's-Hertogenbosch International Women'sClub

I'm a member of an expat womens club in Den Bosch which helps to keep me sane. Here's an article about them on expatica.com - which is a webzine for expats across the EU.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=31629

To underscore the diversity of the group, that's me(Indian) in the picture , 2nd from left - with Jacqueline(English), Sharon(Scottish) and Charlotte(Danish) - as international as you can get !

Sinter Klaas & Zwarte Piet

In this new age of political correctness its often hard to distinguish candour from crudity, or fun from foibles. Be that as it may - its always amusing when one gets into these discussions with other expats, with most decrying what they describe as the lack of political correctness in the Netherlands.
With Sinter Klaas arriving in different towns over the last few weeks, and little Zwarte Piete running here and there, its time for heated arguments yet again!
'What dreadful characterisation, how do i explain to my 7 year old that colour doesn't define 'helpers' fumed my oh-so-correct American friend aka S. She soon found rebuttal in in J's reply - But darling , they are merely dark because they came down the chimney!
S responded with - But what about the hair!
Which actually takes me back to Oeteldonk last year - when a couple of women were walking down the street, with Afro hairdos - that supposedly being their costume. In the meantime, a South African friend who couldn't stop staring at them, and remarked to me with a wry grin - is looking like me entertaining? I responded with - "probably you'd be as entertaining in a blond wig and blue contact lenses!"
One does have to admit that once we've lived in a culture of political correctness ´- many things can seem rather odd here. Like the time my Uncle's Dutch business partner - remarked that his wife had gone on holiday to Turkey with her sister, and was probably getting robbed by all the 'black people' there! This coming from a well travelled, cosmopolitan businessman with work and social interests in many countries in Asia!
But for many expats to generalise based on a few specific instances is probably as dangerous as political incorrectness itself. After all , isn't being pc about not creating stereotypes?
On that doctrinaire note, I must rush. I am not about to miss out on my gevulde speculaas in my little friend -Amelia's school - and get a hug from the Zwarte Piets . Being a sucker for traditional fun - am happy to forget political correctness for today.
Wens je fijne kerstdagen en een gelukkig nieuwjaar ! (Merry Xmas and Happy New Year for the uninitiated!)

Depths of Despair

It's been the best of times, and the worst of times. The best of times since there's all this excitement of a little person soon to arrive in our lives. Not the best of times - thanks to all the horrible sickness and stuff that goes with having little rug rats arrive - like worshipping the porcelain goddess several times a day. That coupled with some of the idiosyncrasies of the Dutch system -make for entertaining times.

First, there was this business of finding a Huisart - (aGP or primary care physician) since a sprog was on the way. Having lived here for close to 7 months, and not having signed up with one was probably quite silly. All this lady of leisure business with holidays every other week - made me believe I was on a holiday ( albeit extended) and would soon return to my crazy, wonderful (through the hazy film of time) job back home.

After spending a couple of days trying to find a Huisart not too far from the centre of town, I found a practice and made an appointment to go see them. After the usual apologies for my rudimentary Dutch, I found the lady behind the counter rather effortlessly slid into English as well. After getting our personal details (B's and mine), I explained to her we possibly had a little rug rat on its way. After congratulating me heartily, she gave me a note to see a doctor at the Jeroen Bosch Ziekenhuis .

I was much relieved since I was used to a cultures of Doctors, for some irrational reason, midwives and home births seemed awfully frightening. Esp. after all the horror stories from the women's club about midwives (turns out even the male ones are called midwife), placentas that refuse to emerge (what's a placenta you may ask), and almost giving birth in the woods, with no pain relief (and you were wondering what that yelp two doors away was - probably a woman, not a cat in labour)! It's always interesting how no one mentions the good stuff, the Kraam care, the Verloskundigen visiting you at home and making sure all's well with you and the wee one. Anyway - I am diverting.

I was rather surprised and pleased the lady at the Huisart was sending me to the doctor. I said as much to her when she responded with - 'At your age, its best if you see the doctor instead of a midwife'. I must confess I was rather squashed and didn't feel so kindly disposed any longer. So I was 30, i know it's old, and people do feel touchy about it, but must she remind me? Also - I was concerned, I didn't realise being 30 put me in a high risk - too old to have a baby category. Ok, so 30 wasn't young, but my friend in NY city had just been told that at 31 she was amongst the younger people having a baby in New York.

Oh well - I would just cope with being an old mother, etc etc, I mumbled and stumbled to the Ziekenhuis. After crawling through the labyrinth that was the hospital, i arrived at the front desk to get a hospital card made. The lady at the desk looked at me rather quizzically, and asked if I was sure I was pregnant! Told her I was as sure as can be - needed to see the Doctor to confirm the same! She asked for id just to make sure she got my hospital card right - when she exclaimed. 'It says on the Huisart's record that you are born in 1957, but your passport says 1975!'

DUH. Now that explained everything. Despite having gone through this several times at stores etc, I forgot to check! The Dutch system of repeating numbers is different from English - where the units number is mentioned 1st , and then the tens no. For e.g.- the time I thought I had spent 'negen(9) and veertig'(4) , so 94 euros at the body shop on 3 little jars, and was thinking, hmmn, the products are sort of expensive in the Netherlands. Turns out the shop assistant meant 49 euros, they merely say the 2nd no. 1st!

One would think they would apply the English no. logic when conversing in English , but not quite. So the girl at the Huisart's assumed I was born in 1957 when I told her I was born in Nineteen Seventy Five! No wonder she thought I needed to see a doctor! At the age of 48 it would need to be pretty close to a medical miracle.

English - Dutch - Semantics apart, the hardest blow was the fact that she thought I looked like I was born in 1957. Hmmn. So you are 30, unemployed currently since you decide to follow the lord and master on yet another expat assignment, find yourself in yet another foreign country, and the lady at the Doctor's thinks you look 48 years old.

Find me a corner quick, I need to curl up and perish! Just like Anne (of the Green Gables, one of my favourite books), I have finally reached the depths of my despair.

The Great Indian Kadhai or Dutch Oven ?

Ok. So am almost borrowing the title of A’s TV show. But there really is no better way to describe this.

It probably all started many moons ago when i took the plunge. Went one early june night to meet the Cookie Baking company. Or Bon Bon Babes Inc. Or the Desperate Housewives, always desperate, not necessarily House wives. Took my friend M's advice, ignored the highbrow intellectual advise from well meaning Men-tors, dementors whatever.

There I was, breaking bread in Den Bosch. Be it souped up dinners, pretentious picnics, wild pub nights, I had a life again! It was fun to be the new flavour in this melting pot. To amuse and entertain, and change perceptions about the little Indian girl! Not so much fun trying to clarify for the nth time, no my partner is not Dutch, not American, not English, and definitely not Norwegian. And agreeing heartily, oh yes, he has an unpronounceable name; you know what they say about for bet...or worse and for worse. Just call him U Haul!

In this newfound vacuous existence i actually found myself living, and letting others too! I used the V word because one afternoon as i chattered away excitedly to my sister about a particularly insane, inane girl’s night out, she reminded me ' who has a vacuous existence now? ' I'll bet revenge was sweet. For not so long ago I had dismissed her evening coffee meetings with her numerous friends as 'such a vacuous existence, what trite conversations', while i laboured on in endless and such meaningful meetings!

Yeah. Whatever. There have been weeks when my most pressing concern has been ' oh dear, what shall i wear to J's cocktail do'. Or times when i have have found myself concocting exotic Indian recipes - as a food ambassador. Imagine my delight when in this crowd of English, American, Danish, Dutch, Russian, Swiss etc. girls - i found someone not very different from me! An Indian girl from South Africa, who incidentally has never been to India, but looks, breathes, cooks and eats Indian!

There was the beginning of a Grand Diwali Dinner. No efforts spared. Everything imaginable was on the table. While the Brits claimed to be stakeholders for the Saag Aloo, the Americans insisted with great fervour - Josh Rogan, Rogan Josh was theirs (It even sounds like the son of an ex President!).

But if you think dinner is all this melting pot is about - you are absolutely wrong. There are wheels within wheels. There is the Book club (with plenty of intellectual pretensions) featuring the Smarties. The Fashionistas. The mums’ n tots. The Hate mums n tots. Most importantly - the Critici van het Nederlandse. Aka - what you don't like about the Dutch!

And so it goes. Every time you are at a party, and have stopped tearing to tatters a pretty girl's green disaster (a short, shiny green dress the men are eyeing), and are running short of conversation, it's pretty easy. Just switch to the topic of typical Dutch toilets. Why they are designed the way they are. Know what i mean? If not, you will have to visit!

Yep, this is the new life. The pot. Melting pot. The women's club. The house elf's hermitage. Aha, yes, also the Vacuous Life. A good life?

The Sunflower is mine in a way

"You may know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way."
Vincent van Gogh (to Theo)Letter 573, 22 or 23 January 1889

It's easy to see what captured Vincent's imagination. It's definitely captured mine - these huge, bright yellow blobs of delight.

I guess my love affair with the sunflower began in childhood, somewhere in remote parts of Assam, where they grew wild, and untamed. My mother snobbishly dismissed them as large, unkempt and weed like. Soon more genteel flowers such as gladioli, orchids and cutesy little pansy beds replaced the sunflowers in our garden.

Then the years went by, and i definitely had no time to stop and smell the rosebuds, or see sunflowers. Till one christmas after i was married, and santa appeared with a little blue vw bug, with a bright yellow sunflower in the bud vase. This was the start of my love affair with the sunflowers again - sometimes it aggravated my sensitive nose and eyes, but there was no replacing the flower! When i said goodbye to Buggie, i left a large flower there for him in the bud vase. The dealer asked if I wanted to take the flower, but my expression stopped him hastily in his tracks, and he looked at my friends, as if to rescue him.

Turns out, Sunflowers get their name because they always face the sun - turning their flowers to track the sun's movement across the sky- a phenomenon known as heliotropis. Just like so many of us, constantly searching for light.

But i think my obsession truly started, three summers ago, when i first saw the Dutch sunflowers. Like everything in this mutant land, they were absolutely gigantic! Way taller than me, the flowers are larger than my well-rounded face! I stared in shock, felt like i was in 'Honey, i shrunk the kids'! I implored B to take lots of pictures, the result? Back in Delhi, i had curious people ask me , 'Didn't you go to Holland, where are the tulips?'.

This year, i patiently waited from spring through to summer. The hyacinths came and went, as did the easter lilies, azaleas, freesia, crocuses, and tulips. Plenty of tulips. Including an unattractive one called Aishwarya. Followed by roses. Here they were at last. My bit of sunshine.

Suddenly i didn't feel daylight deprived on rainy days. There were sunflowers everywhere. In the market. The shop windows. On my deck. In vases around the house. On my coffee mugs. Aprons. Everywhere. From Den Bosch to Brugge. We had friends and family visit, who insisted on touching and feeling them to make sure they were in fact, real!

I have been convincing myself they are real as well. Not a figment of magic mushroom induced fantasy. They are so shiny, so happy, so yellow, and people like. Ok, so i sound a trifle obsessed. But recently on yet another visit to the Van Gogh museum, it struck me; i wasn't the only one with a touch of the sun (flowers).

Meet me in Noord Brabant, and you'll see what inspired the master. Pieces of incandescent light, disguised as the rustic, simple sunflower.

Breaking Bon Bons in Den Bosch

Bon Bons. Pink Lemon. Le creuset. Crumpets. Creme Friache. Stuffed Artichokes. Fleur De Sel.

Just some of the words added to my new House Vrouw dictionary! After the years spent worshipping mammon in the business world, here I was, attempting to become a domestic goddess myself. Move over Martha Stewart. Julia Child who?

I had spent the last few weeks vacantly staring into the television, and burst into tears when one of the animals at St. Tigglywinks (from Animal Planet) died. Also my obsession with Jabu,Tembe and Morula (african elephants) was reaching unusual heights much to the dismay of my family, extended family. I figured the time had come for some interaction with homo sapiens, preferably not related to B's work place, and I took the plunge.

I went to a dinner of the so called Women's club. Turns out they did bake cookies, but they went to work as well. It was such a relief to just find a band of women - trying to make sense of their lives in a different culture. What was supposed to be an early dinner extended into a 11 pm - being almost shunted out of the restaurant-event. There was the usual semi-hysterical typical Netherlands bashing. Then it moved from one desultory topic to another, till all that was left of the evening was a girlie, giggly haze of alcohol!

As I watched my dinner company speed off on their bikes in different directions like glow worms, and i turned towards the beautifully illuminated St Jan's to walk home, I was glad I gotten off my 'corporate' high horse to meet the Bon Bon makers. Perhaps I was finally beginning to appreciate this whole business of being gezellig.

Amsterdam Re#ed

Yesterday was a fun day to be in Amsterdam. If you are the star spotting type you'd be disappointed. Unless you spent 10 hours outside the Grand Krasnapolsky. Or Sanjay Suri is your type. (Do you even know who he is ? I didn't!)

The city had been invaded by desis (indians, surinamese, pakistanis,bangladeshis & the rest of the subcontinent). The iifa awards were apparently not quite as well attended. At a 16o e for a last minute ticket it comes as no surprise! But outside the movie theatres, the Hotel Grand Krasnapolsky where the stars were ensconced, the story was very different!

F & I decided to watch Page 3 in a quaint theatre which was also screening My Brother Nikhil, Veer Zara and Dil Chahta Hain amongst others. Which should have read dil chhata (umbrella) hain since it began pouring for no good reason.

Page 3 is a wonderful and dismal film at the same time. It is a laudable effort, offers a very candid & cutting commentary on the razzle dazzle one sees on the tabloid-like Page 3 of leading newspapers ( which in my opinion is more suitable for making paper boats to float in the dirty water logged streets of Mumbai). That the razzle dazzle isn't what it really is makes it so depressing. Sometimes it's fun to imagine how it must feel to be a super model or a successful director. Looks as though it isn't all peachy.

The worst part of the Page 3 phenomena is probably - non of the truly successful people are really visible! Think about it : would you see Narayana Murthy on Page 3? Or for that matter Manmohan Singh? I doubt if Amitabh Bachchan has to pay to have his picture taken with nubile starlets! As a friend of mine put it "Most of the people on Page 3 of the Delhi Times don't deserve to have their pictures put on toilet paper, let alone a news paper". Some strong sentiment there!

The day ended more coffee, much laughter and many wanderings of the mind later. But somehow the dark side remained etched in my mind for a bit.

There probably is nothing more depressing than shallow beings who choose to call themselves "human". Ones who look perfect, sound perfect, but are far from perfect -which takes me to the nouveau rude article D. sent me.

Will let you know my thoughts on the same later! In the meantime here's a silly picture - see if you can figure it out!

nee, niet, neen, geen,

Or Ja, Jawel.
Does it matter? Not really.

Woensdag 1 juni.
I woke up this morning very excited. This was going to a historic day. Ok, so am exaggerating. But the Dutch were going to have their 1st national referendum in 200 years! (Or so I read somewhere). Besides - it was an awesome sunny day, just right for getting out of the house, and exercising your right to, ok an opinion.

I nearly tripped over myself in the newfound rush to get to the city hall to check the proceedings - only to bump into my cleaning lady on the way out. I stared at her, and asked her in my unique blend of a hint of Dutch, a few rolled R s (remnant from the Boston days), and sign language - "have you voted?"

She nodded, responded with a broad smile & led me to the bathroom instead, and as if to explain how she voted, she picked up a bottle of lily- of- the- valley body splash and asked, "Van de winkel in de marktplaats? Read as: did you buy this in a shop in the market place??

I responded with a niet and stepped out in anticipation of meeting a few civic-minded souls at least. The Den Bosch marketplace was crowded - it was a Wednesday, which is market day for fresh produce, flowers etc. I looked around expecting to see long lines winding around the City Hall. No signs of any lines there! I did spot a line outside Hunkemoller though (the lingerie store in a corner of the marketplace). When I investigated - I discovered some Dutch folks in line to buy bathrobes being sold for 10e a piece!

Then made my way over to the Bossche Broeke - pretty certain that it would be deserted. Shouldn't people be at work or voting? The answer looked like it was neither - they had decided to take the day off to sun bathe instead!

I came back exhausted, and a little disappointed. Just as i was getting into the elevator I met one of our geriatric neighbours who greets me every morning with a "hood morning, I am so sorry, ghoood morning! " I was pleased - was pretty certain he must have voted. He responded to my query "of course, I voted. The song you see. The song."

Figuring the old man had finally gone barmy; I pushed the elevator button till my thumb was blue. Once upstairs, I retired to my laptop, a little sad. A one time ardent follower of Pericles, Rousseau and their ilk, I was depressed by this apparent apathy to the referendum.

I needn't have been though. As I discovered a day or two later. A whopping 63% of the Dutch came out to vote. And 62% of them voted "nee".

So what if the if the vote hinged on an Eurovision Song contest? The Dutch message to those watching was size, or in this case, a song does matter!

Rustle of Spring

Spring is here. Sitting indoors, with the bright and sparkly sunshine filtering in through the windows it definitely looks as though it has arrived.

I heard birds this morning, saw a robin & think i saw rabbits moving the easter eggs. alright so am getting a little carried away.

Am quite obsessed with picasa. but am bored already. edited every single picture i could!

my friends have woken up. spring must be here. r called from ny.m is headed there. bdf is about to kill me because i sent her baboon avatar to everyone!

what's with all this baby making.that is all everyone is obsessed with. again think it has to do with spring being in the air.

have you tried watching cnn europe? all their stories are about america, america, america and once in a while a snippet of germany/ireland!

yesterday i learnt my 1st set of unpronounceable dutch words. forced to. couldn't read the instructions on the cereal cartons!

it is quite amazing how the definition of time changes. is it to do with cultures? or simply my current life?

hmmn.