Week Six - Blinkit Can’t Solve Everything
We started the week on a houseboat in Kerala, which is a pretty good way to start a week.
We spent our last day drifting through the backwaters, stopping at a fish market on the lake to pick out fish and lobster for dinner. A little later, our fish was being chopped apart beside us with considerably more enthusiasm than expected.
Very fresh.
The houseboat was too big for some of the smaller waterways, so we hired a guy with a tiny boat and went exploring. Genefer has been working on her photography, so there was a lot of stopping for kingfishers, darters, reflections and boats.
The sunset that night was spectacular and a great end to Kerala.
On the flight home, we met an American couple who told us to try House of Stitch if we wanted clothes made. We saved that recommendation for later in the week.
When we got home, Jack gave Vishal and Ganesh enormous hugs. He’d missed them.
He also had two really good school days and stayed for about three hours one day, which we were very happy about.
Wednesday was Alessia’s 20th birthday.
I wanted to send something to her summer job from Hyderabad. Uber Eats wouldn’t cooperate, everything nearby seemed closed, and I found myself having the very India-conditioned thought:
“This would have been so much easier with Blinkit.”
Eventually I contacted a business associate connected to where she works, who found a coworker willing to physically deliver a baked good to her desk.
It worked.
Friday was Indian Independence Day, and at work everyone was encouraged to wear orange, white or green.
I announced on Thursday that I was going to order a kurta from Blinkit.
Genefer said no.
So she walked to the mall, sent me photos from different stores, found an orange kurta, and had Ganesh deliver it to my office just in time for the Independence Day fashion show.
Yes, I was in it.
That’s all we’re going to say about that.
Jack was equally committed. He wore orange and made himself grilled cheese with shredded carrot so it matched the Indian flag.
Friday was also Genefer’s first monthly women’s coffee chat. She came back with yoga recommendations, Food Stories, a list of Indian movies and, most importantly, bread.
Café Eclat has the good stuff.
That evening we picked up dinner and then headed to get me from work.
This was a mistake.
Hyderabad traffic completely collapsed. We sat there with pizza, salad, baguette, cream cheese and smoked salmon in the car, making almost no progress.
Eventually Genefer and I grabbed all the takeout, got out and walked home, leaving Ganesh stuck in traffic.
He seemed genuinely upset, like he’d somehow let us down because Hyderabad had stopped moving.
He had not.
The walk home turned out to be more chaotic than the traffic jam. We were carrying bags of food, dodging traffic and trying to figure out which bits of the road were actually intended for pedestrians.
At one point I nearly got taken out by a motorcycle.
The driver received some choice words from me.
Eventually we made it home with ourselves and dinner intact.
Then we opened one of the precious bottles of wine from our stash. Colleagues travelling from Canada have gradually become my wine mules, bringing a bottle when they come, so we guard the supply carefully.
Friday felt worthy of using one.
We laid out the baguette, smoked salmon and cream cheese, added the pizza and salad, opened the wine and recovered.
Saturday we went to House of Stitch, following the advice from the couple we met on the Kerala flight.
I designed a shirt. Genefer bought a dress and a casual outfit. They should be ready this week.
We also took Harriet to the vet because our vet back home had some concerns about her kidneys.
The vet examined her and suggested bloodwork and an ultrasound because she seemed a little dehydrated.
When the bill came, we were genuinely confused.
The consultation was about $7, and the bloodwork and ultrasound brought the total to around $130.
We kept looking at the bill assuming we were missing something.
We weren’t.
Harriet now has a shaved belly.
Momi had a much worse week.
We’d only recently started noticing that Momi, Vishal and Ganesh all regularly travel on the back of motorcycles when Momi was in an accident.
She ended up with a large gash on her leg and still came to work.
By the next morning her shoulder had seized up badly enough that she finally took the day off.
She’d also taken excellent care of Leo and Harriet while we were in Kerala.
Leo thanked her by somehow getting hold of a bag of milk, dragging it into the couch and ripping it open.
Milk inside the couch.
Momi had to clean everything with Dettol. The smell immediately took Genefer back to her childhood because her grandmother cleaned everything with Dettol.
On Sunday we went to the Hyderabad Polo & Riding Club to watch show jumping.
Genefer and I really liked it and definitely want to go back.
Jack enjoyed it for exactly as long as Jack wanted to enjoy it, and then he was done, so our first visit was shorter than planned.
Later Genefer made roast chicken because we wanted something that tasted like home.
Our tiny oven took two hours to cook it.
Only after it was finished did I mention that we also have an air fryer.
Useful information, slightly late.
After dinner, we finally started working through the Indian movie recommendations with The Sky Is Pink.
So that was the week: Kerala backwaters, Alessia turning 20, my first Indian Independence Day, an emergency orange kurta, Jack’s patriotic grilled cheese, good bread, impossible traffic, custom clothes, a remarkably cheap vet, one shaved cat, one injured Momi, milk inside a couch and another bottle gone from the Canadian wine-mule reserves.
Not a quiet week.
Banana leaf lunch on the boat…
India independence Day Celebrations at our community…