Friday 26 February 2010

Lucknow UP...what a trip!!

Well, my loyal readers...here I am again....I know some of you have been asking. Well, there was just no easy internet access ...just the opposite to what I thought would happen in Lucknow. Afterall, my cousins there run a business in the adjoining house. ....Nooooo, the computer in the house was in Aunty Gypsie's bedroom, so naturally I didn't want to be using it all the time, hence I got very little writing done on my blog.

I will have to write up on the visit a little later. Suffice to say it was a wonderful trip...this is where I was doing the interviewing etc. Did that, in spite of the fact I fell sick had a fever, and tummy problems and am still not fully ok. Then my partner Zarina had her brother-in-law die in Goa. ..so she took off for a few days...and I bravely carried on. My relatives provided a car a driver for most of the trip there....really kind of them and we got tea and snacks and lunches and dinners where ever we went....Got some great stories....and met some really neat folks. There were some glitches as well.......Zarina set her micro cassette and started the interview...and made the mistake of handing the device to the guy we were talking to.......He must have been nervous, he held it so tight that he pressed the stop button.......so guess what ....he talked for nothing....we got nothing....and then the micro cassette, fell and broke a piece ....kind of a comedy of errors....

My family of Aunty Gypsie, the two daughters, Amrita and Kavita and Aunty Barri (meaning the older one......real name is Mohini...she is my Dad's cousin ..and was a OB/GYN...did a stint at Johns Hopkin at one time) were regaled daily with our goings on....and they always looked forward to the anecdotes about our interviews. I think pretty soon we had found out lots of interesting facts about people's families. Zarina and I giggled about how, if we were not careful, we could become the town gossips!! However, that was not our intent of course. We felt very priviledged to have so many people open their hearts and share their stories with us.

Incidentally, my family in Lucknow have become my best relatives ever.....all of them. It is really ironic that I had never met them before. All these people I met, including the son Ajit( and his lovely daughter Rohina) who occupy the large apartment upstairs and another cousin Inderjit who lives in another house behind them....were absolutely so welcoming and loving and great.....I am without words to describe. Oh and did I mention the absolutely beautiful and well kept and really professional lawn and garden they have......a full time Mali (gardener) with an assistant or two to help him. ....what more could one want....just a peacock or two to add to the ambiance..and they come around as well!!!...Actually they sat around squawking on the tree in the mornings outside my window...and that I could have done without.

I had a lovely large bedroom and bathroom to myself. Glad I didn't offer to share with Zarina...she was invited everyday for lunch though to our place...which she accepted happily......her accommodations are another story.....The way she described it sounded like a comedy show!!

Tomorrow I leave for Hyderabad. So off to bed.

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