The Un-House in Mysore
Bill: We were looking forward to seeing what was to be our new home. Sandra had found an ad on Craigslist posted by someone in the U.S. who owned a house in Mysore they wanted to rent. From the pictures, it looked pretty good (think, “Kodachrome” by Simon and Garfunkel). We contacted them and, to make a long story short, decided that we would stay there.
Old House in Mysore - Larger than the one in which our apartment was to be, but in similar condition.
The house turned out to be a big disappointment. We were told it has 3 bedrooms with 2 bathrooms, and it has. However, it is very old, there is one western-style toilet and no sink in that room, and the other is a squat toilet. The window openings have no screens, which would be acceptable except that the windows don’t close tightly enough to keep the mosquitoes out at night. The coldwater shower does not work, and a geyser (hot water heater that goes on the wall of the bathroom) will have to be installed if we want hot showers. There are many other problems but, bottom line: it is not acceptable for our purposes. We just want to relax and heal. We do not want to spend months fixing the place up to make it comfortable. We had expected to have to buy a fridge, stove, geyser and furniture, but the rest we aren’t prepared to do.
Unfortunately, we did not discover all this until after we had dumped out luggage and rushed out with the landlady to buy a mattress and bedding. It was as we were settling in that deficiencies began to manifest themselves. I must admit we were pretty discouraged and were wondering if it had been a mistake to come here.
Another big, old house in Mysore.
Sandra: Yes, the house we thought we were taking was indeed a disappointment. I would say it was grossly misrepresented to us. We could hardly believe how OLD the place was, and the million things that needed repairing IMMEDIATELY. The so-called bathrooms were a joke, especially.
However, it was kind of fun watching Mrs. Rao, the mother, in action. She was one of the biggest go-getters we’ve ever encountered — kind, friendly, aggressive, and amazingly energetic and totally competent at everything. In addition to everything else, she cares for her husband, who is a diabetic and has obviously had a stroke or something. In 5 minutes flat she went and changed from her housedress into her sari, put on her makeup, and was geared up to go and do battle for us at the local fabric/bedding store.
Off we walked at an extremely brisk pace (she asked if we were in the habit of walking a lot for health, and we could barely keep up with her), and when we arrived at the shop, she dived right in and started bargaining like crazy on a mattress. She held the guys working there in total awe, and every time they named a price, she countered it with something lower — she was always polite but pushy, and the guys were obviously amused. When we got the mattress taken care of, she started in again on bargaining for bedding, and soon we had a package put together of pillows, sheets, etc. Then, we all got into an auto-rickshaw with the bedding and the mattress tied onto the roof, while one of the shop boys jumped on his motorbike with a friend to follow us back to the house to carry the mattress up to the house.
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