Hello lovelies - to overcome laziness whilst also answering everyone's qs, i'm going to start posting edited highlights of the emails i've written to others. hope there's no abuse of people's privacy!
lots of love, jess xx
ps. realised my earlier reference to vijay didn't make sense with the deleted email: i've been named vijaylaxmi by my boss' mother-in-law (so a sort of adopted granny). it means (most pretentiously and grandly) the Victory Goddess, partly because i came on vijaylaxmi's day of navatra and partly cos i'm meant to be securing victory for everything (as the man telling my future yesterday explained). I've yet to work out victory for whom or over what though....
So emails:
-11th Nov:
hmm, yeah I have fully begun to realise what you were saying about diya before - poor thing, she must have gone even more mental than me. Luckily there is one younger girl who also works in my office (though not for DCI) who's 22 and quite sweet so spend most of my time laughing with her, think i would go mental with just the others. it got lost in the bit of the blog that went when the computer crashed, bt there are some proper comedy stories about the main guy who works until me, called Udai Bhan - best of all being the reply when i asked him what he'd been doing every day for the last three months: 'oh, doing nothing. just sitting'. i still haven't got him to comprehend that 4.15pm does not mean there isn't enough time to start any work (we finish at 5.30. that means work finishes at 3!) hehe, yuo'd be cackling to see my trying to run this office, i've got well bossy and well decisive too!. but yeah it wasn't til vini and aischa (the daughters) that i've had a chance to properly relax.
and man, getting proper fat here - ate so much the last few days! (hope devina's food is all nie and tasty) though eat much on my own cos I can never be bothered to spend hours cooking for one person. plus i've turned so white cos I haven't eaten meat since I got here. though every time i come to usha's house i become a galley slave so can now cook samba and rasham (sp?) and make chapatis and puris. woo.
work itself is kinda mixed - though most days end up teaching art (we tried english but being as their english is better than my hindi got a little stuck) to these awesome (and worryingly enthusiastic for work) children. i'm meant to be preparing reports but they torture Udai Bhan somuch i keep having to go and rescue him - he's convinced they're all no good devil children though, which probably doesn't help matters. (though some of the girls are crazy mental - i gave one a plaster cos she cut her foot and was bleeding everywhere. next day i caught too of them deliberately cutting themselves so they could get one too. and any book or bit of paper i give them they rip up so they can have another one - they all do it, it seems ingrained) DCI work is as chaotic as india itself though, so currently balancing four projects at varying stages of ready-to-launch-ness, all variously dependant on strange characters (such as the malaria-vision man, whom I finally sent home, thank the lord!) and all of which i don't entirely understand - my boss' idea of a briefing is rambling at me for a bit then getting me to call important people who soon work out i have no clue what's going on!
-12th Nov:
am definitely jealous of crunchy brown leaves and autumnal crisp days - it's still toasty warm here (though getting colder and darker by the day), but at least there's a bit of a breeze a-blowing now.
diwali was pretty cool with all the fireworks - but i didn't notice any boats on fire. reminds me of a chinese thing, it is? plus i've eaten so many sweets in the last few days, eek. and the family i've been (occasionally!) adopted into keep giving me everything slightly western they don't like, so i ended up eating an entire packet of oreo cookies with another girl in the office today, feel so ill! though it does mean they've off-loaded an alright 1994 French Medoc to me, not doing badly....cheers for the fireworks pics, they look very cosy! i love this time of year, all getting dark and lots of random and noisy celebrations. i know what you mean about that sudden realisation we're adults - i keep doing it when i say i'm no longer a student. though the mollycoddling and mothering here is making me feel more like a small child everyday. still go us grown-ups eh! we're def getting to the next stage - i just found out that my cousin had their baby this morning, the first one of our generation. awh!
if you really want to experience the other end you should have seen my delhi flat when i moved in. i'm still chasing out the previous occupants (a van full of mosquitos with a determinded desire to ruin my life and bit me in fun places like all over my face and eyelids; a large rat - my sometime housekeeper/cleaner said, oh yes, he sometimes comes when i mentioned it - and an army of giant ants). and despite three visits each from the plumber and the electrician the taps still leak, the lights broken and i risk death everytime i turn on the water filter! still, it would be luxury for most of india's population (except for my boss in her huge apartment on the six floor of a luxury development overlooking delhi - her living room is larger than the ground space of my flat!) and i'm not paying anything, and it's actually quite fun so not real complaints. would love a bit more of the shoreditch lifestyle and nightlife though! all this no alcomahol and no meat is sending me a little crazy.....
thank you so much for the email again, my sweet, and some wintery long distance hugs. I'm not going to make it back fro christmas, sadly, but you'll have to have some drunken xmas parties for me anyhoo. and my entire family clan is heading out to delhi (woo!) for christmas here, which is muchly exciting. especially as i've hardly had time to see any of delhi itself yet, could do with some touristy time with the familie. promise i'll send back lots of crazy spices and tasty presents with them... you'd be so proud of my veggie cooking here, i can make souther indian sambas and rasams as well as chapatis and chutneys and puris and all kinds of daal! should be back in good old grand britagne in may for graduation, though - will either have to tempt you up to oxford or have a gathering in londontown.
over and out, jxx