When In Chandigarh: Lunch with Anupama

On Sunday we had lunch with Anupama.

Anupama is a teacher at Violet's school. She is incredibly nice, and was very excited to have us, and another little family from Violet's school, over for a East Indian meal.

The other little family consists of a very nice couple-- Manish and Puja-- who have a little girl who is almost exactly one year older than Violet, named Olive. They also have an older son (I think his name is Amrit) who is very rambunctious. Anyway, Anupama lives quite a ways outside of town, so Puja called the night before and said that we could ride with them, and that they would pick us up at 10:30am on Sunday.

Well, by 11:45 we were finally all on our way, in an extraordinarily fancy car, Amrit and Olive bouncing around willy nilly; no one uses car seats here. I held onto Violet as tightly as I could, praying that she wouldn't get carsick on their fine leather seats....

Finally we arrived. Zirakpur. It's a little community outside of Chandigarh, off the highway to Delhi. It definitely felt as though it is a town that is still being built, with plots of land sectioned off with foundation borders in between other houses that maybe have been there for quite some time. Kind of a village turned suburb.

Anyway, Anupama and her husband live in this teeny-tiny apartment above her mother in-law. When we arrived there was a bit of a colorful chaos of puppies, children, neighbors, and caged birds. We all went upstairs, and began the afternoon with tea.

When it was time for lunch, we cleared the floor of crayons and paper airplanes that the kids had been playing with, and put down newspaper. Then, we all sat down in a circle, and handed around plates, and started serving up helpings of fish curry, chicken, rice, lentils.... And began to eat, with our hands. Now, friends, eating with your hands is not such an easy thing if you aren't accustomed to doing so. There is some method of turning your hand around backwards and scooping and pushing the food with your thumb, but I think maybe it takes a bit of practice. The food was very good-- but very tricky to hand-eat with all of the thick sauces and tiny fish bones. Anupama began telling us the differences between East Indian food and Punjabi food. One fact of interest-- there is a lot of mustard oil used in East Indian cooking. I can't say it tasted mustardy, but it definitely had a richness to it that we haven't really had before.

Another fact of interest: Violet and Olive are adorable together. They are certainly a pair. They were climbing on and off of chairs, clambering around (almost stepping in the fish curry), and even though Violet doesn't speak any Hindi and Olive knows only a few English words, they seemed to be able to communicate in the wordless way that kids can. If we were staying here for longer, I think Manish and Puja and their little family might become good friends of ours.

Well, lunch ended, and the afternoon moved on, and we got back in the car to drive home, making one stop: Walmart. Manish and Puja raved about it, saying that it was brand new and that you could get all the best prices there. It felt incredibly strange to leave the humble home of Anupama where we all ate on the floor, and then go straight to Walmart.... (India, the land of contrasts, strikes again). Indian Walmart feels a lot like Costco. You need a membership to get in, and most of what they sell is large packs of grocery items. I ended up pushing all the kids around in a shopping cart-- Violet sitting in the front, Amrit standing up in the basket acting wild and grabbing things, and Olive hanging off the side, while Puja and Manish disappeared. Then the kids started crying for their mom, so we found Puja, and then Tyler, Violet and I got completely lost and couldn't find anyone for 20 minutes. Maybe, in some ways, a typical Walmart experience-- although I don't really know, since we never shop there.

The whole day was quite an adventure! Now, pictures... (click to enlarge)