Ye Mera Ghar

We did not bring any bedroom furniture from US when we moved to India. We never had great bedroom furniture to begin with. It was all garage sale collectibles. So ever since we moved here I have been thinking about buying furniture. Delhi is well known for good furniture. I went to all the areas famous for furniture making like 'Kirtinagar', 'Ghitorni' . I did not like the concept of ordering the furniture and getting it made. I wanted something off the shelf. Well that was hard since queen beds are not so common (kings are) in India. They did not have ready ones available. There are few stores like LifeStyle who sell readymade furniture but their prices were exorbitant. I was almost getting tired of this endless search when I found the store(chain of stores) Style Spa. They make furniture that is contemporary yet reasonable in price. I liked this bed because it is simple but elegant. I placed an order for bed, side tables, dressing table with a stool. It is compressed wood that is treated for termite or any other kind of natural damage. Basically Ikea kind of stuff.
Furniture would be delivered on Wednesday(25th). I am excited since my search for furniture is over before the school begins.
Check out their web site for more. It would give an idea to some of you who are eager to move back to India for good.
I will send you pictures of my bedroom once it is all set.
Bedroom image taken from Style Spa website

Home Alone

Manna is away on a business trip to Chennai, Nasik, Pune. He is going to come back with kids and grandma on 26 th. So I am alone at home. Once in a while it is good to be alone and I really do not miss my family because I am a free bird for a week for the first time in 10 years. He left for Chennai Thursday(19th June) morning.
Friday evening my driver told me a story about how one of the women on the farm used to be scared of staying alone since she used to hear footsteps on the terrace of her house. I said in my mind "Dude, I am not one of those crazy ones.." I go to bed on Friday night thinking about his story.
At midnight I hear someone banging on my door. I wake up and make sure that it is real and not a nightmare. Meanwhile that person stepped into my house. Then I realized that I had forgotten to lock the door. That was my "Oh Sh*t" moment. When I come out of my bedroom I see that it was my neighbor standing there. She was shouting "Are aag lag gayi" (There is a fire!). I looked at their house door which is just 10 feet away from ours, thick black smoke was coming out. The door looked like a chimney emitting smoke. I called up the main gate to let them know that there is fire in the house. I also handed the emergency light to the neighbor since they had turned off their power supply. My neighbor's is a family of 4 with husband, wife and 2 kids, 15 year old boy and a 7 year old girl. From outside I had no idea how widespread the fire was. Everyone in their family came out except the dad. He was busy extinguishing the fire. His wife kept shouting asking him to come out. Finally when he came out he was all covered in smoke. When the security guard showed up with the fire extinguisher and electrician, the fire was almost put out.
It seems the fire had started with the AC unit in their kid's bedroom. The son just happened to wake up and realize that his AC is melting above his bed. He got up carried his sleeping sister in his arms and took her to parents to inform them that his AC is melting. By the time he could wake his parents up, the whole room caught fire. The dad put out the fire with buckets and buckets of water. Now their entire house is damaged from the smoke. Luckily no one is hurt and they had an insurance on houehold items so they did not have at least any financial loss. Good thing is that they have lots of help available on the farm in terms of cleaning, clearing the house and people would start plastering, painting and repairing the house from Monday.
It is really unfortunate that it happened to them but we have learned our lessons from it. Since we shifted to India we haven't bought a fire extinguisher(Thanks to Manna who left ours-2 of them in the Belleville house) and we do not have any smoke detectors in our rooms. Also we do not have the insurance for the home goods. The house is covered by the company but not the belongings in the house. So we are going to take care of those things right away!

And now my driver has one more story to tell about a woman on the farm who hears someone banging on the door at night when she is alone!

Weekend at Neemrana

As you know the kids are still away with their grandparents. They are coming back on 26 th June. So we are just two of us here in Gugaon. Ya.. don't start imagining much.
Anyway Manna had this Saturday off so he had planned a surprise trip for us. He took me to a fort called Neemrana (Please check out the 360 tour to get an idea of the fort). It is 2 hours from Gurgaon(in state of Rajasthan). So We left home on Saturday after lunch. This was our first road trip where Manna drove on his own. I was really nervous about that because in India there is no such thing as driving courtesy while you are on the road. People are extremely selfish and they break every possible law when they are behind the wheel. But to his credit he drove extremely well and we reached the fort at 4:00 pm.
The fort was fabulous. Right from the massive entrance door to the decor, everything was well preserved. Each room was decorated with a different theme. The room we stayed in was 'Radha Mahal'. It was a small room but very cute with a balcony showing a view of the town below. It took us almost 2 hours to see the entire fort. The place was very well planned with all the facilities like pool, library, beautiful swing sets, gym, spa, dance, good food, and guided or audio tours of the fort. The fort caters to lot of tourists from outside India so the hospitality was top notch (of course the prices were top notch as well but let's not talk about it). There was high tea provided late afternoon. The evening was wonderful starting with Rajasthani dance, drinks and ending with fabulous dinner featuring Indian and western food. After the dinner we took a nice walk around the fort admiring it's beauty at night decorated with lights.
The next morning we set out to see 'Bawdi'. On the way we had a nice breakfast (Yum Kachori, Samosa and Jalebi)at a local 'Halwaii' (sweets maker) Bawdi is a well that is 9 stories underground. There were no signs or tours telling us the history of this marvelous structure. One local said that the queen used to have a secret underground path from the Neemrana fort to bawdi where she used to come for a bath, Wow! I was happy to see that the government of Rajasthan has undertaken a project to preserve this historic structure. We returned to the fort taking a route thru' the village. In the afternoon it rained pretty heavy, the fort looked beautiful with water gushing thru the steps. We had nice lunch and enjoyed almond pie, mangoes, khaja, and coffee for dessert. We returned home early evening.
It was very nice to be just two of us after a long time. It was one the memorable weekend outings I have had in a looooong time.
But now on a calm Sunday evening I miss my kids and want to be with them badly!

Pathetic joke - 1

What did Kangaroo say when his baby was stolen?



Ans: Someone pick pocketed me.

hahahaha !!!

Naukari(Job)

It has been a week since I left kids with my parents and flew out to Delhi. It was wonderful visiting my family, chilling out, eating millions of Mangoes for every meal and most importantly doing nothing(without hubby)! Hey that is what you get to do when you move to India!
Kids are having too much fun with Nani(grandmother), Abba(grandfather), Mama(uncle-my bro), Mami(aunty-his wife) and their two Angels(6 year old and a 2 year old). They don't miss us at all.
So you must be thinking why did I leave those comforts and come back to Gurgaon to Manna? Well, good thinking. It so happened that I accepted a job offer from a company and my joining date was June 2 nd. The company is No. 1 into mobile messaging(SMS) in terms of volumes. Yup, my job is spamming people. I completed first week of my job. I will definitely write about the culture differences and how I feel working in an Indian company after 10 years.
Happy Sunday!