I have only one sister--my little sister Olena (or Lyena, but that's too confusing because of my name). And she lives in India. A long time ago, when she'd found out that she was pregnant, I promised her that if she were to have a baby, I would go over there after she gives birth and help her to take care of him/her, as if I am a pro at babies myself. Well, when I promised that it didn't quite dong on me that she was living THAT far away and for a moment I thought it wouldn't be a big deal. HAHAHA!
Baby Aaryan, a healthy baby boy, was born on October 27th, a little bit earlier than expected. It turned out that the perfect time to go see my sister and the baby would be at the end of November as then, for sure, the baby would be here. Because I wanted to minimize the time Robert had to take off work and do all the busy crazy after school activities, we decided it would be best if I left right before Thanksgiving and spent ten days in India. I left Robert and the kids a long detailed list of who has to be where and when, a bunch of food in the fridge and embarked on my very-very long journey (28 hours).
I went from Raleigh to London, Heathrow and was delighted to see my dear beefeaters and Mr. Adventure at the airport!
I shopped extensively at WHSmith for all kinds of chocolates while I waited for my plane to Delhi.
I was doing fine even during my flight London-Delhi--watching movies, reading my books--a vacation for myself!
When I got to Delhi, I was super tired, understandably. And then I had to fly to Kolkata, which is only a two hour flight, but because there was some sort of problem with our plane, we all had to move to another plane. BUT because it was after already an hour of us sitting on the broken plane and waiting, they had decided to feed us breakfast first on that broken plane (while on the ground) and only then transfer us to the new plane. That took awhile. And their logic didn't make sense.
Anyway! I finally got to Kolkata and got picked up by my sister who looked like a model (four weeks after the baby was born;). I'll share pictures of her later, but in this post I kind of wanted to put captions to all the many pictures I had on my phone from my trip.
The first and most honorable mention goes to JALABEES. Oh, ever since the wedding in India in 2014, I had been dreaming about tasting these fresh super sweet, melt-in-your-mouth, delicious treats. And finally I was in heaven!!!
Some pictures are of the stuff around the house, not in any particular order. This is a really intricate table set on one of the floors of the house where my sister lives. It's probably my favorite pieces of furniture there.
This is the courtyard, the main entrance from the street with many beautiful plants. I assume it gets really wet and flooded when it pours, but when I was visiting we hardly had any rain at all.
This is a view from my room. Not fancy, eh? This is a "ghost" house, so to speak. I don't know if anyone lives there.
My beautiful headboard. My sister's family has a lot of furniture like that.
And this is Pradnya, my sister's mother-in-law. This is in the dining room by the kitchen.
One time, Pradnya and I went to the sari shop. Beautiful little place with all kinds of color. I was just sitting there as an observer fascinated at how culturally different people in India are in the way they discuss business.
This is when Pradnya had to order one of the wedding outfits for her daughter, who was getting married in a few months.
Oh look! More Jalabees! This is how they come from a pastry shop--lots and lots of them-yum1
Taking a walk in India is tricky. It's just not really common for new moms just to get out of the house and take a baby in a stroller for a walk. We managed it this one time we went to walk around the "park" across the street from Olena's house. Yes, we got a lot of stares because now they were looking not at just one white lady but at two! And I saw a dead rat, which reminded me of when I saw a dead rat in Ukraine when I was little on my way to school...argh....bleh...gross!!
I can't forget to include Sia! He is the family's cook-friend. He makes breakfast, lunch and dinner if you ask him. He must have gotten so tired of me always asking me to make me garlic naan and paratas.
This is a parata, a potato pancake. LOVED IT! A couple dozens of them came home with me on my thighs.
And here is a beautiful picture of homemade food that I loved! Some sort of eggplant stuff and chickpeas stuff and naan. Sia kindly made me a bunch of naan (sweet naan and garlic naan) to take home, wrapped in foil.
Back to the outside. On our walk, I snapped a few pictures, just to give you an idea what it looks like on a relatively clean residential street in a very good neighborhood. Do you want to find a spouse?? Go here!
Medicine? Here!
A bunch of street dogs? Here!
And here is Olena, on her break from babyhood, in front of their house (with all the furniture from the country house they sold that they were giving away to their friends as it was no longer needed)
And me, so you could see how tall the house is.
The house has three stories--on the first floor are all the common areas, on the second are the master bedroom and a couple of extra bedrooms and the third floor is where my sister, her husband the baby live. Plus they have a nice terrace on the roof.
And one of the days, we hired a lady to come to our house to help my Lyena dye her hair and thread our eyebrows and do a hair conditioning mask on me.
I wish I could say she did a fantastic job, but not so, at least not with the hair:))
Okie-dokie. I better take a break!
Lyana.
No comments:
Post a Comment