Notes From the Holiday Period
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Sandra wrote a number of e-mails home, from which the following were extracted . . .
Bill got his hair cut in a little shop in our neighborhood, and the barber did a great job for about a dollar. Now every time we pass, he and his barber buddies all smile and wave.
You know, if we ever have to leave Mysore, I think it’s going to be very, very, difficult. We seem to be bonding to a lot of people here, and it really hit home yesterday. We decided to have lunch at the Park Lane Hotel, since we had to go downtown anyway. We went out to the auto-rickshaw corner, jumped right into a rickshaw, and away we went, smooth as silk — all the drivers outside our apartment building know us now, and they knew we’re wise to them and they can’t get away with cheating us or taking us out of our way, and that just makes things a whole lot easier. Now we can be friends.
We pulled up in front of the Park Lane Hotel, one of our favorite places to eat, right beside a stepping stone placed right there where you step out, to keep your feet out of the dirt. I felt like the Queen of England, alighting from my carriage – ha! As we paid the driver (without hassle!) another rickshaw pulled up behind him, and out jumped Ramesh. Ramesh is a rickshaw driver who has been friends with us since our first day in Mysore, when we were still living in the hotel. He has a boisterous, funny sense of humor and is always needling us to call him on his cell phone and take his rickshaw to someplace touristy, like Chemundi Hill. From the beginning, I put him off by saying, “Not today…but we promise, someday we really will.” For some reason, he found that amusing, and since then, whenever we run into him (which seems to be all over town), he always greets us with a hearty hello and a big smile, and he laughs and says, “Is today ’someday’?” And we always say, no, not today, but someday soon….He’s a sweet person, and very concerned about Bill’s cancer, and always asks if he’s getting better. Anyway, yesterday he leaped out of his rickshaw in order to give us a strong hand-pumping and to wish us a hearty, in-your-face Happy New Year.
As we turned to enter the doorway to the Park Lane, the chowkidar, who knows us by now, gave us a very warm greeting, too. Once inside, we always feel at home, and by now we know everybody who works there. First person we encountered was the head waiter, whom we’ve talked to so many times about his family, etc., and he seemed so genuinely happy to see us again that I thought he was going to kiss us. Then, here comes Swami, our “favorite” waiter, and our first real friend we made in Mysore. He breaks into smiles (he’s the one we gave a Christmas card to), and immediately ushers us to our “favorite” table, joking that he’s reserved it just for us. As we settle into our chairs, about 4 other waiters all come over and greet us — they all know us by now, and each one has served us at one time or another, in our many visits there. They are all so sweet and helpful. It all helped to reinforce the “being treated like a Queen” feeling that I’d experienced earlier.
Then, later, when we went over to the cloth shop to try to pick up our “stitching,” we chatted again with the husband and wife who run it, and whom we’ve also gotten to know. I had brought them each a good-quality Cadbury’s chocolate bar and a little New Year’s card, because they’ve both been so friendly and helpful to us, and the wife seemed almost overwhelmed, even though it was just such a tiny little token of our thanks. Then I started thinking of all the other people we’ve become friends with, who have all been so kind: Carolyn and Hossy (who, incidentally, gave me a big kiss on both cheeks the first time he met me, Italian-style); Tina (who sometimes cooks a pot of food for Bill) and her husband; Mala, our landlady; Carolyn’s daughter Juli and her husband Vivek; even a couple of the waiters at the Green Hotel who give us special service and always ask about how we’ve been and know exactly what Bill’s dietary needs are. Dr. Kumar is another sweet person; genuinely nice. We are very blessed, indeed, as we go into this New Year, with so many caring friends, and all the love and prayers of family and friends praying for us, especially for Bill’s health.
Seems as if one of the best gifts you can give a person here is to take their picture and give them a copy. When we had our keys made by the guy sitting on the street on a little box, we took a picture of him working on the keys while I sat and watched. Friday, we stopped by his workspace and gave him a reprint. The look on his face when we gave it to him was priceless — a mixture of awe and wonder and amazement that we would actually have taken the time and effort to have a reprint made of a key-maker. I’m sure he never thought he’d ever see us again. We also gave a flower-selling boy a copy of a photo we’d taken of him, and it was passed all up and down the market and inspected by everyone there before it finally reached him.
We spent the day at the Green Hotel again, and it was a very pleasant way to spend New Year’s Day. Then we walked all the way from there to downtown, arriving at the palace just in time to see the palace, the gates and the 2 temples on the grounds all lit up with thousands of little white light bulbs – they light it up every Sunday night after dark, and there’s a band playing and crowds of people taking pictures. We did the same — it looked like a fairy-tale. It was a nice day; very strong breeze blowing, but sunny, and the air temperature was quite cool and dry. This is definitely winter-time in South India, but winter ends around mid-Feb., and then it will start getting hotter and more humid. The monsoons start around mid-May and go till about the end of September.
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