Mr. Kaia's Neighborhood

Kaia and I are really going to miss our neighborhood and its characters. From the corner auto stand at the intersection of 4^th Seward and Balakrishnan roads to the scowling sewing-wallah down the street to Shyam the ironing man, we’ll really miss seeing them on a daily basis. I suppose that I should have done a posting on Kaia’s neighborhood long ago, introducing the different people and their backstories, but alas the time for such dreams never came to pass. It is interesting how, when you get established in a place, that you begin to lose the curiosity and enthusiasm for the everyday. In many respects, I started indiapapa to try to shed light on the mundane practices within fatherhood, but in retrospect I realize that I could have done a much better job had I not gotten caught up in the so-called dramas that infect our lives. But anyway, I digress…

Even though he is nearly three, Kaia still needs to be in motion in order to take his afternoon nap. If it is scorching hot (which lately, it has been—highs in the mid 100s!), then well strap him in the car seat and take an air conditioned ride through the neighborhood, but if the weather is OK, it’s the stroller (or ‘trolley’ as folks call it here) for a few trips around the block—or to the auto stand and back again. Depending on how tired he is, you might end up going 4 or 5 times up and back, which can be not only frustrating, but tiring in the mid-day sun, regardless of if its breaking the century mark or not.

I really love how service vendors will set up their operations on the sidewalk street shoulder—no enforced zoning here. I would imagine that those who duplicate services (like ironing) have an agreement about who services which area, and it is really remarkable how these ironing guys remember the cost for each client. With dozens of garments, each a slightly different price, they must really have an air-tight memory. One site that I’ll never forget is how Shyam’s wife worked right up until she delivered her son, carrying large bags of neatly folded and ironed clothes on her head throughout the neighborhood with a full belly of boy. Sometimes the power would go out in our building and she would actually walk four flights of stairs to get to our place! Simply amazing how hard some people work in this country (and equally as remarkable how lazy others can be) and what they are physically capable of.

Just last month they finished the TVS guest house next door to our building. Since we moved in April 2005, they had been renovating it and with a crew of nearly 20 men and women. Kaia and I would often go down and watch them pounding and chiseling flagstones for the walkway and I would just be in awe of how much weight people could carry on their heads. Someone once remarked to me that nearly all of India has been built on the heads of (mostly) women with sturdy necks and even stronger backs. I wonder what Kaia thinks when he sees so many people working so hard and most of the time his papa is pecking away at a computer keyboard, getting fatter by the hour. Hopefully, when we get back to the US, I’ll have a chance to get myself back in the physical groove and move my body like it is meant to be used. I don’t know that I’ll be carrying things on my head, but one can really learn a lot from just watching what’s right outside your door. It just so happens that, in this country, that can be a rather amazing thing to behold.

Why I Love this Time: Our last peanuts from the peanut man…