Welcome to the AAA - Auto Attitude Association

Since I have come back to India I have been across 4 metros (3 states). If you think that the first thing I noticed was the culture/language barrier..well you are in for a surprise. Nope...what I noticed and experienced first hand were the behaviour patterns of autorickshaw drivers. It truly is amazing ! Let me elaborate city by city:
Pune:
While my husband and I were in the not so joyful process of apartment hunting, we would come across several "auto hubs" (In colloquiall lingo: jhund).If we asked them for a ride to a place - they would take their time measuring us, and quote a price on which you could get a ticket to the next state ! Needless to say we headed out with caps and bottles of water from the next day, imagining that we are off on a roadside hike !
Chennai:
Hmm... I have a partiality towards this city..being born and brought up etc etc..But let me make it clear that I draw a line between the love for the city and disdain for the auto community. Atleast the pune guys were honest enough to quote a price which we could choose to refuse, but here the man would happily take you till the destination offering tit bits of general local gossip. He would wait till you have reached to drop the bomb of asking atleast 2/3 times the amount on the meter. If you refused to oblige, well then beware you can learn all the choiciest expletives that tamil language has to offer, with the accompanying mannerisms.
Bangalore:
The incident which I am going to site is not a fragment of my imagination so pay attention my friends ! I set off to bangalore to spend a month with close family and friends, right after getting back from US. So yes you could say that I was very green in all aspects of survival. Once when I was getting back from my music class I got into an auto after specifying my destination. Well either he had misunderstood me or he was in a mood to pick a fight because somewhere in the middle he started complaining that I had cheated him by indicating a wrong place. I was baffled by his behaviour, and asked him to stop. Obviously I must have pushed a wrong button, cause that aggravated him to driving faster and taking on a route I had never seen before. So I did what we girls do the best ! I screamed and jumped out of the running auto!!! I must have caused quite a ruckus, before I knew it I had an audience of 10-15 do-gooders, who thrive on situations such as these. That day was a revelation, cause I never knew I had it in me to curse like a fisher woman. Once I was done blowing off the steam, I threw the money on his face and walked back home. Ofcourse the adrenalin died once I got home, and I had a bad case of shivers and a mother of all shoulder sprain !!!
Mumbai:
After the above anecdote, my 2 liner on the plight of mumbai residents at the hand of auto rickshaws is going to sound very mundane. But hey I have to complete my analysis !! Just a simple word of advice to those relying on auto's as a means of commute in Mumbai - DONT...Because they have attitude,attitude and more attitude or maybe they have loads of money burried in a rabbit hole. Anyway they would prefer to cruise on their own, rather than transport you to your destination, even if it happens to be on their way.
Whew after this heavy R & D & Analysis - I am exhausted..will see you all next year !

Bargains

I remember when I was really small, I dont remember the year(ha ha...thought you could deduct my age did you ?)...anyway I digress. I used to go to the market with my parents for picking vegetables, and end up staring with awe at my mother when she employed her bargaining tactics. Infact both my father and I used to slightly distance ourselves from this woman, who with a multilingual flair (hindi/tamil/malyalam and english) used to convince the shopkeeper to bring down his rates by atleast 50%.
Well after so many odd years, even after I have graduated to a status of motherhood, I am pleased to note that nothing has changed ! Yesterday while trying to get myself a pair of shoes from a streethawker (thats one thing in Mumbai that you can never have a dearth of !) here I was very meekly asking him to quote his best price and my mom without batting an eyelid asked him to hand it over to us at less than half his asking price ! At that instant my thoughts were - "Oh no...we need to check out more shops for something I like" and my instant sympathy was with the poor chap. But by then my mother had started dragging me and my feet out of there with a stern no-no. Guess what ? to my amazement, the shopkeeper not only gave in but promised a 3 month warranty as well !!!
Moral: The art of negotiating cannot be taught in classes...needs to be learned first hand from the yesteryear moms.

Vacation Rocks..Life hmm Sucks !

How many of us have while vacationing in India have thought - wow..what a life, what luxury to have help around the house, how neat that we dont have to do our own laundry, how totally cool that we do not have to load/run the dishwasher...Hip Hip Hooray for the indian maids !
Well guilty as charged...I have. I used to have this totally green feeling, and after a few weeks here used to go back to US quite morose with the banal lifestyle of "Do it yourself" philosophy. Guess What ??? I am eating my own words now... Because lo and behold I am back in India for good, and a huge eye opener for me is..Yes you can get domestic help BUT
They ask for the moon & stars and more..
They are totally absolutely , very reliably... UNRELIABLE !
They have no sense of time...and every time you ask them to stick to time.... and they look at you like you must be demented
& They are more often than not the reason for familial disputes of mammoth proportions !Soooooooooo.. the gandhian philosophy of self-help doesnt sound too bad in retrospect does it ?

2 sides of a coin

So let me get to the best part of being in one's country,one's home. The joy of being with family !!! Lets face it - how happy are we being in a silo ? Without having those wonderful mother hens telling us how weak we look, how we need to eat more etc etc.. (Admit it...We in a most convoluted way are just waiting for someone to tell us that, so we feel good about hogging :-))
Well I just had a similar experience over the weekend, which gave me the reassurance that we had done the right thing (ofcourse I say right/wrong in truly relative terms !) in coming back home. After all, our kids too need to face the chaos of being in a house overflowing with aunts and uncles and cousins ! They too need to know how it feels to be singled out and asked - "Do you know me ?" , " I am your mother's cousin's grandmother's.....". Ofcourse the best part of our traditional indian gathering is the overflowing spread of tasty treats ! In the midst of this happy commotion, it struck me...this is why I came back, and this is what I wanted my kids to experience for themselves - the abundance of love, affection and wishes ,a sense of belonging and realization of one's roots.

Dodge Ball

Dodge ball - a game that I am sure most of us have played one time or the other. For those of you who havent had a chance, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the general rules of the game - before thinking of moving back to India, specifically Bombay (Sorry still cannot think in terms of Mumbai !)
Now to elaborate on the reasons, well its simple really - the number of things you need to dodge on the road, to get from point A to point B. Lets take my daily commute to work - I walk from home to the station, cross the tracks,take a shared rick to work. As far as any veteran Bombay-Wasi is concerned, this is probably the breeziest of commutes ! But (ofcourse there is a but) I feel like a hero at the end of it - why ? simple - I have managed to come out unscathed - have not stepped over poop, have not been assaulted by a cow/dog, have not been the target of "spit projectiles",have managed to hold my breath while crossing numerous overflowing garbage bins and have not had at part of my body run over by autos !

So you see...learning to dodge a ball is as important as learning Math/Science or maybe even more so, and my PT instructor would be proud of me, for translating the sport into an essential part of my daily existence :)

Introduction - My name is ...

I have put this off for a while now, was trying not to succumb to the "art of blogging" which seems to have taken over many !..So much so that I even saw a movie on it - Julie & Julia. But I have to admit, it does give me some perverse satisfaction that someone in this vast universe is reading my thoughts...and who knows is actually in agreement with me !
Before I go off on a tangent, which my husband claims is a very common habit of mine, I want to draw a boundary around this blog. So here are my self-imposed rules
1. Though these posts revolve around my experiences in my life, the broad theme is going to be - Life in India
2. I will refrain from cribbing about the difficult people in my life.
3. I promise to add a touch of drama and flair, to make the ordinary sound extra-ordinary.

Let me end this monologue by giving a short introduction about myself
- I am an emotional, sentimental and ofcourse temperamental woman in her 30's (divulging that was in itself a difficult decision) . That one line should suffice as an introduction, more of me is sure to come out in the days to come.....