Vellaikkaari: of ration cards and things that go bump in the night

Who knew that moving into a place could be so political! And so incredibly exhausting. Well, I knew it could be exhausting, but settling into a house in India comes with it's own unique challenges, as you can imagine. I haven't been able to get onto this blogger thing in a few days due to a number of factors including illness and internet problems. Now I am finally able to log on and I'm sitting in an A/C internet place which is simply splendid.

I had wanted to move in on Thursday, but I ended up getting this high fever/bad cold/a dose all-night diarrhea-for-good-measure kind of illness and as a result I was in bed all day on Thursday. I had such cabin fever that I was really itching to move into my new place. Despite being pretty weak from this weird illness, I had to go around for about 8 hours non-stop in the heat on Friday, buying stuff for the house and moving stuff in. I was taking buses and rickshaws and walking back and forth all over town and at the end of it I was pretty incredibly dirty and tired. It's hard to believe that this was only yesterday. Feels like ages ago already.

When I arrived at the home yesterday I was very happy to see that doors and windows had been installed! I also unknowingly arrived at a very auspicious hour, which Saroja's husband confirmed to me by showing me the time on the calendar, which lists all the auspicious and inauspicious hours of each day. We did a puja and waved the camphor flame all over the premises which made me feel pretty good.

When I arrived, a crew was feverishly applying cement and working on the front stoop. They were working on this late into the evening and are at it again today. It's looking pretty good, except for the big cement chunk I knocked off the steps when I left the house. But I must say I'm somewhat frustrated at this extravagant expenditure when there is a gaping hole in the bathroom where a window should be. While it does provide a lovely view of the "Government Bar" across the street, thousands of mosquitoes are flocking in there and being a major nuisance, rendering the attached room off-limits. They've assured me that this window will be put in and I believe them.

The single most costly, and frustrating, task for me has been getting everything needed to cook some food in my house. Tamilarasi's sister-in-law Chellapandi is now working for me, and she lives next door with her mother-in-law who is my houseowner. Tamilarasi wrote up a long list of all the different spices and dals and want not one needs to cook at the bare minimum, and this budget list came up to Rs. 650, not even $20 and not bad for a month's worth of basic non-perishables, but here this is a fortune and I don't know how people eat. This is only for one person, mind you.

THEN, you have to go and buy vessels and cups and plates and all that, and again I suffered from major sticker shock -- this time at Anantha metals. In TN it seems that to every food item there is a unique vessel and a unique utensil with a unique Tamil name (in addition to a different verb phrase for cooking each item), and I pretty much don't have a clue. Chellapandi wrote up a list for me, with such things as paal chaddi, kolumbu chaddi, vade chaddi, chinna silver chaddi, etc. All these are different kinds of pots for different things. I was totally confused. I ended up pretty much buying the whole store. I nearly fainted when I saw that a "cooker" alone costs Rs. 800 ($20), and this is one of the smallest ones they have. The other family-sized ones are into the thousands. As you will see from the photo, metals stores offer a mind-boggling array of products and as a foreigner I was completely overwhelmed. I asked Tamilarasi how on earth people afford all these vessels, and she informed me of what should have been obvious: when a woman gets married, her parents give her all those things as dowry.

Despite all this purchasing, I still don't have everything I need. The most important thing I don't have is a gas cylinder to hook up to the stove. So Chellapandi is cooking on a "Country stove" of sorts which is basically a kerosene stove. And it stinks. And there is only one burner. So why not just get a gas cylinder, you might ask? Why have a perfectly good stove just sitting there collecting dust? Because you need a freaking ration card, that's why. If you don't have one, you are screwed out of a lot of things. Foreigners don't have these. There's a lot of politics involved in the gas cylinder situation, among other things in my moving experience, but I'll save that for later. My landlady is being weird about it. Her dream and goal is for foreigners to live in her house, but without a gas cylinder there is no hope for this. I am too patient and foolish. Just yesterday morning she had told me she had two cylinders and I could use one. This was when she was in front of others so perhaps she was telling a different story, because by evening the tune had changed and now it's up to me to go around begging for a gas cylinder. We'll see how this goes.

So last night was the first night I slept in my new house. Curiously, at 1:30 AM someone rang the doorbell and I startled awake. I was completely petrified for a while and remained barricaded in my room, listening for any sounds. About 10 minutes later I snuck out and looked out the window but I didn't see anyone. This is unnerving to me because everyone knows that I am staying there alone, and at 1:30 AM in the morning EVERYONE is in bed and all lights are off, so I guess the only folks out are crazies or rowdies who like to ring doorbells and scare the shit out of white girls.

Okay, that is quite enough for now. I will post more pictures of the house soon, including an outside shot and some snaps of the neighborhood. It's certainly a "village" in lots of ways, and my very presence causes a stir and incites chaos every time I set foot outside, but I think I will like the area. The road, however, is the worst in Madurai, and you have to wait at least 30 minutes in the blaring sun for a bus sometimes, and these are my only complaints. Tamilarasi assured me, however, that the actor-turned-politician and Madurai man himself, Vijaykanth, has promised that his party will install a new road through BB Kulam. I'll be interested to see how this plays out!