In the hot seat

We are now experiencing the heat everyone’s been warning us about, and full summer in the Great Karoo doesn’t come close. Struggling with frequent power outages at home during the day, it’s hard to say who’s panting the loudest – the dogs or us!

The dog children didn’t take long to learn how to open the front door (when unlocked). At nine in the morning they march through the front door, straight to my study where they know the fan or air-conditioning would be on (that is when we have power). There they’ll sleep at my feet until Raju, still acting mother of the house, opens the study door, demanding that they go outside for a while, because, “Soo-soo doing!!” (they need to water the trees).

I must admit, having at least five surprise power outages a day has stretched my sanity to the limit. Sitting in 46 degrees Celcius without fan or aircon and having lost internet and email connection and a lot of work right after preparing a news release, broadcast or newsletter, is not fun. I’m beginning to think there might be truth in the Indians’ belief that you need to choose an auspicious time for important events to take place (in my case all those communication events). Astrology is rather important in India, and before important days such as a marriage, house warming, etc., the person(s) involved visit those who know to establish an auspicious date and time (usually impossible times such as 3:49 in the morning) at which the ceremony must be performed. And if you choose not to start the event at that time, be sure to have bad luck with it.

Kahn meets Jeremiah

Enjoying slightly cooler temperatures later in the evening, we got into the habit of relaxing on the swing bench in our garden at around 21:00. One evening we watched Kahn as he hopped rather peculiarly around a spot in the corner of the garden. After a victorious pounce, grabbing something in his mouth, our dog came running towards us, shaking his head with foam coming out of his mouth.

Horrified at the sight of him jerking and foaming, we force-fed Kahn some milk and tried to wash his mouth with some water (while Cujo was very happy to finish the milk – a very scarce commodity in our dogs’ bowls!). Meanwhile Alex, still the night watchman, went to investigate the culprit in the corner of the garden. There he found a round, moist frog!

We had a big scare, but are happy to report that, although both Kahn and the frog acted quite traumatised – not to mention Theo and I – all of us survived. The frog (Theo dubbed him Jeremiah) decided to remain a resident in the corner of the garden, and we see him sometimes, going for his nightly hops. Rather sure, though, that Kahn will never consider Jeremiah a good friend of his …

The Telugu movie

In March our expat association’s newsletter placed an advertisement for foreign women to send in their photos – they needed three candidates to play in an Indian movie. Theo wanted me to send in some photos, but I chose to ignore him on this one.

One morning, while driving with him to his workplace (some mornings, when I feel a little blue, I go along for a morning drive to Shriram and back), I received an odd phone call. At first I thought I had won a movie ticket – but I couldn’t understand why the prize included meeting the producer. After a few minutes of confusion, suspicion kicked in and I turned to Theo who at that time would have purred if he was a cat! Explaining to the, by then, speechless woman on the phone that my husband sent in my photos and there’s nothing wrong with my mental state, we made an appointment to meet the producer.

Not asking me to do an audition, I was suspicious. Maybe they needed someone to act as if in a coma or dead … I could do that. But what if it’s a porn movie …? Luckily we got to see the plot and it looked okay – and so I met Hannah from Kenya and Linda from France, and we were the news starts-to-be in a movie with the very original title, “When I was in India”.

As per arrangement, we would only shoot on weekends and a taxi would pick us up at our homes, take us to Secunderabad (about an hour’s drive from Hyderabad) and bring us back home again. Also, there would be enough for us to eat and drink. All we needed to do was to bring a few outfits to change into during the shoot. And no, Hannah, Linda and I won’t be asking any money for our efforts – we’re in it for the experience and for the love of our new country.

But it was not that simple. On the first Sunday of the shoot we were ready at 8:30 as arranged. At 9:45 a very small taxi without air-conditioning arrived, already with three other passengers in, cramming us in and having us sitting on top of each other. Arriving at the house where the shoot was to take place at 10:45, the camera men still needed to set up, after which they decided it was time for breakfast.

By 12:00, in a house with no air-conditioning where the temperature started to touch 40 degrees Celcius, the shoot started with the three of us being rather thirsty, sweating like pigs and struggling to look fresh and friendly. At 13:00 we stopped for an hour to have lunch, despite our plea to continue so that we could get something done. And by 14:00, when they realised we weren’t going to get enough done before 16:00, the producer announced that we will continue until 18:00. Oh, and would we mind going back home by auto-rikshaw (one of those yellow-and-black three-wheelers), because that would make the producer’s life so much easier … The French/Kenyan/South African mini explosion that followed must have been somewhat powerful, because at 16:00 we were all crammed into another small car without aircon again and on our way home.

The following week the plans for the weekend’s shoot changed several times, and suddenly the taxi also wasn’t available to pick us up anymore, so we were asked to get to the set by ourselves. Stressed out by trying our best to be accommodating, and disappointed, we realised that this wasn’t going to work out – especially as it was clear that we were not going to be looked after while doing the producer this “favour”. So, we decided to do something rather new to us – we quit.

One positive thing came out of this, though – Linda, Hannah and I became good friends.

Greetings!
Marga