barbie in a saree

I was killing time earlier waiting for some minor adjustments to be done to my new kameez tops (more on this below) when I discovered the perfect mascot for my desk at the San Francisco office.


Allow me to quote from the back of the box. All spellings are [sic]:

Barbie is breathtakingly beautiful in her Indian avtaar. Dressed in colourful sarees, complete with bindi and ethnic jewellery, she's out to steal your heart. She symbolises the values that are so intrinsic to any Indian. Truly, a picture of traditional Indian beauty.

Waitasec, she symbolises the values that are so intrinsic to any Indian? Because she's wearing some lame bangles and has a completely unrealistic body under that saree? She comes with her own little hand mirror, by the way. Whatever, people.

The guy was trying to push the deluxe Rajasthani Barbie on me, but I demurred. Then just now when I was looking for a photo of that one to show you, the first hit was a site selling one for $149.00. I don't know what the one I saw today cost, but the one I bought was something like $12.50 so I'd be surprised if the fancy one was more than twice or thrice that. Maybe I need to get my ass back down to the mall and then hit eBay.

This round of salwar kameez purchasing has not been entirely without incident. The ones from the first shop were supposed to be couriered (that is the fancy way they say "delivered" here) to my office on Friday, but they did not show up. So I tried calling the number on the receipt and it said it wasn't available. So I went down to the shop where I bought the fabric (the sewing is done elsewhere, hence the couriering), and the SHOP HAD CHANGED NAMES AND OWNERS SINCE LAST SATURDAY. I walked in and walked out again first, thinking "Oh wait, this isn't the shop, it must be down the block a bit." Except no, it was the shop. And yet also not the shop. But they got the woman from last week on the phone for me and she assured me that the clothes were almost done, it would just take till Wednesday. Hey, it's India. They claim things will take "six minutes" even when they will take three hours. So when they say it will take a whole week, well, I'll let you do the math (since, as Barbie in India might say, "Math is hard!").

Anyway, so then I went to the other shop to pick up my other order, and it was indeed ready. The fanciest shirt, though, had a dark spot near the hem. The owner assured me it would come out at the dry cleaners (at which point I thought to myself, "The whosit now? They have dry cleaners here?"). I went home and I could not get the spot out with regular soap, so I laundered the top with detergent and that didn't help either. In the meantime I had tried on the other tops and discovered that they needed to be let out across the chest (you know, because of my bodacious B-cup rack), so then I figured I'd go back to the shop for that and also pick up some real live stain remover while I was out.

(Y'all are probably wondering why I didn't return the stained shirt and demand they fix it. I know, I know, that's what I should have done. But I am so confrontation-averse that I find it preferable to either get the stain out myself somehow or just live with it--it's not all that noticeable.)

Here's a photo of the stained kameez dripping dry in my shower. The stain remover worked somewhat but not completely, so for now I have given up on further improvement. Maybe I will take it to a cleaner in the U.S., where it is less likely to end up being beaten against a rock in some putrid alley.



And here is one of the new whole outfits. It's not as shiny in real life--that's an effect from the flash. I might wear this one on Monday.


Barbie in a saree, yes siree.

cum laude, redux

Today Dan, Misti, and I went downtown again and went to the gardens in Malabar Hill. Once again we got our Beavis & Butthead-style jollies from an unintentionally funny sign:



There were cool butterflies in the garden:





This is the same garden place where Robin and Alex took photos of the penguin trash cans and the giant shoe, and as much as I would love to make use of the "very large shoe" tag again, it's not really worth the redundant photo here. Oh wait, but I just talked about it, so I can still use the tag! Awesome.

What was not so awesome was the ride home. Which took almost two hours. In the dark. In a rickety, stall-prone, seatbelt-less, 40-year-old taxi (the same as all the other taxis). In bumper-to-bumper traffic, without air conditioning, and with exhaust fumes and ambient smoke you could cut with a knife. Seriously, I feel like my life expectancy went down by at least two years on this ride. I am not even going to try to describe it. Once in a while I would turn around to Dan and Misti in the back seat and just widen my eyes and silently plead, "What in the name of sweet holy jesus in motherf@cking hell?"

But back to our day. Here's a guy taking a nap in his taxi; the drivers do this a lot. This one was in a line of at least five taxis parked along the road with feet sticking out of the back seats.



We had yummy food again at the same place we went to dinner last time we were downtown, and we did some serious shopping. Misti got a rug and some jewelry and a wall hanging, Dan got some gifts, and I got jewelry for myself, including, but not limited to, the following:


(That's coral.)


(Those are freshwater pearls and...um...some pale blue-green stones.)

OK, it's really hard to think about being frugal and saving up for a nice dishwasher when you are stuck 10,000 miles away from your apartment.

Anyhooooo, the rest of the photos I took today are here.

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.