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[mostly written December 13, 1999]
We're here in Coimbatore okay. The first few days went very slowly, orienting ourselves to the neighborhood and all the different ways of doing things, and getting some of the basics set up. Amma will need some regular help to avoid breaking her back doing all the cooking and cleaning (no dish- or clothes-washer); we've been helping some, but haven't been and won't be here all the time. Appa seems happy, especially when we have visitors, and even when there's not, the TV has quite a lot more Tamil programming than in New Jersey.
E-mail is great, but so are physical letters! For that, or if you feel like dropping by :-), the address here:
[Irrelevant now, but if you really want to know it was on Venkataramana Road in R. S. Puram]
We do not yet have a phone (might soon, despite the typical 1-2 year wait, because this is a doctor's house.), but you can reach us at our neighbor's phone until then. If we don't get a land phone, we'll get a cell phone. They're nearly the same price (& receiving calls is free!), and time-wise you can walk into a store and walk out with one. Another reason why there is some popular support for privatization.
We've had some technology adventures, getting appliances installed (refrigerator, TV with cable, and a water heater for the wash room), also outlets sparking, fuses blown, power outages (scheduled and unscheduled), and tracking down an air pocket in the pipe to the water pump. Water flows from the city into a ground level tank every morning, and we run a pump to get it from there to a tank on the roof so that it will flow down out of our taps. Drinking water we get, like the rest of the immediate neghborhood, from a tap in front of our neighbors' house. A little more on that below.
The milkman (Tamil, paal karan) comes every morning around 6am, and again in the early afternoon. He rides a bicycle, with the tall milk can tied onto the rack in back of the seat. First he cruises up the street, ringing the bicycle bell, to alert his customers that he's coming. When he comes to our house, he comes inside the gate and up to the front steps (the first couple times he waited at the gate), ringing the bell more continuously. Usually I've been up already, and amma leaves a clean pot out for the purpose, which I bring out. He fills his cup from a spout at the bottom of the tank, and pours it into my pot. Then, before I have a chance to move (though after the first time I knew to wait), he returns the cup to the spout for a last little splash, and adds that to the pot as well. We share a smile and a head-waggle, and go on with our respective days.
Everyone knows that the milk gets watered down. Quality has in part to do with how little your paal karan does this. Prabhakaran, the young man who lives here also, has been trying to get amma to buy from a different paal karan, whose milk Prabha likes better. Not because of water I think, maybe just better cows. Amma just says "milk is milk." As far as I know the milk is straight from the cow's udder; because of that and the water, we always boil it before using. Everyone does this. Coimbatore's drinking water, on the other hand, is supposed to be the sweetest in India (Prabha says the best in the world :-), coming from the nearby Siruvani river, and most folks here drink it straight. We're still boiling it, just to be safe from bacteria unfamiliar to our immune systems. It tastes fine even after boiling, which generally makes water taste worse, so I'm curious what it tastes like right from the tap. I'll take a small risk some time before we leave and try it.
Last night I had the best sleep yet, from 9:something til morning, only waking up briefly a couple times. I remember a bunch of dreams, but I'll just share the last one. I was in some kind of meeting in a big, unfamiliar room, with Jey and I guess her mom too. Then the milkman's bell rang. I got up, grabbed a pot and went out (the big room turned out to be just off the living room of the house here) to get the milk. I saw that it was a different paal karan. He about half-filled his cup, and dumped it into my pot. Immediately, I noticed that it was rather watered-down. Actually, that's being generous; I could see the bottom of the pot clearly through the liquid. After an awkward pause, I blurted out, "Ithu thanni!" (this is water!). He didn't do much of anything, so I told him to wait a minute and called for amma.
She came out and expressed dissatisfaction. They talked in Tamil that I didn't catch, except one phrase of his in English, "milk is milk" :-). He seemed grumpy, but didn't fight it much, took the pot and dumped it back into his milk can. Just then I noticed the regular paal karan coming up to our house.
Then I fully woke up, hearing a bell, knowing that he was really here. Same milk, same smile.
Good morning.