WARNING - wordy post ahead, get your coffee!

WHEW! Its been 3 months and a day since I posted! That's a new record and one that should immediately disqualify me as a blogger worth my weight in salt!!!!


But no one has done that yet, so here I am.....and don't say I didn't warn you, but this is going to be one long post!


In 5 days we leave for Seattle from Bangalore. Almost exactly 6 years ago, we bid farewell to Seattle to come to Hyderabad......

........never thinking in our wildest dreams that 6 years later we would be working our way backwards.


We came here to India for a reason, and that was to take care of my in-laws. Both my husband and I are glad we did, glad we spent the last 5-6 years with them. We knew the weather would be unbearable, the traffic horrendous, the civic sense completely lacking, laziness and inefficiency rampant, politicians corrupt to the core...but we were coming here for a purpose, and reminding ourselves of that seemed to help tolerate all this over the past few years. But things have a way of turning out and suddenly last year we found ourselves in a position we just could not ignore....we no longer had the responsibility of looking after anyone, an old colleague of my husband wanted him to come work for him in Seattle, my son and son-in-law were in DC, my parents here were still in good health....and almost as easily as we made the decision in 2005 to return to India.....last November we made the easy decision of moving back to the US. The logistics of a trans-continental move never worried us...we'd done it once, we'd do it again!!!


As many of you know, where we go, our dogs go, and vice versa. The first thing I did way back in November after we made the momentous decision to move back, was to find out the quarantine rules for bringing dogs into the US. If there was even a one day quarantine, I was willing to give the whole idea up. Irrational I know, but I was sticking to it. And I was thrilled to find out that as long as they were vaccinated with all the proper shots and all the proper documentation, they could breeze right into the country. 

(On a side note: I plan to write a long detailed post on this process to help others in the same situation, cos I researched so much on the web, but could not find one comprehensive article on it. So folks with pooches - stay tuned). 

So now 4 months later, armed with vaccination reports, health certificates, doggie passports, quarantine no-objection-certificates, acclimation certificates and micro chip numbers, Lucy and Junglee are ready for Seattle!!!!

Am I ready for Seattle? I would be completely dishonest if I said I am sad at leaving Hyderabad. I have often compared India to a rough blanket.....it keeps you warm but irritates you. I have tried to adopt the "chalta hai" attitude (for non-Indians, its the "oh its alright" attitude), but that always eluded me. I have fought with all my neighbors...for burning leaves outside my window, for having carpentry work done late at night, for dumping trash on the street, for blocking my driveway with their chauffeur driven cars...! But I have enjoyed the hospitality of fellow Indians....total strangers crowding around you to help you in an emergency, people completely incapable of admitting they don't know the way to a place when you stop and ask, and giving you wrong directions instead, being able to borrow sugar and rice from my maid when I run out of it, having manicures and pedicures and haircuts at home, having almost everything brought to your home, the amazing food, watching people get knocked out of their motorbikes on the road and then getting up, brushing themselves off, shrugging and continuing on...only in India will this happen!

But I am so ready for Seattle. The 23 years I spent there were not for nothing.....I have some of my best friends there, I love the diversity of the population, I love the organic "Birkenstock" vibe, I love Seafair and the Space Needle and the ugly EMP, I love Starbucks, and nothing beats Seattle in the summertime. So I am thrilled to be heading back. 

The past couple of months has been an absolute frenzied whirlpool of planning, organizing, decision making, sorting, buying, selling, negotiating, late night scanning and e mailing, hair pulling and teeth gnashing....in no particular order!


And at the end of it, in addition to many new grey hairs, this is what we have...a house that is sold (after soooo much paperwork)  in Hyderabad......

another house that is bought in Seattle (yes, you read right, we bought a house online AND unseen.....for a week straight we were up from 2am to 5 am signing, scanning and emailing purchase agreements to our agent in Seattle)!!!

a 40' container of our precious cargo on its way (as I write) to the US of A......

2 doggies trying to adapt to their new homes........big plastic crates...... 

A living room that went from this.....

to this.....

As sorry as I am to leave this house, which was a labor of love for my husband and me, I am excited to start life anew. A new house is like a blank canvas.....so its waiting for me to add my brush strokes to it and make it a home. People have asked me over the last couple of months how I can even leave my home? And I say, its easy - after all what makes it a home are the people (and pooches) who live in it, and the things of beauty I surround myself with. And thanks to efficient airlines, lack of quarantine laws, moving companies and the Internet, I am able to take everything I need to make my house in Seattle a home. A house is just the physical thing that "holds" the things I love in one place. 

So speaking of things I love, what better excuse to buy some lovely Indian linens and furniture than a move to the US??? So very wisely, when my husband was immersed in some sort of excruciatingly painful bank work or real estate transaction which had his complete attention, I would brazenly suggest we should buy this or that...you know...cos we'll never find something in Seattle for this price!!! And almost always his answer - cos he was so preoccupied - would be "yes"!!! I won't list all the things I bought - you'll get to see them in pics after I settle down, but I just had to show you just a couple of beauties.......

This amazing 80 year old vintage wooden salt container from Preethi of Indyakaleidoscope....

and this absolutely lovely Katran chair I bought 3 days ago from Sahil and Sarthak , which got delivered as the packers were packing! 

So now the dust has all settled - literally and figuratively, the dogs are somewhat happy in their crates, (one is, one isn't), 4 large suitcases are packed with enough things to keep us going for 2 months till our container arrives, and our hearts and minds are filled with lots of cherished happy memories in this home and we look forward with great excitement and anticipation to returning back to another home.

Before I sign off for a week or so, I must thank all those loyal and faithful readers who didn't abandon S and S when there was no post forthcoming....in fact, they continued to visit daily looking for one and told me how much they were missing them. So thank you to all of you....it's because of that, that I am able to muster up the strength (at 10.15pm tonite at the tail end of 3 very exhausting days) to write this post  I promised I would before I left India.

And one last request from you all...please pool together your collective chi and good wishes and energies....and hope my 2 little babies, Lucy and Junglee, make it well across the seas in the cargo cabin below the aircraft :(, and emerge from their crates at Seatac airport, with wet noses and wagging tails!!! 

I'll be back blogging, hopefully at my usual pace, once I settle in Seattle! Now off I go to do my final packing....bye!

The Hyderabad I knew....

It’s been almost 5 years since I left USA

For 23 years I had been away

And then we decided to come back to stay

In this city of culture and history and pearls

The city where I'd spent a good many years

But it seems to have lost all its beauty and charm

The crowds and pollution are cause for alarm

At every street corner that I can recall

Now stands a beast of a new shopping mall

Wide open spaces that were commonly seen

Have been transformed by developers hungry for green

Into hodge podge apartments packed like sardines

It was a city of Nawabs and the Salarjung

Of raven haired damsels and heroes unsung

The Moguls, Nizams, the Qutb Shahis

Charminar, Golkonda and the Baradari

Where you could almost hear the dancing girl

Taramati in her devilish dervish whirl

But these magnificent signs of a once glorious past

Have turned into eyesores and are decaying fast

Now spoilt and ruined beyond repair

The paint is peeling the walls are threadbare

Except for graffiti etched in so deep

By some loutish bloke or senseless creep

(I love you Saroja marry me your Sandeep)

Tenacious climbers spreading their branches

On the seven old tombs and their seven arches

And smoke and fumes of this modern city

Blacken the sandstone of antiquity

There’s litter now, the beauty is lost

Frito Lay chips and Kit Kat wrappers tossed

By people with money who vacation out west

Who clearly don’t know how to protect their best!

The signs of progress are all around

And all day you hear construction sound

Pounding and hammering well after hours

We’ve argued and pleaded with all of our neighbors

Laborers sweating, living mouth to hand

The women work, children play in the sand

The sun beats down on their sari covered heads

Their bodies are tired, oh to sleep on the bed!

80 rupees they earn as their daily wage

While their owners browse the Page 3 page

Hoping the photographer captured them at the party

Hosted by Mrs. Glam Socialite Lady

Ornate homes with pillars and portals

Vastu compliant for the wealthiest mortals

(“Is the master bedroom on the Southwest

The Italian cooking range facing east?

I’ll have to start planning my house warming feast”)

And high rise apartments of concrete and glass

Beckoning the NRI’s who moved back en masse

With  cutting edge names like Mantri Celestia

And Aliens Space station and Rainbow Vista

(Mildew Apartments is luxurious too

but realizing their folly, it got changed to Mild Dew)

Promising you all your Bay Area comforts

Like centralized gas and smooth tennis courts

And telecom systems and 24/7 security

You won’t need to leave, it’s a self contained city

And on the 27^th floor the air is clean 

No mosquitoes, all you’ll see is manicured green

But they forget to mention that in half of a year

The plaster may crack, little lines will appear

And the windows will warp and the toilets may leak

The fans will start humming and the faucets will squeak

You call up the plumber, the painter, the mason

He says “we’ll be there” and you say “hurry, hasten”

And the clock keeps on ticking and the seepage gets worse

And you rant and you rave and you swear and you curse

Cos no one ever said when you left the USA

That in this glorious city nothing moves before midday!

Then finally just as the sun starts to set

The painters appear with white paint and bucket

After sanding and scraping they repaint the plaster

You pay them, they leave, they have fixed the disaster

But then suddenly your eye falls on the windowsill

The white of the paint is now on the black grille

So the painters come back saying “Sir don’t you worry,

a little touch up, we’ll be done in a jiffy”

And just as you feared by the time they are done

The wall now has traces of ob-si-di-an

(You wish you could lay your hands on a gun!)

There are Internet problems and telephone glitches

Power outages and exploding switches

Online cash transactions that stop in mid air

So you stop and you wonder – did you pay that airfare?

Price stickers that stay on and refuse to peel

Snack packets where you have to blast open the seal

Juice and milk cartons sealed with a tab

Which breaks off in the middle so you give it a stab

Paper towels that will disintegrate when wet

Its maddening and it gets me terribly upset

Faulty appliances, rusty nails

A sorely lacking attention to detail

But by now you have learned not to take any chances

And you learn to “adjust” to these annoyances

42 degrees Celsius 30 in the night

That’s 107 and 86 Fahrenheit

Summer in Hyderabad is March April May June

Don’t even dare to step out after 12 noon

Leaves curl and shrivel your skin starts to dry

Nothing to stop the sun blazing the sky

Even sugar cane juice, lemon flavored cold water

Will not quench your thirst or make you less hotter

The AC’s get turned on, desert coolers get filled

Mango and Pineapple juices get chilled

You don’t want to eat your appetite is killed

The streets become bare from noon until six

Except for the stray dogs swarming with ticks

Circling the trash cans hungry for picks

And then they fill the night air with their barks

Cruising the street like the Jets and the Sharks

The only creatures that seem to survive

Are lizards and roaches, they breed and they thrive

And barefoot children not a care in the world

The streets are their playground they swing from the tree

The ice cream man goes by they look wistfully

The dust swirls around and comes in thru the doors

It settles on counters, your skin and your pores

It clogs the air filters and coats the glass table

You pull out your duster with the US Swiffer label

Each disposable cloth lasts a week the box boasts

But one day of dusting turns it to dark toast

Cos the Hyderabad dust so black and so grimy

Turns the cloth into shreds in one single day

As the evening approaches and you think to step outside

The temperature has lessened you’ll no longer be fried

Then you hear the familiar sound of the DDT truck

Spewing white spray for mosquitoes run amok

So you run back inside you beat a hasty retreat

Cos you know when it comes hurtling down the street

That the fumes meant to kill those annoying gnats

Will kill you instead, yes it is a known fact

And as if the city is not polluted enough

The Municipal workers who fill up the troughs

With debris, yard waste and other trash items

Set the whole pile on fire it’s an easier system

(Why bother with compost, recycling and reuse

when this is so quick? Its an easy excuse)

And the smoke fills the air and spreads into our home

It chokes me and gags my reflexes and then some

While the authorities in charge have so careless become

The traffic situation is equally treacherous

Civic sense is lacking, the driving atrocious

Buses, then vans, then cars and then scooters

Autos then pedestrians, that’s the pecking order

Red light is stop, green light is go

That’s what they told us and that’s what we know

But here in this city, the rules are all twisted

As green turns to red they rev up their speed

Before red turns to green they’ve zoomed off ahead

The cops are too lazy they turn a blind eye

They’re too busy sipping on Irani chai

And people like us who follow the rules

Are left waiting at lights, looking like fools

If you slow down your car to let someone go

You’ll disturb his rhythm and upset his flow

He is so used to dodging and avoiding traffic

You’ll just throw him off by being altruistic

Then there are speed bumps that crop up overnight

Built almost like Mount Everest in height

If by chance you happen to zip over them, Pouf!

It’s likely you could be tossed right thru the roof

The concept of sidewalk just does not exist

And if there is one it’s full of cyclists

Crossing the road is a hot potato

And sometimes, you’ll laugh now, I have used an auto

To get from one side of the street to the other

I did this one time along with my mother

Then there are times you are in a hurry

To get to your meeting or airport, you scurry

Only to find out the cars have been halted

Lorries diverted, pedestrians stopped

So that one of the many corrupt politicians

Can cruise thru the streets in his armed Suburban

And if you ever get sick and are in an ambulance

God help you cos you don’t stand a chance

No one will move, no one will behave

You’ll be stuck in the traffic and go straight to your grave

The new six lane freeways are pretty snazzy

The Outer Ring Road and the PVR highway

to the Rajiv Gandhi airport at Shamshahbad

(Rated 5^th best  in the world I might add)

You fly over the city in the pre-paid cab

But the view below you is awfully drab

Houses and tenements in sad disrepair

So close to each other there’s no room to spare

Shops sharing walls to sell liquor and beer

The same walls that say “do not pass urine here”

Electricity power and TV cable cords

Dangerously bunched up power hazards

Children on rooftops with no parapets

Flying their kites and white paper jets

Each trying to win with glass coated maanja

(All the shops have it now, its imported from China)

Cafes crowded with people shelling out money

To sample the famous Hyderabadi biryani

Above all this squalor are hoardings and billboards

Distractions meant to take your mind off the roads

For new shopping meccas and jewellery sales

Kalaniketan wedding mall, exhibitions and melas

NRI villas and gated communities

With golf course sized gardens and other amenities

And far away in the hazy distance

You see the majesty and grandeur that once was

Mosques and minarets dotting the skyline

Now dulled and decayed in sorry decline

And in the midst of all this sorry ruin

You’ll still hear the call of the muezzin

But you leave this behind as you get to your flight

The airport is new all gleaming and white

Attendants to help you and porters to spoil you

Security will scan you and frisk you and stamp you

Landmark, McDonalds and Café Barista

Pizzas and croissants the food choice will tease you

The city gets forgotten, you head to your bay

As you get on your flight and go far away.

Poetry by me, pics by Lakshmi