Unpacking and getting settled

Our boxes have arrived and about 140 of them have been unpacked, though not much is in its "final" place yet.  I need to do a lot of organizing.  However I've been doing the nice things, choosing colours for the rooms, deciding where to put furniture, hang lamps and eventually put up our pictures.  Our bare apartment is being transformed into something that resembles a home!

Our dining room

Bedroom is looking good.

Rachel has set up her bedroom and here she is with new glasses!

Riding the public bus

Our welcome to ASB involved having a garland (mala) placed round our
necks and a tikka placed on our foreheads for good luck

Our Superintendent told us that we are the only foreigners in this neighbourhood and that's certainly true.  The only Westerners who we have seen here have been those in the ISB community.  As we walk down the street we are often stared at - not in a hostile way but in a curious one.

Today I was running a little late.  Outside my apartment block I saw a bus and someone running for it (so it seemed it was just about to set off).  I've never ridden a public bus here but I got on anyway.  The driver looked at me as if I was VERY foreign (alien, really) and pointed me down the bus where a conductor took my 5 rupee fair.  There wasn't a bus stop for where I wanted to get off, but the bus stopped for me anyway.

I went and had a pedicure today too.  As I was sitting down next to an Indian woman she asked me if I was staying at the Kohinoor hotel.  I told her I was living here now.  Again she was very surprised.

It won't be long though.  This area is going to totally change in the next 6 months or so now that the school has moved in here.  I'm excited that I'm right at the start of it, in the first wave of the change.  That I experience what it is like to live here as an alien being!

Paint!

OK, the balconies are stuffed full of plants, now it's time for the walls.  Yesterday I asked if I could have my walls painted.  Yesterday evening a painter came round to ask me what colours I wanted.  Today 6 painters came around and painted almost the entire place.  Our lounge/dining room is green and red, my bedroom is blue and Rachel's is lilac and purple.  Yes, 3 rooms completely decorated in just one day.

Tomorrow the shipping arrives.  The place will soon feel like home.

Plants!

The apartment is still bare, but as of tomorrow our 4 balconies are going to be stuffed full with plants.  Rachel and I went to a nursery today and ordered more than 20 which are being delivered tomorrow.  Our pots will arrive in the shipment, hopefully on Saturday.  By next week the place should start to look and feel more like home.

A visit to an Akanksha Foundation school

One of the things I love about ASB is that there is a big committment to service education and yesterday a group of new teachers went to visit a school for slum children that is being run by the Akanksha Foundation. The school is doing good work - the students are delightful and very smart.  The teachers are very dedicated and it's great to think that ASB is getting us involved in such a life-changing project.

Brunch at the Leela

This is my 4th day in Mumbai, and they have been 4 very full days indeed.  We have had the minimum of meetings and the maximum of shopping trips and time to get ourselves sorted out.  We have been able to sort out our gym membership, find housekeepers for our apartments, go shopping (several times), open bank accounts, visit the foreign registration office and so on.  We have had breakfasts in the local hotel, evening meals in restaurants or at the homes of administrators and today we had brunch at Leela's.  This hotel is right near the airport and has one of the most famous brunches in Mumbai.  It was also featured in the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers which is about life in a Mumbai undercity, as one of the people in the book manages to secure a job at Leela's.  For me, this brunch certainly lived up to expectations.

The great difference between rich and poor is so obvious here.  Just an hour ago I was surrounded by 5 star luxury, now as I look outside my window I can see a construction site where the people working there would never have the opportunity to have brunch at Leela's.  I'm currently reading In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce, a writer for the Financial Times.  He interviewed a Frenchman called Andre who had lived in India for a number of years and asked him about why he lived in India.  Here is his reply:

India has thousands and thousands of years of practice at harmonising differences and penetrating to the unity beyond.  There is an essence to India that other countries do not have, which tells you that behind the diversity of life there is a spiritual reality called unity.

Diverse it certainly is:  while India is acquiring the trappings of a superpower, the majority of the people lack basic amenities. Yesterday we drove past the world's first million dollar home in South Mumbai, called Antilia, after a mythical island.  This home has 27 storeys and more floor space than the Palace of Versailles.  On the roof are 3 helicopter pads and the ground floor has space to park 160 cars.  A staff of 600 work here, taking care of the 5 members of the Ambani family!  At the same time India is home to a third of the world's chronically malnourisehd children, and over two thirds of Indians live in villages, half of which lack roads, healthcare and schools.  Almost half of India's women don't know how to read and write.

Slowly Rachel and I are adapting - from living in a country that has one of the highest standards of living in the world.  We are trying to embrace India - the sights and smells, the food, the noise.  Last night we went out for a meal with no plans for how to get home, and only one person in our party who had any idea of the name of the road we live on.  We bargained, tried 2 different taxis and had an entertaining (and sometimes scary) drive home.  We made it!

Embracing India

We were shown this video on the first day at our new school and told that the thing that will make us a success or failure here is our ability to embrace India.