Week Seven - Big Boobs, Buffalo Milk and a Very Unlucky Chicken

Gen’s weekday mornings now start at 6:30 in the Botanical Gardens with a 72-year-old ex-military Guru who may be the fittest man in Hyderabad.

She understands absolutely nothing he says.

Men at the front. Women at the back. A woman everyone calls Madam Guru. Peacocks wandering through the gardens.

Gen calls it Monkey Yoga because Guru worships Hanuman, the monkey god, although the name also suits the workout. This is not peaceful yoga. It is constant movement, somewhere between yoga and a HIIT class.

It is also monsoon season, but apparently it does not rain during Guru’s class.

Before? Sure.

After? Absolutely.

During? Apparently clouds know better.

The group has been incredibly welcoming, which made it much more real when one of the men from class was caught in the terrible building collapse in Gachibowli this week. Two people were killed. He ended up in hospital but, thankfully, is going to be okay.

A building collapse feels different when the person involved is suddenly somebody from your 6:30 a.m. yoga class.

Gen also had her first proper experience with medical testing in India.

Doctor: ₹800.

Blood tests: ₹4,500.

Bone density scan: ₹4,500.

About C$148 total, including a scan she couldn’t even get her doctor at home to agree to.

There was one drawback.

Communal Crocs.

You take your shoes off before entering the clinic. When Gen needed to provide a urine sample, they handed her a pair of Crocs for the bathroom.

The same Crocs everyone else wears.

Including the men.

With varying degrees of aim.

So gross.

And yet all her results arrived the same day, directly to WhatsApp, before her doctor even had them.

India can apparently give you immediate ownership of your medical information while also making you wear another man’s bathroom shoes.

Contradictions.

Then the weekend went completely nuts.

Saturday started at 7 a.m. with pickleball at Soo Café in Jubilee Hills with Shalini from the U.S. and Michael from Australia.

Seven sounds insane until you live here. By eight, the sun is already trying to kill Court Three.

The café was beautiful. The omelettes were good.

Team Beham lost.

I don’t wish to discuss it.

My competitive spirit did not move to India for character development.

From there we went to Sid’s Farm, which I immediately renamed:

Milk School!

The classroom part went on longer than Gen would have preferred, but the dairy story was genuinely fascinating.

Sid’s works with roughly 7,000 small farmers, many with just two to five cows. The cows are milked, the milk goes into steel containers, and then it travels to the dairy to be tested and chilled.

In Canada, milk gets cold almost immediately by the farmer when it comes out of the cow.

Here it can stay warm for hours.

Which suddenly explains to us why fresh milk often lasts only seems to last three or four days.

We tried buffalo milk, drank sweet lassi and attempted to milk cows ourselves.

Then our tractor got stuck in the mud.

The official recovery plan was for the tractor behind us to push.

Gen and I were sitting at the back with our feet dangling over the edge.

Those feet came up very quickly when Tractor Two started approaching.

Milk School became briefly quite advanced.

Saturday night was even stranger.

We went to see Gen’s friend Isobelle, who plays cello with the George Hull Collective.

The show was called Dark Vibe, with a Velvet Grind theme, and was adults only.

They were serious about that.

We had pictured sophisticated cello music.

One of the first songs was basically about a woman having enormous boobs.

The next involved a man splitting a woman in two.

So: not quite the chamber-music evening we had mentally prepared for.

It was Indo-funk jazz, wildly risqué, very talented and completely entertaining.

The crowd was a mix of Indians and expats, the drinks were excellent, and Gen developed a deep commitment to pomegranate mojitos and piping-hot fries.

We genuinely couldn’t remember the last time we had gone out to a club.

With Vishal’s help, now we can.

Having someone we trust with Jack gives Gen and me the freedom to actually do this stuff. Pickleball, dairy farm, quick change, adults-only Indo-funk jazz.

At home that would have required planning.

Here it was Saturday.

Then came Sunday.

I joined my first Hidden Gem of HYD - photography walk.

They do them every week and don’t tell you the location until the day, which I love.

This time we spent four hours photographing abandoned government buildings around Hyderabad.

We worked on framing shots through windows and doors, leading lines, ISO, aperture, and generally progressing beyond my previous technique of pressing buttons until the picture looked good.

I met Sagar, a really good photographer and an extremely affable guy.

We hit it off immediately, made plans to go shooting together, and he is going to try to connect me with his photography teacher.

I came home completely fired up.

My review:

“That was amazing.”

And then there was the chicken.

This was not at Sid’s Farm.

Different chicken.

There is a photograph of her alive.

There is another photograph from later.

We met her in the afternoon.

We ate her that night.

Before.

After.

No further reporting is required.

Jack had a really good week too.

He finally told his swimming teacher what he actually hates about swimming lessons: putting his head underwater.

Gen completely understands because she hates it too.

Once Jack explained the problem, he went from participating for about 20 minutes of his hour-long lesson to around 45.

That felt bigger than swimming.

He figured out what was bothering him, found the words to say it, and somebody listened.

Meanwhile, Gen continues buying unidentified vegetables downstairs and bringing them home to Momi for diagnosis.

Usually Momi knows.

This week even Momi was defeated by one enormous elephant-turnip-looking thing.

After researching several possibilities and discovering that some required careful preparation, Gen decided cultural curiosity has limits.

It may be going in the garbage.

Momi also brought me fresh coconut water and coconut pieces one morning, and the balcony is now producing mint, curry leaves and tiny sprouts of basil, sage, thyme and chives.

Against Hyderabad sun, monsoon rain, insects and plants that seem personally opposed to Gen, this counts as a major agricultural victory.

And tomorrow Alessia arrives.

So this week gave us Monkey Yoga, a building collapse, communal Crocs, pickleball defeat, Milk School, a tractor rescue, adults-only Indo-funk jazz, pomegranate mojitos, abandoned buildings, a new photography friend, a swimming breakthrough, an unidentified vegetable and a chicken we knew personally.

With Vishal’s help, Gen and I are making the absolute most of this year.

Possibly at an unsustainable rate.

Before…

After…