24 March 08: Meet and Greet

Didn't get out of the religion thing entirely. I had to wake up early and watch Naani pray and play with her half-a-dozen Krishna dolls (bathe-dress-feed while singing to them). She asked me to help her by handing her flowers from the garden and various of the small bartans filled with prasad , like sooji halwa. All this before even breakfast! They should just make Barbie-Radha and Ken-Krishna dolls and then market them to all the grandmothers so they can “bond” with their grandaughters. Here in Rajasthan they'll sell like bhel-puri sells on Chowpatty beach.

Only after the big family breakfast could I get out of the compound and go around picking up the tour group members at the Railway station and bus station. Luckily, Montu, my cousin, dropped me off in his jeep on his way to his “business”.

As I had expected, I had trouble with the names. Since I'd had no contact with customers at my job, I hadn't gone through the mandatory “Accent Standardization” and “Introduction to Spoken American-English” that our Tech support people have to go through. The first fellow I met was Brian, and that was simple enough. The second, who had managed to get to the hotel on his own, was taking a chhutti before going back to the US, after his stint with an NGO in Ahmedabad teaching “Indians about energy efficiency”. Vinod had told me not to get into discussions with them, so I let it pass. As Vinod had emphasized before I came here, “They are here for a holiday, they aren't paying tuition fees for an education!”. I didn't have a list of names on me, so at first I thought Mr. Efficiency's name was “Air Wing”, until he wrote it down and showed me “Erwin” and he was drawing out the “E” because of his German ancestry and I said, “Arrey, like in Erwin Schrödinger!”. I think he was about to smile when I botched it up with “Can I call you “Arvind” instead?”. He just got this pursed lip look, said “No! You may not.” and turned away. Brian --who was overhearing this-- sniggered. Arrey, if Sidhesh and Nandita at Tech Support can become “Sid” and “Nancy” ... ?

Vinod's chap here, Salim had picked up the people on his list, and he told me that the whole group was there. So before the dinner meeting at their hotel, I went looking for the ones he'd picked up. I found them all in the bar. I introduced myself and they told me their names. I didn't get all the names, so I pulled out the printed attendance sheet I had armed myself with and asked the group for “Amy”, saying it as I saw it: “A” as in “bat”, “am e”. No one owned up to the name until I started calling out the last names, like a roll-call. Then she responded, “It's Eymee”. The rest at least were simple: Michelle, Ellen, Dev, Jaan etc.

One person has already dropped out. This morning I went to pick up 4 people who were all arriving by the same bus from Delhi, but there were only three women waiting there for me. After sorting out the names I asked Susan where her husband was, and she said, “ Oh you mean my X2B, he had to stay back because of business, to take special care of some West coast client who is visiting, like I care.” One of the others shrugged and said, “Well, look around, girl, you can enjoy yourself with some tall, dark, handsome royalty here in Rajasthan.”. I didn't quite get all that, so I said, “OK, but you can't get any money back now.”, just so it was all clear, since this was Vinod's company and I really didn't know what his refund policy was. Her response was funny, “No skin off my bone, its his money and he has plenty of it.”. BTW it should be “no skin off my nose”, but as I said, I 'd missed the American-English usage class.

The other two at the bus station looked alike, both taller than me and a bit older too, shortish hair cut funny and upwards in the back and they both had matching nose-rings on opposite sides. The one without the spots on her face (Leftie) is quite cute. I asked if they were sisters and they looked at each other and laughed. I said, “I mean you have different last names.”, OK it doesn't make any sense but I was just trying to make conversation. They just glanced at each other and laughed again and Rightie said no, they weren't sisters.

For a second there, just a flash, because of that secretive colluding laughter, I was afraid one of them was going to pull my nose, like my older cousins Priya and Mukta used to do. You know, they still do it, even though they are both married. I think it will only stop when I get married. I guess there are worse reasons to get married, and my parents keep suggesting them.