A Break

The Phoren Tale took a longish break not for lack of anything to tell but because Mr. QuaintHeart is such a dear that he whisked us off to a break. No, it was not quite as South as I had hoped, but it we did enjoy a few very quiet, very hot days in Fort Aguada, Goa.

Our days were bright and lazy under a relentless April sun, but we did not mind the heat as much as we loved the relaxed mood at our hotel. Baby QuaintHeart too enjoyed his little holiday: he loves a good swim.

Now we are back in Mumbai and I hope to be able to pick up the threads of this fresh blog in a few days time.

Missing South India

Today I was thinking about South India and how much I miss that place. I have such wonderful associations with the entire region, be it its natural beauty or its people: it feels much more like home than QuaintTown ever could.

There are countless wonderful memories attached to South India and one city in particular: one city I shall aways love. Come May this year and it will be five long years that I have set eyes on this place. It seems a lifetime ago that we moved from there, and I am filled with so much regret. I left wonderful friends there. A wonderful life. Wonderful opportunities. We had our reasons to leave and they seemed like good and right reasons at the time. And though I know it is wrong to do so I cannot stop thinking sometimes how my life in India would be dramatically different if only we had stayed back there.

The truth is that I faced tremendous adjustment problems when we moved away. I had only ever known South India, and moving away was like moving to another country. Different people. Different language. Different food. Different culture. How could it be the same country I had agreed to live in?

It was not the same country and I am not sure I am truly reconciled with this new place. We have been moving a lot. A period of great restlessness followed. And everything ever since feels like a compromise.

I have been thinking about going back to South India just for a visit, but I know a lot has changed and somehow I think I should just keep the memory unadulterated. Unspoilt. Nostalgic.

Mr. QuaintHeart does not like it when I refer to any of this. That does not surprise me. Not only did he have to bear the brunt of my complaints (and they are many), but is also the one who has benefited the most from our frequent moves. And he is not unsettled by moving places. This is how he grew up. In fact, this is the way most Indians of my acquaintance have grown up: always packing and unpacking, shifting base. Nobody has roots. They are like huge Banyan Trees. They just grow new roots wherever they are.
I am a creaky old Sycamore Maple. You can't move me.

...which is a ridiculous statement, considering that I moved to India and had no trouble doing so as long as I stayed in my beloved South India. But then again most of this post seems somewhat ridiculous, and I believe I should top it off with some good syrupy nonsense in the end:
I think it's time for a holiday. The southernmost I've gone in five years is Goa, and that's not nearly South enough.

Let Bygones be Bygones?

I'll probably start lobbying for a holiday when Mr. QuaintHeart comes home tonight. Maybe we can go to Cochin. Last time I was there it was flooded and pretty and touristy and it smelled of Jasmine and fish. Or maybe Kovalam, though I heard it has not turned out for the better. Or maybe right down to Kanyakumari. This year it will be a decade that I've been there, and that sounds almost meaningful.

Arguments

I want to talk about the arguments that are going on here. No, not those arguments that take place in the QuaintHearted household, though we do of course argue and I consider it a very important ingredient of any relationship. But I want to talk about the arguments of our neighbors. For some strange reason we appear to be surrounded by very hot-blooded people who suffer frequent outbursts. Every other day some household or the other appears to be on the brink of disaster. Doors are being slammed again and again. Loud, high-pitched voices can be heard, and the choicest of abuses are flying through the air.

* Shanti *

There is a teenager living in a tiny ground floor apartment in an old building opposite ours. His character appears to be somewhat deranged. On several occasions there has been a huge commotion either in or in front of this house. Once, someone had locked him into the house, so he kept banging on the metal door and entertained the entire neighborhood with his profound knowledge of gutter language. The watchman of our building - never shy of spreading some gossip - told us this boy had the habit of running off which is why he was locked. Something similar happened just two days ago, and it appeared as if the whole family was summoned as several cars and bikes drew up in front of the house and loud, endless discussions went on.

It is strange. QuaintTown is a very ordinary neighborhood, and I have experienced this in different Indian cities before. There always seem to be really noisy, aggressive arguments.
It makes me sad.

A good, fair argument is one thing, but this yelling and abusing and slamming of doors disturbs my peace. Maybe I am being sissy about this, but it strongly reminds me about how people flare up in any public space and behave real bad to each other.

I wish they'd just calm down and relax a little.

Being A Tourist Again

The other day my dear friend N visited us in QuaintTown. She still lives in QuaintCountry and I have known her since childhood. It has been a few years since she made her first journey to India: she visited Rajasthan and fell in love with India. So when she finally had the opportunity to return to India she was really excited, even though it was a very short trip.

She stayed over at our place. It was lovely to have someone from back home. I always love to welcome people from back home into my Indian life and I get super excited about showing them around. I love to introduce them to our every day life. It is the simple things that matter most: where I go for a walk with Baby QuaintHeart. Where I buy my breakfast eggs. Where we pick our veggies. All the tiny little details.

I am not sure why this means so much to me, but I think I re-evalue my own adjustments when I see them through someone else's eyes.
In addition, I do not want to lose touch with my roots. It has happened once before that I had so completely immersed myself in Indian culture that my family was shocked when I visited them in QuaintCountry. This is not about dress or other such obvious signs, but rather that I had become completely detached from my roots and was a very different persons. This was painful: this look of disbelief in my family's eyes. I would not want this to happen again.

But my most favorite reason for having friends and family over in India is that I get to be a tourist again. I let N choose some spots she wanted to see in Mumbai and then I planned an itinerary for her, which was so much fun! We travelled in the local train to watch down from the bridge in Mahalaxmi and observe the Dhobi Wallahs. I have done this dozens of times and I have also gone inside the Dhobi Ghat (of course Mr. QuaintHeart took care of me). Then we continued our journey, standing at the gate of the train and letting the hot breeze ruffle our hair. It felt beautiful. It felt like a holiday. It felt as if I was in India for the very first time.

Then we continued further South to walk along Marine Drive. It has been many years since I walked there for the first time. That was in 2002 before they revamped it and created this beautiful sidewalk which is there today. We took a cab to Colaba and I did not bother haggling about the fare, I just sat there, pretended not to know that he took us for an entire tour of South Mumbai before finally entering Colaba Causeway. We got a bit lost there looking for a chocolate shop which is somewhere hidden near the Post Office, but when we could not locate it, we simply dashed off to the Taj and further to the Gateway of India.

Usually, I am so stuck in everyday life that there is no time for such frivolous adventures. I am too focused, too, not allowing myself to waste five minutes here and there. That is why it was so amazing to have N over.

Moving to India

Moving to India was not very difficult to me. I never thought much of it. If Mr. QuaintHeart had lived in Ireland, Iceland or Italy, I'd have moved there instead. But since he lived in India, that's where I went, too.
Not once did I question myself whether I could live here or not. It seems preposterous to ask such a question. Over a billion people manage, so it seems absurd that I should not be able to manage just as well.

Naturally some major adjustments had to be done, and maybe it was of a great advantage not to have read a single travel guide book. Such fear mongering as the rubbish they publish (such as about food and water in India being unfit for consumption) is not my cup of tea. Instead, I had read a lot about Indian religion, geography, history and politics and culture, and that is the knowledge I came here with. It was all theory, but it helped me to explain to myself the quirkiness of this patch of Earth.

That does not mean I came here and fit in immediately. I came here when I was very young and I had a whole suitcase full of ideals which I considered really important to my identity and my sense of self. It was painful to learn some of the lessons. For example, I have never before been much interested in conforming to every minute rule  in order to earn my place in a community. In QuaintCountry, I was a member no matter what I did. In India, I belonged to the out-group. I thought: well, if they don't love me, that is of no consequence to me. I shall remain true to myself. However, I did realize soon that relations here are so much more close-knit and it is more important to be a socially accepted member in order to integrate oneself.

It was hard. Hard to learn that women have a different status here. Hard to learn that one is judged so harshly based on flimsy grounds such as dress or the food I chose to eat. Hard to understand the difference between a value I can cherish in my heart and one that I can put on display outside.

I scoffed at Mr. QuaintHeart when he refused to take me out in a sleeveless top. I thought it was ludicrous to impose such rules on me. That was because I did not understand that our neighbourhood was extremely conservative and there were some not-so-nice shops around. In addition, I was quite unable to understand the gestures and tiny signals Indians give which would help me to judge a situation to be either harmless or tense.

I learn such things over time.

When I look back at my first months, I am sometimes appalled by my lack of understanding. Most of us consider ourselves to be open-minded and tolerant and culturally sensitive, but we not. I judged things I observed through my QuaintCountry spectacles, and it took a long time and an inner struggle to discard them in order to judge Indian realities through Indian eyes.

That does not mean I accept things without questioning them. It also does not mean that I am unable to decide between right and wrong. Or that I would put the stamp of approval on just about anything just because this is India and They Are Like That Only. No way. But it does mean that I have learnt the subtle difference between the things I have a right to change and can change, and the things that don't fall into this category.

I am sure that ten years down the line I shall look at my self of 2011 and laugh out loud at some of the ideas I hold today, but that does not scare me. I just goes to show that we all grow.

Meeting Mr. QuaintHeart

It's been almost a decade since I met Mr. QuaintHeart and instantly decided that he was the one. He is not the kind of product that sits on a shelve waiting to be picked up, so I was not all surprised to be faced with a minor obstacle in the form of a FaintHeart who could not quite make up her mind: To marry or not to marry Mr. QuaintHeart.

No such doubt presented itself to me. I moved swiftly and resolutely, eliminated my competition (with fair means!) and... the rest is history.

We were married two years later, having had to sit out a longish period of separation due to a shockingly bad labour market which would not allow Mr. QuaintHeart to move to Europe with me. It was a situation both of us found unbearable. One day I decided I would wait no more, packed my bags and simply moved to India, where we have stayed ever since.

About Mr. & Mrs. QuaintHeart

We are an intercultural couple. I come from QuaintCountry, a member of the former European East Block. Mr. QuaintHeart is originally from Delhi. We live together in Mumbai in the Western Suburb of QuaintTown together with Baby QuaintHeart and The Quaint Pet.

I have been a member in BlogCountry for many years and author a personal Blog in QuaintLanguage, my Mother Tongue. But I crave the anonymity of a Quaint Blog, which is why I decided to start over in order to be able to tell the real stories without fear of being exposed.

This is our story.