Going Pagal with Prashad, Porn and Plasma Cars

This morning hit a high note for craziness here.

Prashad for Dragons

Yesterday, they found another enormous lizard (though not a dragon this time) in our driveway/foyer. So this guy, the dragon and a mud snake they found the first day makes three wayward intruders into our space. Now all the villagers have requested that we buy prashad (blessed food) and distribute it to all of the families in our colony to ward off any further visitors. Though, for what it is worth, our guard, Sunil, is clearly getting a lot of leverage from taking down so many reptiles. The guard supervisor asks for 101 rupees to go and take care of this errand. He comes back with a huge bag of little tiny fried laddoo pieces (tasted a little like funnel cake) and told me to take enough for myself, Professor-ji (that is Vik) and the baby. Then he gives some to Sunil and proceeds to go door-to-door offering prashad to everyone in the complex. My question is, are we being protected from the animals or are the rest of the community getting protection from us? Scarlet letter anyone?

Porn and Grinders

Then we went into town to do a few things and I wanted to buy a blender (grinders as they are called here). Usha's driver, Sonu, stopped at a place and went upstairs. He came back and indicated that they sell grinders. It was the end of our outing, and Usha stayed in the car with her baby and Vik stayed in the car with ours. I followed Sonu and we went up the narrowest and tallest staircase to find a room full of nothing but CDs and DVD. On a folding table was a pile of about ten blender/grinder/juicers in boxes combos stacked up. I only recognized one brand and asked to look at it. It still had juice on it. I said, "This is used." The merchant said, "Used, nahin, no, no, first rate." I asked to see another one and was clearly out of my depth. I asked Sonu to go get Usha from the car (of course, leaving Vik with two babies to try on for size). While I waited I looked to see if there were any movies we needed. I didn't recognize any of the titles. Actually everything was written in hindi script, I couldn't even say if I recognized anything. Well, Usha came, made the guy open and assemble two juicers, we picked the best one. As I retreated back to pull out my cash, Usha tells me that I am standing in the middle of the pornographic film section. I looked around and none of the video covers indicated anything too steamy. I guess I am naive, but I never thought about there being an Indian pornographic industry. I paid the man and as we left, Usha tells me that the whole store was selling only porn and grinders. That was their exclusive business.

Plasma in Mandarin

Finally we got home and had lunch. We have a state of the art kitchen and we had maggi noodles (Indian, top ramen). I did add a handful of frozen peas for color. The highlight for the day for Zazie was that we finally bought her a little car she can zoom around in the house. She has asked about a hundred times why we left hers in America. Each time we said we will buy her one here. Today we did. We got her a plasma car, a self-scooting ride-on toy. She is just too big for the little ride-on toys and she didn't want a pedal car. We described what we wanted. They didn't have it, but their "other store" did. A few minutes later a guy shows up with the thing and it seems fine, though very cheaply made and it has had this atrocious little cat toys on the front and seemed to light up and play music. For our family, this normally would have been a dealbreaker. Zazie has managed to reach three years old without owning anything battery-operated and most of her stuff is made of wood with colored with plant dyes. This toys looks like lead paint on wheels.

However, we have moved to India and sometimes it seems the whole country is made of plastic and is battery-operated and she is so heartbroken that we left her things in America and it is so hard to get out, to the right store, and then to find the thing you want, to bargain down for the price and then to actually pay for an item, and the heat and the kids and the drivers... that we decided to just get it. We finally got home and she sat down and the thing started playing all these songs in Mandarin-Chinese! A few minutes into playing with it, the music abruptly stops and the batteries roll on the floor. I guess, in their haste to put the batteries in, they neglected to put the battery cover back on and there is no way for them to stay in. Win-win, I say.

And that was just the morning.