culture, club

This evening Alex and I finally got over to the health club about a block and a half away, where we have a membership that comes with the apartment. We moved here in late July and turned in the paperwork for the club right away. We got our ID cards a few days ago. Welcome to India.

Aaaaaand...the place is closed on Mondays. But at least we found out that on every other day it is open from 6:00 a.m. till 10:30 p.m. And only one hour of that is closed for lunch and only two hours are for "ladies only." (We don't expect that the doors actually open till around 7:00 a.m., because posted hours here are seen as mere suggestions, but we might be brave and try showing up at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow anyway.)

After that we went to The Culture Shop and spent money. Other than a $7.00 shirt I haven't really bought myself anything here so far, clothing-wise, seeing as I have to save my rupees in order to afford tofu and Cheerios, but tonight I splurged on a hand embroidered pashmina shawl from Kashmir:





And since it's All Ganesh All The Time right now in Maharashtra, they had all sorts of extra stuff in honor of the current festival. I got this groovy plaque to hang in my apartment:



Is there anything not to love about Ganesh? No, there is not. Plus I love how he is always making the talk to the hand gesture. You can almost hear him saying "OH HANUMAN NO YOU DITN'T!" With an accompanying head bobble, of course.

By the way--don't believe a damn thing you read at either of those links above, or on any other part of the Hiranandani Gardens propaganda site for that matter. As with so many things here, it is all about pretending to be what you're not. And what this place is not is a luxurious paradise with magnificently constructed buildings and a spotlessly posh clubhouse. I mean, it's no slum (that's next door), but the web site is seriously delusional.