Adoption Update: Papers Resubmitted

Sunday night, I caught an overnight bus to Pondicherry. We still had not really managed to initiate the legalities of adoption – our previous attempt had been rendered null and void as we later discovered that there were certain errors in the petition that would have to be corrected. A month had passed and we were still trying to correct and resubmit the petition.

The task of getting the papers back from the court, making corrections concerning my employment status (now unemployed) and income (now nil), and resubmitting the papers had finally fallen on me. Amit had an important(ish) meeting (teleconference) that he was optimistic of attending from home in the afternoon; besides, I think he’d had just about enough of traveling for the moment.

Monday morning, after a sleepless night being bounced around on bad roads, I was dropped at Pondicherry bus stand at the ungodly hour of 4.30 a.m. I spent three hours sitting in the bus stand, surrounded by recumbent figures sprawled all over the floor, as is to be expected in the wee hours of night in any bus stand anywhere in India. I had my book for company (A Crack in the Edge of the World, by Simon Winchester), so I wasn’t bored, but I wasn’t happy about the volumes of foul tobacco smoke (beedi, at that, which is unfiltered and therefore particularly foul, even in comparison to ordinary cigarettes) that went up my nose and down into my lungs – way more passive smoking that I’ve done in many years combined.

At 7.30, having had idlis and coffee at the local shop for breakfast, I walked out of the bus stand and started searching for the court house. Searching, because the last time I went there we had gone directly from the hotel. Not being very familiar with the geography of Pondicherry, I decided that the simplest thing to do would be to get to the hotel, and then navigate from there for the courthouse. Thanks to this decision, I got an impromptu walking tour of Pondicherry, for more details of which, see below.

Having reached the courthouse at 8.30, I called the lawyer, who said she would come by 9.30. She finally turned up at 9.45, shortly after the judge arrived. She succeeded in locating our case papers and getting the clerk to return them to us, but there was no time to make the changes before the judge was seated at 10. I was rushed into the courtroom, my papers were passed up to the judge, he called Amit’s name, looked up and saw me, nodded, passed the papers back down and then I was ushered out of the courtroom. After waiting a few minutes, our papers returned to the court clerk in the back room, and it was now that the lawyer set about making the requisite corrections. I signed half a dozen times, and by 10.30 it was all done.

I took an auto back to the bus stand, boarded a bus to Chennai, alighted at Guindy, called for a cab, grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant, located my cab, got dropped at the airport, caught my flight back, spent an hour stuck in evening rush hour traffic, and was home by 7.30. The effort hardly seemed worthwhile for the sake of 30 minutes and half a dozen signatures… but at least I can now describe any of the major roads of Pondicherry.

My Walking Tour of Pondicherry

• Exited bus stand in front of the pretty pink foot overbridge, turn left.
• 150 m on, passed Mass Hotel on left
• Road splits, HTV take the high road, but it meets again at the next intersection
• Took a brief and unnecessary detour on to cuddalore road; saw railway crossing, thought, “That way lies our agency,” turned back
• Continued on previous path, keeping bus station behind me; passed botanical garden, ornate gate looked inviting
• Saw a familiar-looking left turn and took it – turned out to be Anna Salai; walked the length of it (seemed like a lot) and it eventually turned right on to SV Patel Salai, right in front of Anandha Inn, the hotel we stayed at last time. “Good, I should be able to find my way from here,” I thought.
• Turned right at next intersection off SV Patel Salai, on to MG Road (mistake).
• Walked down it until I met Jawahar Lal nehru at right angles, turned left.
• Entered the French Quarter and was tempted to take a right on one of the inviting-looking streets, but didn’t know which one or where it would land up, so kept going straight till i ran out of road. Then took a right, found a lovely garden in front of me, did a little zig-zag to the left and found the sea – at last!
• Took a right turn onto the promenade, Gaubert Avenue, walked on for another few minutes, found the courthouse.

Time taken – 1 hour

What I should have done – or rather, what the auto did on return and charged me 30 bucks for…

• Get on to Rue De Bussy (Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg) and keeeeeeep going straaaaaaight till you come to the pretty pink foot overbridge in front of the bus stand

time taken – 10 minutes

Well, you live and learn.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I’m not sure if my account of our trip to Pondicherry to file papers gave the impression of quite how rushed and hectic it was, but it really was. Amit was extremely tense about the whole process going off smoothly and without any further delays. I was only worried about managing the kids and keeping them happily occupied.

Our lawyer, for some reason, thought she was doing us a great favour by asking us to come and sign all the papers at her office on the morning of the filing. She apparently thought that the only alternative to this procedure was for us to come a day earlier, thus she was showing us maximum consideration by sparing us a day. She did not consider that we might actually have much preferred to arrive a day earlier and finish the work at leisure instead of being under such pressure. She also did not appear to have heard of or thought about the possibility of sending us either the actual documents or a draft of those documents by fax, snail mail or email beforehand, so that we could read or even sign the papers well before the date of filing.

Naturally, there were pages and pages of stuff to be signed by each of us, along with filling in our names and addresses in a couple of places. By the time it was all done, it looked like we hardly had enough time to get to the courthouse before 10 a.m. – and if we were late, that was one day wasted.

Amit asked the lawyer for a copy of the papers we were signing, and she flatly refused. Obviously, there was no time to make a copy at that time (it’s not as though her office even had a copying machine), but that was not her main reason for refusing. She said it was not required for us to have a copy at all!

How can that be? I’m signing legal stuff on stamp paper stating something or other, shouldn’t I at least have a copy of whatever it is I’m filing?

Amit, being nothing if not stubborn, insisted on photographing the documents with his cellphone, which he managed to do without making it unduly late. I tried to hastily scan through the pages – I wanted to be sure there wasn’t a line in there somewhere saying that we agreed to make over all our worldly possessions to the said lawyer, so help me god.

So, in some ways it wasn’t surprising that we missed it. What did surprise me was that Amit actually read the photographic copy of the entire document word for word during the drive back, and he still missed it (and he’s the sort who’ll catch “Foster Care” spelt as “Faster Care”).

It’s not as though what we missed was a tiny little typo error – no, there it was plainly stated that I, the joint petitioner, was currently employed with such-and-such company and drawing a monthly gross salary amounting to exactly so much. (And therefore financially empowered to look after the said children.)

This, on a petition dated 9th April, 2008.

When we had submitted the entire set of documents including our payslips to the adoption coordinating agency in Bangalore way back in April 2007, I was gainfully employed. By the time we got the twins home in September 2007, I wasn’t. This statement – which, by the way, occurred twice – in April 2008 was plain wrong, by well over six months.

The penny quietly dropped into my head sometime on Thursday morning, but even then I didn’t pay it much attention. It wasn’t until I discussed the matter with Amit late on Thursday evening that we both realized just how serious it could be. HOW could we have missed this? We both knew we had read this in the document, it had just not occurred to us that it was no longer true.

After much serious discussion and several frantic phonecalls, remedial measures were put in place. Our lawyer, who was plainly peeved at us not having pointed this out that morning (HOW??), agreed to stop the file in court, and one of us would have to dash down to Pondicherry, legally withdraw the file, make the corrections, initial them, and “appear” (if you can call it that) before the judge to re-submit. The only saving grace was that only one of us need go, which meant that Amit would have to do the dashing, while the kids and I stayed home.

Adoption Update – Filing the Papers in Court

We finally took the first step to legalising the adoption – filing the papers in court in Pondicherry.

Pondicherry is not an easy place to get to, if you’re traveling with little kids. The easiest would be to take an overnight train to Chennai, and from there a car (or bus) to Pondy. But, we had to be in Pondy by 9, and preferrably looking quite presentable by then, so that didn’t work for us this time.

Pondy itself also does have a railway station, but this is described by Lonely Planet as being of more use to the local goats than to people, so it didn’t appear very confidence-inspiring. There’s no airport at Pondy, so going by air would still necessitate changing to “surface” transport at Chennai.

I had optimistically booked 4 seats on the overnight bus to Pondy – but the sleeper reached Pondy too late, so it was a normal Volvo “seater” bus. The idea of holding the girls in our laps for the entire duration of the journey was frankly scary – I’m sure my lap-load would have slipped off my lap at some point.

So after way too much discussion and consideration, we decided that the best thing to do would be to hire a driver-driven cab and drive both ways.

Still, we made this decision at 2 p.m. And we had to leave by 4 in order to have something of the night left by the time we got there.

Now if you’re wondering why we left it so late to organize things, I have to add that it wasn’t entirely up to us. The lawyers in Pondicherry were on strike (no clue why) on Tuesday, and our lawyer said she would let us know by afternoon whether the strike would carry on the next day or not.

So, having received the all-clear from her around 1 p.m., we rushed around organizing and packing and were on our way by about 5.30.

The drive passed uneventfully and we reached Pondy at midnight. Then, it turned out there was a problem with the papers of the vehicle we were in, and at the Pondy border they refused to give our driver a permit for the vehicle. They allowed us to go into Pondy, at the risk of being caught and fined at any point. Great.

The next morning we had to be at the lawyer’s office by 9 a.m. Amit insisted on taking an auto, though it was only a short drive away. After signing a whole lot of paperwork, we got into the lawyer’s car and went to the family court, reaching there a little before 10. Apparently there’s only one Judge at this court and he sits at 10. After waiting in a hot, crowded, small hall outside the hot, crowded, small room that was the court, the Judge came, a bell rang, our case was submitted, and Amit was called. By the time he could push his way through the crowd to the front of the room, with me tagging along a little behind him, it was time to turn around and head back out. Our appearance was done! The Judge hardly glanced at him and wouldn’t even have been aware of my existence. If we had sent in someone off the street to appear as us, he wouldn’t have noticed.

We waited for our lawyer to return. Waited, waited, and waited some more. The weather was hot and sultry and the kids finally turned cranky. From the window in the hall, I could look across the road to the endless sea thrashing against the rocks on Pondy’s Marine Drive. Unfortunately there’s no beach here – only a long, straight stretch of coast, with a black, rocky shore, and a higher, sandy promenade, and the road right next to it. No trees, no shacks, no shade. Still, at least it was out and away from this crowded hall – it certainly couldn’t be any worse than being indoors.

I took the girls and crossed the road, leaving Amit to wait for the lawyer and call me if I were needed. At first, the girls were delighted to be on the “beach” – they sat in the sand and played quietly by themselves. After about 20 minutes, Tara suddenly started howling and wouldn’t stop. I decided she must be hot and thirsty – we had forgotten the water bottle in the hotel in the last-minute rush to leave. Walking down that beach and crossing the road to find a snack bar that sold water was really difficult with one girl wailing and the other wandering around smiling and picking up dirty ice-cream sticks. Once I got some water into all three of us, I saw Amit standing across the road, scowling, cellphone in one hand – my phone was ringing, but my hands were too full to permit me to answer it.

A little after 11, we were back in our hotel room, cooling off. By 1.30, we were all bathed and fed and ready to leave on the long drive back. Seven hours later, we were home. Though it had been a hectic trip, I have to say that on the whole the girls handled it very well, apart from the one hour at the courthouse. It was probably the two of us who were more tired out by it.

The next trip will be after a month or so.

A Long Way to Go

The twins have been with us for over four months. Someone I met recently who had adopted a baby girl in December 2006, told me that the paperwork for their adoption had been completed in four months. They adopted from Belgaum (Karnataka), and had to make one trip back there to complete the process.

For us, adopting from Pondicherry (Tamil Nadu) the process seems to be completely different. First, we were told, we could not even file for adoption until we had completed three months of foster care. I wonder why that is: do they want to give adoptive parents time to change their minds?

Now, after about six weeks of daily phone calls, they have sent the papers to the lawyer, albeit missing one signature. Once the lawyer okays the paperwork and obtains the missing signature, we can actually file the case in the court. That might – with luck – happen next week or so.

The lawyer gave us a rough overview of the entire process. The details are cumbersome, but the summary is that it will involve at least five or six trips to Pondicherry and will stretch over seven or eight months, barring any disruptions to the schedule such as a lawyers’ strike, which are quite likely to occur.

Worse, for every trip to Pondicherry, both parents are required, which means, in our case, that all four of us will have to go. I wouldn’t mind just travelling to Pondicherry and spending a couple of days there; the problem is that most of the time will be spent waiting at the lawyer’s office or at the court – and that will be tough on the kids.

Well, you gotta do what you gotta do. At least by the end of it, we’ll be so used to travelling with the kids that family holidays will seem less like trouble and more like a vacation.

Why Adopt?

Why not?

When we were wondering whether to adopt, and later as we discuss the matter with others, we came up with a whole lot of questions or issues around adoption. Some of them were very relevant to either one or both of us; others were not important; and some lines of thought advanced by other people left us frankly astonished.

In no particular order:

• Gender
• Age at the time of adoption
• Age at the time of being given up for adoption
• Looks and complexion
• General health – height, weight and overall development
• Diseases, disabilities, or congenital conditions, if any
• Date and time of birth or assumed date and time of birth; sun sign
• Marital status or nature of relationship between biological parents
• Reason for being given for adoption
• General health of biological parents – predisposition to genetic diseases or conditions
• Health of biological mother during pregnancy – exposure to/use of tobacco, alcohol, other substances
• Economic status of biological parents
• Caste of the biological parents
• Religious affiliations of the biological parents
• Moral and ethical values of the biological parents (why on earth should this matter? At least I’ve not yet heard anyone wanting to know the political affiliation of the biological parents…)
• Whether or not the biological parents were vegetarians

There might be other, more arcane considerations: the kind of car the biological parents drive, or whether they prefer Pepsi or Coke. For Amit and me, only the first six points mattered at all, and of them it was only the matter of diseases, disabilities, or congenital conditions that could be a gating factor. While we did consider and discuss the other five factors, and have some preferences on them, we did not consider turning down an option on any grounds other than health. Yet, I can understand other people being concerned about some of the other issues as well, and I can understand many of these being important enough to be gating factors for other people.

All said and done, it is not an easy decision, and finally there’s only one motivation that is strong enough to override all the considerations against adoption: the fundamental desire to have a child. People have often said to Amit and me what a noble thing we have done by adopting our kids; but they completely miss the point. In our case, as in many cases, there is nothing “noble” about it. We adopted purely out of the desire to have kids – a selfish desire, if ever there was one. Once that desire is strong enough, it no longer matters whether the child was born out of wedlock, whether she was born to people of a different religion or caste, or whether she is a saggitarian, a taurean or a scorpion. Nothing matters except that she will be yours and you will finally be a parent.

More About the Twins

It’s great to see the twins growing up. To me, it seems that they have already become taller in the three weeks that they’ve been with us. Mrini is now walking with great flair – and falling, frequently, with almost as much flair. She doesn’t seem to mind the falling. She loves to walk off the mattress – which is on the floor, luckily – without realizing that there’s a step involved, so she just walks straight off it and inevitably lands on all fours. The problem is that she tries to do this with the steps in the park as well, and those are quite high, not to mention the stone ground below.

Tara is still not walking – she totters around if somebody’s holding her by both hands. She’s not developed as much of a will of her own as Mrini has either – Mrini, by the second or third day of walking, was not content to allow me to lead her this way or that, she had a clear and certain idea of where she wanted to go and she would lead me.

That said, though, Mrini remains the one who is more keen for parental attention and approval – she consciously avoids actions that will get her into serious trouble, and often stops what she’s doing and goes looking for mama. Tara, on the other hand, doesn’t seem disturbed by the prospect of upsetting the parents, and doesn’t bother if nobody is around to pay her attention – she will sit for hours (well, large fractions of an hour, at any rate) with some particularly fascinating object and babble happily to it without needing any further stimulation, approbation or attention of any sort.

It’s great to watch them when either one has discovered some new item to play with – it could be a pen, a dish from the kitchen cabinet, or an insect on the floor. One, say Tara, will get hold of it and explore it thoroughly, while the other watches with envy. Then comes the first attempt to grab the object. If Mrini is grabbing, she sometimes scores on her first attempt, but Tara, being the politer of the two, rarely does. Tara does often manage to defy Mrini’s first attempt to gain possession of the treasure – she screams and turns away, moving it out of reach. Tara being smaller and unable to stand unaided, has to concede certain advantages to Mrini and usually the object will not stay long in her hands. Once Mrini has the object, Tara might just watch for a few minutes before trying to get it back. Her attempt to get it back might meet with success if Mrini has had enough time to explore it thoroughly; sometimes Mrini goes so far as it hand it back to her, surprising all of us. Sometimes, Tara just loses interest – or pretends to – and goes off to find other items of interes.

The other day, I was in the kitchen in the morning, and all was silent in the dining room. I was beginning to get suspicious when the doorbell rang. Answering, I found our downstairs neighbour, holding two of the twins’ toys in her hand. They’d found out that they could have great fun by tossing their toys through the railings of the balcony!

A few things I have managed to teach them already. They know that all their toys are in the toy box and sometimes, if I ask them nicely, they will go and fetch one particular item from the box and hand it to me. They know the car, the ball, and the picture book by name. I have had some success in teaching them, once they have pulled all the toys out of the box, to put them back in. Mrini has even managed a transfer of technology to putting her shoes back in the plastic bag they belong in, and sometimes putting newspapers strewn all over the living room, back on the surface they ought to be on. The one thing they won’t put back yet, though, is all the kitchen dishes that they pull very noisily out of the kitchen cabinets about half a dozen times a day. I don’t really complain – it keeps them safely occupied for half an hour at a stretch, and it only takes me a couple of minutes to put it right.

Mrini, who is very proud of being able to walk, diligently practices walking indoors every morning. Around 9.30, with breakfast safely tucked away and bath time yet to come, she walks several times from the living room window, all the way to the washing machine, or to her room, and back, usually without falling down. Lately, she has realized that grown up people walk with shoes on, so once she’s done a few rounds bare foot, she pulls her favourite pink shoes out of the plastic bag and waves it around and yells at me to put it on. Then, she practices walking with one shoe. After a while, it’ll strike her that perhaps her other foot deserves a shoe as well, and she’ll promptly come and demand it – she’s apparently particular that only the matching shoe be put on the other foot. Unlike Tara, who is forever worming her foot out of her shoes, Mrini rarely takes off her shoes once I put them on her.

Mrini has also discovered the game of fetch. It’s almost the same as it is with dogs: the adult throws a ball (or a dinky car) and Mrini goes and fetches it, so that the adult can throw it again. Tara, who is the epitome of laziness, watches it and laughs and thinks, if Mrini is going to do all that work, why on earth should I make any effort at all?

Mrini has developed a few fears in the past three weeks. First, she displayed a mild but typical case of separation anxiety, being quite uncomfortable if I left the house even though Amit was around. Then, she developed a fear of the sound of planes flying over our flat – which occurs with such boring regularity that a genuine phobia of it would make life altogether unbearable for her and everyone else around. That fear extended to motorcycles being started in the parking lot below, then it suddenly faded and disappeared.

Amit had bought the twins a colouring book and some crayons, but all the twins wanted to do was to eat the crayons, so I put them away in a safe place and just entertained them with the black-n-white pictures in the colouring book instead. Mostly it was pictures of cartoon people, but there was one picture of a cartoon cat as well. I called it Pat’s Cat (it was a Postman Pat colouring book) and showed it to the twins a couple of times along with other pictures in the book. All of a sudden last night, Mrini saw the cat and started making very alarmed half-shrieking sounds. If we took the book away, she stopped, but then she would fetch the book out, find the cat picture and start making the alarmed sounds again. We watched her with amusement for a while, then distracted her with other toys. After a solid five minutes of distraction, she went to the toy box, pulled out that book, opened it to the cat page and started getting all agitated again.

Anyway, we put them to bed eventually, though I half expected her to wake up at night yelling due to disturbing dreams of Pat’s Cat. She didn’t, thankfully, but what she did was to wake up in the morning, go straight to the toy box, pull out the book, find Pat’s Cat and start shrieking all over again. Is that some memory or what? Strangely enough, by the time she had got breakfast down the hatch, she hadn’t forgotten the cat, but was finding it less scary already.

And so it goes – never a dull moment.

Yes, Twins!

We got our babies! We drove back from Pondicherry yesterday afternoon. It was all relatively smooth sailing, medical tests were all clear and the girls took to us without too much fuss. They’re sleeping for the moment, but it’s time I went and woke them up for dinner. I don’t think I’m going to be getting much time on the computer in the coming days, but will try to post some photos eventually. Thanks for all the best wishes!

Twins? TWINS?!

There’s no point going on about it, but the fact remains that every time we see kids – and we see kids every day, every where, damn it! – I think of how nice it would be to have our own, and I wonder when it’s ever going to happen and whether it’s ever going to happen. Life goes on, I don’t get all depressed and blue, like I used to, but I still think of it and it still pricks me, every day.

We had heard that it might be easier (read, quicker) to adopt from Calcutta, so with great hopes we approached a well-reputed agency over there… but after meeting my father-in-law three times and Amit once, they said, “Sorry, we don’t really encourage out-of-state applicants. Come back in January. Or don’t.”

We were thinking, vaguely, of trying yet another agency in Calcutta, but without putting our hearts into it. I thought Bangalore was our best hope and it looks like being a long wait.

Then, we got a call. They’ve got twins! In Tamil Nadu. Are we interested?

You bet we are!

It’s true, they’re 13 months old, so we have already missed the first step, the first word and all that. They’re probably already rattling away entire sentences in Tamil. But, if we get them, we’ll have them the rest of our lives at least, won’t we? Even if we’ll have to jump straight into the potty training part, without any of the cute, cuddly, waddling around on all fours part. (I hate when people tell me how lucky I’ll be to miss out on the long nights and the early months. I really don’t think missing out on the teeniest bit of it, however tiring, is “lucky” and if people think it is, they should try it, before they say it.)

Anyway, so, twins. That means two. Girls. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up – it’s too early to say anything and lots of things could go wrong… I shouldn’t be declaring it to the world at large right now… it’s like telling everyone you’re pregnant the morning after the night before. But, hope and anguish are fighting a pitched battle inside me, and I can’t keep quiet about this right now.

I wish Amit weren’t such a staunch atheist… crazy (and corny) though it sounds, I’d be happier if I knew there were two of us praying for this to work out.

Naturally, I’ll keep you all posted.

Adoption Update – Home Study

Adoption update: The home study was yesterday. The social worker came and quizzed us about our lives, right from place of birth to current income and everything in between. She wanted to know about every job either of us had ever had (and believe me, I’ve had LOTS) and everything we’ve ever studied (I seem to have studied lots as well, all things considered). She took a good two hours over all this, and ended with a quick guided tour of the premises, that had been scrupulously tidied up in anticipation – so much so that even all the diwan covers had been changed and washed.

We won’t know whether we passed, or what grade we got. I guess we did ok.

She warned us not to expect anything in a hurry – it could likely take a year or more. It feels like we’ve just been told we’re pregnant, but with a longer and less predictable gestation period than most people. At any rate, she didn’t completely dismiss the possibility of twins.

She suggested that we get in touch with adoption agencies in other states as some states have fewer parents, more babies, and that can speed up the process enormously. We got on the phone right away – Calcutta, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi. The latter two didn’t answer their calls, and the former two both tried to dissuade us from registering with them. Anyone would think they were being forced to give away their own babies, they are that protective. Oh well.

Both families were brought up to date, and both seemed highly optimistic, I wonder why. It is strange how you hear of almost every couple that someone or other knows, who have adopted and got their baby home in three months or less. How???

Resigning myself to waiting one whole year, I’ve been wondering what I’m going to do with myself for all that time. Work seems too mundane to be worth the effort. In the meeting with the super-duper boss, various promises were made to find me a more exciting role in the company, but I don’t have high hopes of anything coming out of that. After due consideration, I set up a meeting with a super-super-duper boss, my boss’ direct boss who is about three levels away from the CEO. That’s going to be today and I’m not sure what I’m going to say or what effect it’s going to have, but I suppose I should say something.

Meanwhile, I fought a mini email battle (all very polite, of course) with my immediate boss in an open arena, and he was forced to concede. Now I have a mini victory, which entails a modest amount of work for about three months. Is that worth hanging on for? It looks like too little, too late.

Three weekends away from German class have cost me dear. I sound like a defunct machine gun, stuttering and sputtering but to no effect, when I try to speak in class. We have a “filter test” this weekend – a full mock exam, the outcome of which indicates who can consider taking the final exam, and who should quietly retire. As we have already discovered, the greatest difficulty is presented by the speaking test, and then by the hearing test. This filter test has me so worried, that I’ve taken to getting up early in the morning to revise – a practice I last engaged in about twenty years ago when I face the Xth standard board exams. Well, if I flunk out of it, I get my weekends back with almost immediate effect, which is great. If I pass, on the other hand, I have to sacrifice another two weekends for the finals. So, flunking has its advantages.

Evenings are spent trying to ignore Amit, who is trying to distract me from my archaeological pursuit. Studying after marriage looks like an extremely challenging undertaking… But one way or another, both Archaeology and German come to an end by end August. Should I continue? Or take a break?

I have promised (under duress, I must add) my violin partner that I will meet her for duets on Sunday afternoons – that’s a promise that I’m not going to keep. I have also promised (no duress) Chris that I will accompany her while she gets better acquainted with the steering wheel of her car on Sunday afternoons – that’s a promise I’d like to keep, though on the weekend past various things (includnig Deathly Hallows) got in the way.

One thing’s for sure – July has been and continues to be a hectic month. What will August and September bring?

Diwali

What I always liked about Diwali – apart from the good food, of course – was the lights. I liked the idea of decorating the house with candles or diyas. This was even before I knew the significance of it. What significance? Well, two that I am aware of. One, the houses were lit up in Ayodhya to welcome Ram & Co back from their sojourn in the jungle, where they had various adventures, the key message being the triumph of good over evil. Anyway, when the good trio came back to Ayodhya, the faithful citizens welcomed them back by lighting up their houses and in those pre-electric days they used lamp lights.

The second significance of the lights is to welcome in Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. There are various rituals to do with welcoming Lakshmi into the house: keeping doors and windows open, keeping all the lights on, doing puja, buying things, gambling (What? Why?? How??? Who knows!), spending money, making money etc. For my part, I like to keep the doors and windows open anyway to get some fresh air in, but on Diwali day this is not very effective because there’s no fresh air to be had anywhere in the entire sub continent, practically. Why? Because all of it is full of the fumes of fire crackers.
Why, oh why, do people have to light fire crackers? And why the ones that go Bang!? I hate things that go Bang!, and I hate them even more because most dogs get petrified and run and hide when things start going Bang! around them. Probably other animals aren’t too happy either, but dogs are definitely unhappy and, come to think of it, I don’t think babies are too thrilled about it either.

The festival of lights, people, lights. NOT the festival of noise. And I’m not even saying anything about pollution and asthma and deafness and blindness and fires and burns and child labor in making the fire crackers in the first place.

The thought of twisting bits of cotton and placing them in tiny earthenware bowls and filling the bowls with oil and lighting the cotton wicks and watching them burn is something so lovely and so peaceful. Much could be said of the alternatives to diyas: candles or electric lights. But candles are messy, they topple and leave wax all over the place, and besides, they go out at the slightest hint of a breeze. Diyas are much neater and much more cooperative, they often manage to keep burning even in a breeze. And electric lights – fairy lamps and long strings of bulbs that are festooned over the entire building – look very nice, but are missing the romance altogether. Without the effort of twisting the wicks and pouring the oil and then watching them burn in a bit of a breeze, fluttering but surviving, without that excitement, where’s the thrill of Diwali, the festival of lights?

Another thing that I think certainly doesn’t go with Diwali is bombs. Not firecracker bombs, I mean, but killer bombs, the kind that are left in shopping places to kill people. Why would anyone want to do that? Call me naïve, but I simply fail to understand why a person, any person, would get any kind of happiness or satisfaction out of killing innocent people who are out shopping to celebrate a festival – to celebrate life. All they are doing is buying gifts and sweets – small things to make ordinary people happy. Nobody is carrying out any social-religious-political agenda here. Why go kill them? The person who left the bomb there, and watched its destruction later on TV, he’s human too. Why did he (or she) do that? Why? I don’t understand.

Lights, and good food. That’s what Diwali is about. Why not just keep it that way?