Susan requested "less Slumdog, more Millionaire" so I'm be happy to oblige. On
Saturday night we invited our neighborhood millionaire over for dinner, with his mother Indu who was visiting from Delhi.
Rahul is a friend of Kate and Ben's we met when he and Aysha, his partner, threw a party last Christmas Day. They are central to social life in the village of Agonda. This party was where we ran into Dion, our friend from UM. ( He was here this year until a tax problem in Greece forced him to go back to Paros and dig out some papers to present to the taxman. Sadly, he took his 12-string guitar and downloads of season 4-5 of Breaking Bad with him.)
We're not sure how Rahul came by his millions but "internet entrepreneur" is as close as we can get at this point. He and Aysha, an artist, have leased a lovely little house in the village for five years and have fixed it up beautifully. They have a cook.
I don't think I've ever described the layout of the village. Geographically, the beach is lined with huts, better huts and cafes. The huts are clusters of "buildings" facing the beach and called things like "Secret Garden," Agonda Beach Paradise," Big Daddy's," "Forget Me Not." Buildings is in quotes because the materials are used and re-used every year when the huts have to be dismantled for the monsoon season. the next year the exact same plywood sheets are tacked together under thatched roofs, and the exact same toilets and sinks are installed in attached (thank heaven) bathrooms. The more upscale huts use better building materials, but they also have to be disassembled every year. The village decided this to avoid the building of huge permanent resorts that would bring more development than anyone wants at this point.
A road parallels the beach, and between the beach huts and the road are the village houses. Interspersed among the houses along the road are the shops, bookstore/post office/cooking school, German bakery (run by Nepalis who also sell wool socks), ayurvedic establishments, greengrocers, internet cafes. The north end of town is marked by the bridge, which leads over the river to the red road-- rocky, rutted and tough on flipflops. After a kilometre or two the red road turns into the paved road, where the better Kashmiri shops and a couple of fancier hut/restaurants are located. Also, the dental clinic where Pat and I had our teeth cleaned, Daisy's Lovely Lady Beauty Saloon, tailors, Fatima's restaurant and dried goods store and more cafes. Next to these enterprises are the town's anchor, St. Anne's Church and elementary school. The paved road continues straight out to a part of Agonda I have yet to venture to-- "uptown" as I'm thinking of it, and forks to the left right in front of the church, turning into the road to the south end of the beach. So the town is divided into the bridge, the red road, the paved road and the church.
Those last 2 paragraphs are exactly the kind of thing I would skip in reading a novel. On to the characters!
Rahul's mum is in her early 70's, lovely, elegant, sophisticated, cultured and funny with a great haircut and no wrinkles. Just like us :) Pat's and my knowledge of Indian life has been formed from many, many Indian novels and I don't think we've run into a character like Indu. I'll let you know if we come up with one.
She told us about the Art Summit in Delhi that Aysha was attending this week which sounds a lot like Art Basle in Miami (and Basle of course) and the Havana Bienal. Lots of emerging Indian artists, and of course, a massive Scene. We need to find out more about emerging Indian artists before she leaves.
Indu also went to the "silent" headphone disco last week and told us how a young fellow asked her to dance as soon as she'd adjusted the bulky headphones. This is the place where 3 different DJ's compete to get the most number of dancers to tune into their channel. Rahul encouraged us to go next Saturday night. "Get there around 10 or 11," he said, "then you'll be sure to get a headphone." We were actually considering postponing our bedtimes to go, until Pat's daughter Kate told us the music is all techno/house. There is no Springsteen, Stones or Segar channel. It took a long time but our kids have finally found a music we can't stand.
We talked about recycling, our current obsession, and Indu said Delhi has a good system in place. Rahul told of us a project he'd worked on long ago to involve school kids and composting boxes which they were supposed to sell it friends and neighbors. The scheme didn't work out because the kids had no real training or script to work from. Indu urged him to try again because recycling and trash management are all over the papers now and there seems to be a groundswell of interest in actually doing it.
Rahul said there's no money to be made in recycling, but ultimately there must be, because San Francisco recycles 98% of waste and surely no one is picking it up out of the goodness of their hearts. So that's my research project for the week: to find out who much money "ultimately" can be made from municipal recycling.
Saturday night we invited our neighborhood millionaire over for dinner, with his mother Indu who was visiting from Delhi.
Rahul is a friend of Kate and Ben's we met when he and Aysha, his partner, threw a party last Christmas Day. They are central to social life in the village of Agonda. This party was where we ran into Dion, our friend from UM. ( He was here this year until a tax problem in Greece forced him to go back to Paros and dig out some papers to present to the taxman. Sadly, he took his 12-string guitar and downloads of season 4-5 of Breaking Bad with him.)
We're not sure how Rahul came by his millions but "internet entrepreneur" is as close as we can get at this point. He and Aysha, an artist, have leased a lovely little house in the village for five years and have fixed it up beautifully. They have a cook.
I don't think I've ever described the layout of the village. Geographically, the beach is lined with huts, better huts and cafes. The huts are clusters of "buildings" facing the beach and called things like "Secret Garden," Agonda Beach Paradise," Big Daddy's," "Forget Me Not." Buildings is in quotes because the materials are used and re-used every year when the huts have to be dismantled for the monsoon season. the next year the exact same plywood sheets are tacked together under thatched roofs, and the exact same toilets and sinks are installed in attached (thank heaven) bathrooms. The more upscale huts use better building materials, but they also have to be disassembled every year. The village decided this to avoid the building of huge permanent resorts that would bring more development than anyone wants at this point.
A road parallels the beach, and between the beach huts and the road are the village houses. Interspersed among the houses along the road are the shops, bookstore/post office/cooking school, German bakery (run by Nepalis who also sell wool socks), ayurvedic establishments, greengrocers, internet cafes. The north end of town is marked by the bridge, which leads over the river to the red road-- rocky, rutted and tough on flipflops. After a kilometre or two the red road turns into the paved road, where the better Kashmiri shops and a couple of fancier hut/restaurants are located. Also, the dental clinic where Pat and I had our teeth cleaned, Daisy's Lovely Lady Beauty Saloon, tailors, Fatima's restaurant and dried goods store and more cafes. Next to these enterprises are the town's anchor, St. Anne's Church and elementary school. The paved road continues straight out to a part of Agonda I have yet to venture to-- "uptown" as I'm thinking of it, and forks to the left right in front of the church, turning into the road to the south end of the beach. So the town is divided into the bridge, the red road, the paved road and the church.
Those last 2 paragraphs are exactly the kind of thing I would skip in reading a novel. On to the characters!
Rahul's mum is in her early 70's, lovely, elegant, sophisticated, cultured and funny with a great haircut and no wrinkles. Just like us :) Pat's and my knowledge of Indian life has been formed from many, many Indian novels and I don't think we've run into a character like Indu. I'll let you know if we come up with one.
She told us about the Art Summit in Delhi that Aysha was attending this week which sounds a lot like Art Basle in Miami (and Basle of course) and the Havana Bienal. Lots of emerging Indian artists, and of course, a massive Scene. We need to find out more about emerging Indian artists before she leaves.
Indu also went to the "silent" headphone disco last week and told us how a young fellow asked her to dance as soon as she'd adjusted the bulky headphones. This is the place where 3 different DJ's compete to get the most number of dancers to tune into their channel. Rahul encouraged us to go next Saturday night. "Get there around 10 or 11," he said, "then you'll be sure to get a headphone." We were actually considering postponing our bedtimes to go, until Pat's daughter Kate told us the music is all techno/house. There is no Springsteen, Stones or Segar channel. It took a long time but our kids have finally found a music we can't stand.
We talked about recycling, our current obsession, and Indu said Delhi has a good system in place. Rahul told of us a project he'd worked on long ago to involve school kids and composting boxes which they were supposed to sell it friends and neighbors. The scheme didn't work out because the kids had no real training or script to work from. Indu urged him to try again because recycling and trash management are all over the papers now and there seems to be a groundswell of interest in actually doing it.
Rahul said there's no money to be made in recycling, but ultimately there must be, because San Francisco recycles 98% of waste and surely no one is picking it up out of the goodness of their hearts. So that's my research project for the week: to find out who much money "ultimately" can be made from municipal recycling.
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