Here we are in India

Villa 178

Here we are in India. Everything is so different from home. I thought I’d post a few pictures so you can see what we’re doing. This picture is our house here in Palm Meadows, a gated community in Bangalore. It is full of rich people and domestics. This is NOT the way most people live.

Lawn Ladies

Tom and Mona’s house, 178 Phase I Palm Meadows. About 3600 square feet (334 sq meters). This is only a medium sized house. There are many much larger. We have trimmed all the bushes and re-planted the vines since this picture was taken.

These ladies weed the grass and gardens. They crawl around in the squatting position and pull out weeds. Ugh, my back hurts just looking at them. The same ones come every week or 10 days. After them, a guy with a push mower does the grass. We also have a yard sweeper who picks up all the leaves and things that come off the trees. He comes every day! He also waters the plants.

Ganesha Festival Parade

One of the most holy seasons in the Hindu religion celebrates the god Ganesh. It is very colorful and exciting to see the celebrations. Imagine Christmas, 4th of July, Bastille Day, and Spring break parties all at the same time. These musicians and marchers are in front of the Ganesh statue. After lots of prayers (loud), celebrations (very loud), parades (extremely loud), and TWO WEEKS of Incredibly loud partying in the street right in front of our gate, everyone parades the statue of Ganesh through the neighborhood (Amazingly, astonishingly, louder than you ever thought possible) and places him in the lake to melt. Hundreds of these celebrations take place all over Bangalore and the rest of India. The government is trying to get people to melt the statues in small plastic pools, buckets, and so on, because the clay is bad for the lakes. However, some statues are so big and important, only a lake will do.

Ganesha Statue

Here is the statue we had in Palm Meadows. They hauled this cart down every through street. All the kids, servants, and new foreigners like MOI were running after the cart and dancing. Really fun

Babu and Honda CRV

Here’s our new Honda CRV and our driver Babu. I never thought I would get an SUV. However, you need one here. The roads are very bad, even when paved. Last week, Babu and I drove to the nursery to get new vines. We had to go out into the country to buy them. Imagine the very worst farm road you have ever been on and then put really large pot-holes, trenches, cows, giant trucks, school buses, motorbikes, etc. on it, and you will have one of our not too bad country roads. We did get the flowers, no problem, but my teeth were really rattling, even with the Honda.

This beautiful young woman is our housekeeper, Lakshimi. We just got the stove installed. She’d been making fruit salad and squirted pomegranate juice all over her dress, so into one of Tom’s T-shirts she went.

This is how she really looks: