look on the bright side of having a workaholic wife!

I am still fascinated with the construction zone behind the house. I have binoculars which can reach the faces where my camera cannot. The best I can do for photos is an overview shot, my telephoto cannot quite get in that far. The women laugh a lot amongst each other and their faces show the concentration as they walk through the construction zone, climbing over the steel rebar constructions left lying in the way (it would take 5 minutes to move them if only someone would do this!), up and down the paths worn in the piled up dirt and gravel. Watching them balance the wet concrete on their head while slipping down a four foot high pile and jumping over the steel is really something. Their protective equipment (besides the yellow hard-hat) also includes one huge, bright orange rubber glove to protect the skin from the lime of the concrete. Occasionally, you’ll see several feet of juice fly from their mouths, backlit in the evening sun - some must be chewing something like tobacco (paan, perhaps?). After they make the drop into the hands of the concrete supervisor, the empty pan is banged once on the ground to clean it and it flies back on top of the head for the walk back to the concrete mixer. I shot a movie on the digicam and will try to get it on the website too. Sitting down now, in the shade next to the mixing machine as the men crank it up for a new batch - they grin and laugh with each other, cough some, covering faces with parts of the sari, helmets turned upside down and standing on their support columns in the dirt.

The men seem more reserved and aren’t all buddy-buddy as they work. They seem to have the easier jobs for the most part: building the forms to hold the concrete out of wood, wiring together the rebar for the reinforcement, putting up scaffolding on some of the columns now that they are tall enough to require it, telling the women where to point their head as they dump the newest load. However, there is one group of guys who are also in the earth-moving business - but not concrete, just dirt excavated from the next set of footers. This particular group also doesn’t appear to be wearing any pants. More like a male version of the sari wrapped around their legs, although not as colorful. These men work individually, whereas the women are definitely a team, sometimes trading off or working as a relay race might.

Our maid, Soulpadia (as best I can spell it) comes in every day to sweep and mop the floors, and also do the dishes. She did laundry as well, until Mehnoush had too many things ruined - now we send the ones we don’t care about out, and do the rest ourself. It takes her a little more than an hour using a low hand broom that looks like a horse’s tail which requires bending double to use, then followed by an old-fashioned mop (no Pledge-wipe mops here yet!). She does two stories and two bathrooms, plus the kitchen and then also does the other Misys employees who live in this same complex... What’s that, you say? Oh, I haven’t told you about the housing area we live in yet? Okay then... here goes:

This is a three-story unit set back off of Whitefield Road (a major road outside of Bangalore) by maybe a half-mile. The industrial park ITP is nearby, but the apartments are located down a tiny rural road going through fields - which I suspect are not going to be there much longer at the current rate of construction! The main door enters off a courtyard surrounded by similar units - parking garage is below them all. The pool is a brilliant blue among low greenery and carefully landscaped shrubs; red tile roofs of the buildings contrast with the cream-colored stucco walls and black ironwork railings and fences - there was a crew in yesterday which either unplanted palm trees, or else they planted them and changed their minds and took them away again! I’m not sure which, but it was very confusing! As you enter our condo, to the left is the entertainment center - a few stuffed chairs and a sofa with a small TV. Straight ahead is a dining area, and then the long, narrow kitchen equipped with a propane stove, refrigerator, microwave, coffeepot, etc. The utensils are all a bit funny - more like they were stamped out of sheet aluminum and are a bit flat. The kitchen is very bright and cheery because two walls are all windows. Adjoining the dining room is the first floor bedroom with a bath and a balcony (overlooking the construction site to the south that you’ve heard way too much about). To the right in the main room, the open black marble staircase heads up to the office and master bedroom floor: two bedrooms, two baths, another balcony and a huge office space. The stairs continue up to the third floor screen room, which opens onto the courtyard and pool below - the back of which is a doorway leading to the roof balcony which seems to be shared with the apartment next door.

The main floors throughout are polished marble, with some pergo “wood” in some of the bedrooms and ceramic tile in the baths. The walls are definitely not sheetrock - hard as stone, so probably plaster over concrete block? There are no carpets or wall hangings to soften the place since it’s not really ours - so it is very, very echoey (the reverb is turned to 10 on the amp), which makes it very interesting to play the flute here - and everyone around can hear because the place is so wide open. There is no A/C - and actually, now that I look around, no heat either. We haven’t need anything at all since the weather is absolutely gorgeous: mid 70’s with no humidity in the day, maybe just a bit cooler at night. In the sun, it can get hot, but the windows are all protected by overhanging balconies so that doesn’t seem to affect the house much. And the stone floors really keep their cool. One drawback with all the open air access is that the dust and dirt do come in - it’s a good thing that Soulpadia comes every day, since the floor leaves your feet dark and dusty again by the next morning. Regardless, this is a very impressive building and seems quite deluxe to my old midwestern upbringing.

I am not sure what is in store for tonight... so will close now and finish up the entry tomorrow.