Our New Place in Mysore
Sandra: I think Bill has covered the apartment search pretty well. Amazing amounts of time were wasted every day. We were always waiting for people to show up at every stage of the venture, guys who were supposed to meet us with keys who didn’t arrive, or who didn’t have the right keys or whatever. In India, it takes about 3 hours to accomplish anything that in North America would take less than an hour.
Our new living room. The big covered brown thing on the left is supposed to be a power supply to keep the fridge and a few lights burning during the frequent power outages. It never did work, except when we tested it.
And in spite of using lots of mosquito cream, I somehow manage to pick up about 3 new bites a day, don’t ask me how. I just keep praying none of them are malarial, but fortunately, malaria isn’t TOO common here.
Anyway, we finally arrived at this apartment building — it was the last one of the day. Mala, the landlady, was extremely friendly and helpful, and she told us this is actually her niece’s apartment. She doesn’t normally even show it, but I guess that she had a good feeling about us, and I really think the Lord inspired her to let us take a look at it. We sort of sensed right away that this was the one that He had picked out for us, and immediately Bill said this was the place he liked the best, by far. It really was an answer to prayer, especially because it was furnished, and we were starting to realize just how expensive it was going to be to have to buy a fridge, stove, and even the barest of essentials.
View looking east.
Although it’s certainly not furnished in the way WE would choose, and it’s delightfully very “Indian” (lots of reds, oranges and purples), it’s comfortable, clean, spacious, and even has drapes on most of the windows. Another VERY important aspect is, it has screens on the windows, and although they’re jalousies, MOST of them close (a few have broken panes of glass).
The view is superb (we’re on the 4th floor), the neighborhood is quiet and treed (for India), and we have a family of pigeons nesting on our kitchen balcony who are constantly cooing and fretting over the eggs. We also have a resident gecko who squeaks at night, but we haven’t seen him yet, except for his tiny droppings. Haven’t seen any roaches, just a few ants.
Giant bee hive outside the spare room window next to the kitchen.
However, there is a horrendous, gigantic, BEEHIVE hanging from the roof right over the window of the spare room (which, after Mala gets her stuff out of, we could use as a small office or study). Sometimes they buzz nastily on our kitchen screen door, but Mala has assured us that no one has been stung yet! The hive is several feet long, very fat, and black with bees. I saw the bees swarm yesterday — what a sight! The sky was black with them. Mala says they’ve tried everything possible to get rid of them, including fire and pesticides, but nothing works and they just keep coming back to build another hive. We just try to stay out of each others’ way – ha!
There are 2 bathrooms, one of which we use as a wash room. In Indian bathrooms, when you take a shower, the whole room becomes your shower. The water sprays all over the place, and after your shower, you just mop up the floor with a swabbing rag, wipe the water off the toilet, and that way your floor gets a daily cleaning at the same time.
There is only a screened outside door for the kitchen, but the inside door has a big latch and lock for security at night.
Washing large items, such as sheets and heavy towels, is a problem, however, because we haven’t a washing machine and the “girl” who is available for maid work is a very tiny creature who can’t handle big, heavy wet items. So we’re thinking we’re going to have to take our large washing to a man in the neighborhood who does ironing and, hopefully, some washing, too.
We have 2 bedrooms, blessedly furnished. In India, there’s no such thing as closets, so we would have had to buy, in addition to everything else, huge wooden wardrobes to hang clothes in. There’s a large living room/dining area, sparsely furnished but that’s fine. The kitchen comes with a little counter-top 4-burner gas stove and a smallish fridge that ices up too quickly (the freezer door is off its hinges and needs repair). And, Indian-style, everything is very open-air; therefore, there is a screen door, but no regular door, so a great breeze blows constantly thru the kitchen, and in the mornings it’s sometimes almost too cool at first, but things warm up quickly.
This place has terrific ventilation, plus every room has a ceiling fan. Floors and walls are all concrete, so you can’t hang anything on the walls, and what little IS hung, such as towel racks, are mostly hanging precariously by giant nails that have fallen out of the cement and just sort of stuck back in again, because nothing stays long drilled into cement.
Our apartment from the outside. Sandra is standing on the balcony of our bedroom. Living room balcony is on the right.
We have purchased a cheap little crumby toaster oven, but it’s good enough for our purposes, and a few utensils, dishes, buckets for washing floors and stuff, as well as cleaning supplies, soap, detergent, etc. Fortunately, there is a large “supermarket” about a 10 minutes walk from here, that carries almost everything you need. I even bought a scale!
The main bedroom has a small balcony, as does the kitchen and living room. A train runs somewhere very nearby, several times a day, but it doesn’t bother us. . . I’ve always kinda liked hearing a train. The 3 major religions are also represented within a few blocks: there’s a Hindu prayer hall just down the street, a Roman Catholic church, and a Muslim mosque — I was so surprised to be awakened at dawn by the call to prayer from the minaret — I absolutely love hearing that, at least 3 times a day.
Well, here it is the next evening, Friday night: our first Sabbath in India. I had some other “firsts” since I wrote last night, too.
I got up in the middle of the night and switched on the light in the kitchen and beheld the biggest water bug (palmetto bug) I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen many in my lifetime. As I stood there gasping and dithering about whether I should even try to swat him with a shoe, he scurried away under some boxes. So now I know he’s out there, and I will live in terror – ha! Bill also killed a large one in the spare bathroom, hiding under a bucket, but he wasn’t the same one.
Also last night, the pariah dog that Mala keeps as a “guard” dog, decided to go berserk and started barking at the gate at 3 am, at absolutely nothing. Where the night-watchman was, I have no idea, but that stupid dog just would not stop barking, and it went on and on without letup. Finally Bill got so fed up, that he went into the kitchen, got a pot of water, went out on the balcony, and threw it at the dog, which stopped him in a surprised mid-yelp. It worked!
Then, this morning, I awoke to see masses of bees swarming against the bedroom window, and the balcony was covered in dead bee bodies, for some reason. And finally, this afternoon, I saw 3 monkeys walking along the wall of the building next door — 2 very large adults, and a baby one. That was fun. And, just now, we had a power failure, which wiped out the previous paragraph. I’m glad I saved up until that, at least.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
