It was a fantastic trip!! I enjoyed myself tremendously there but sadly, the village was quite a disappointment. It was just a village, with no places to shop or things to see.
Anyway, we survived the 4hours flight and almost 8hours van ride to the village. The spouse was thinking ahead when he chose to travel at night.
Night Travel = Tired and sleepy children = Less hassle
The kids were so excited. They loved the plane ride as they could play games and watched lots of new inflight movies / cartoons. Naseer was so independent. Buckling the seatbelts for the other siblings and eating his meal without spilling food all over the tiny tablet.
The kids slept throughout the van ride to the village. We reached India at 10.30pm India time (that's 1am Singapore time) One of our luggage was tampered with, the lock was gone and the zipper was cut off. But nothing was missing from it, so we were quite ok. The spouse's aunt and uncle were already waiting for us and as soon as we sat in the van, Zaza and Farah knocked off and slept throughout the journey. The boys were quite excited at first but then they fell asleep too and woke about an hour and a half before we reached father in law's village. Feroz then felt whoozy and puked. He was pretty independent too. Told me that he needed a plastic bag coz he felt like vomiting. He held on to the bag and vomitted into it. I mean knowing Feroz, he could have done it on Zaza's hair coz she was asleep and did not know anything, or he could have just vomitted on Naseer's lap, or even into the mineral bottle and just leave the vomit there for us to drink but my boy, my premature little darling actually vomitted properly into a plastic bag. Like a good, obedient little boy.
And this puke was his very first puke in a vehicle in his whole almost 6 years life.
Anyway, enough of gag story.
We reached the village at 5.15am (India time). Both father and mother in law woke up and were so happy to see all of us. We had guests coming to see us almost immediately and we were so tired and didnt even had time to wash up. By the time, most of the guests were gone, mother in law asked me to wash up the kids and shooed us away to our room to sleep. We slept at 7.35am and was woken up for breakfast at 10.30am.
We had so many guests that at one point of time, I felt like a celebrity..hehehe.
I was telling the spouse that we might be getting more guests than Siti Nurhaliza (a Malaysian singer) was getting for her wedding. LOL!!
The village was truly a village. Though father in law's home was made with bricks, you stepped on sand as soon as you stepped out of the house. It was also quite modern in the sense that there was electricity, water running from tap , fridge etc but, these things were not working well. We had no electricity and water supply on some days and so we had to bathe with the well water. Our hair became so stiff and our skin were not in the best condition. Farah broke out in rashes and she was very uncomfortable there. India was very, very hot.
Other than stroking cows, goats, horses etc, we were also slapping our arms and legs every now and then. The population of mosquitoes in India far surpassed their human population. We had bites all over. Poor Farah, she was so badly bitten all over her face and even the palms of her hand. I brought along some anti mosquitoe patches as well as Johnson and Johnson lotion but these mosquitoes were so lethal, that they could even bite through materials.
I figure that the government of India might as well call it, the land of Mozzies, it's a fantastic breeding ground for this little bloodsuckers.
I also lost all inhibitions in India. It's ok to spit, litter, pee or even shit on the roadside. I am not joking. I saw a man shitting on the roadside when we were on our van trip back to Madras. I saw him pulled up his dhoti (the white sarong), squatted and in the midst of the night, I saw something escaping his anus. Really!!
I told the spouse to look and he said that I was disgusting.
I was disgusting?? This joker shat in front of so many people and I was disgusting?
Ok..anyway, cant blame him. Toilets (they call it latrines there) and dustbins(errr, I think this word does not exist in the India vocabulary) are not readily available in India, at least at the remote part of the village. I think I did not see any dustbins at all during my whole trip there, except in the airport, and I saw only one.
But of course, I did not shit or pee or spit in public, but I was littering. Yes, it gave me some adrenaline rush to see sweet wrappers escaped my hands and swiftly made their way to the already fully littered ground together with their other friends, like germs and stale water and cow dung etc. Oooh...my neck feels warm just talking about it.
Well, when you are in Rome, do what the Romans do.
By the way, mother in law burnt the rubbish in our backyard which half looks like a dumpster.
Other than enjoying life doing nothing, I think people in the village just stay at home and hardly go out at all. There is no market. The meat and vegetable seller go from house to house to sell the goods and the milkman comes twice a day to sell his fresh milk. No, he does not travel with a goat like they did in Indonesia, he did not have to do the rythmic hand action and aimed the goat's nipple onto our milk tin. He had a big container of milk with a tap attached to it. Quite modern right?
Anyway, where we stay, you dont go out to buy things. There is nothing to buy in the village, no shopping centres, no little bazaar for you to buy cheap wares. They only have small grocery shops selling biscuits, soaps, shampoos and drinks. Nothing else.
I was disappointed as I did not have a chance to shop for anything.
On top of that, the kids fell sick one after another. Food poisoning. And no amount of the medication I brought from Singapore worked. At last, we had to bring the kids to a paediatrician in another village. They got better only after they took his medicine and it was all in tablet form. I was so afraid that the kids may get malaria from the many mosquitoe bites they suffered from. The kids lost quite a lot of weight when we were there. Farah and Zaza was badly hit. Zaza had motion sickness and was giving us so much problem when we travelled in the car to visit the other relatives. She was screaming and crying throughout each journey, holding onto her tummy and yelling "OooooH....my stomache pain!! Open the car's door, I wanna get down. Daddy, my stomache pain!" And she went on and on and on that after a few days of her screaming each time we travelled, it sounded like something out of the stereo, like you were listening to some reality A&E trauma show they are broadcasting life in the radio.
Well, in one of our daily very tiring and trying trips, mother in law brought us to a place called Nagore which has a few shrines of some holy people. She got some people to cook and we donated some food to the poor there. There were too many poor people. It was sad and heartbreaking. The food we brought were not enough. There was a man who had no limbs lying flat on his front on the road in the hot sun with a tiny plate by his side. He was not wearing any clothes except for a tiny piece of shorts. He looked dead. I was so shocked coz I almost stepped on him but I could not rub off the vivid image of him lying on the road like that till today. The road was burning hot, slippers were not allowed so we walked with our bare feet and we were all tiptoeing coz the heat was stinging onto our feet and this poor man was just lying there flat. He must have burnt his skin! I just could not understand why nobody bothered to carry him and placed him somewhere else, under the shade perhaps, people were just walking on the road and some didnt even notice him. I wouldnt be surprised if he was stepped upon many times.
Right after that, we went to the Nagapattinam beach. It was one of the beach hit by tsunami 2 years back on Christmas day. It looked calm and inviting, never once could I ever imagine the number of lives the waves swallowed and brought with it into the vast depth of the sea. The beach was almost empty that day and the kids were so happy playing with the sea water. Mother in law looked so happy that day too. It was one of the very few outings we ever had with her. I sat with her on the sand away from the water because I was carrying Farah and wearing one of her Burkha and didnt wanna wet her clothes. The spouse held Naseer and Zaza and brought them to the waves while Mersina, the spouse 18 year old cousin held Feroz and they played with the waves, running behind each time the waves came crashing towards them.
Naseer and I saw a little tiny crab ran out from one of the many holes on the beach made and quietly made its way to another hole on the sand.
Having fun....something that we totally forget about when we are in Singapore.
We went back that night and had to leave again coz we were invited for dinner at another relative's place. We were always out for either dinner or lunch or breakfast. The spouse has an army of relatives there. I dont even recall their names except for his immediate aunts and uncles (mom in law's sister and brothers). They were so warm and kind that even in their poverty, they would treat you with the best meal their family could afford. It's strange. I dont feel the same kind of warmth with my family over here. They fed you in abundance. Their plates were big-sized and so were their servings. Refusal means we disliked their cooking so we just ate and ate whatever was piled onto our plates. It made them really happy to see us enjoying their food.
The houses there are very rundown. Some of the thatched roofs had holes in them and I wondered how they slept when it rained. Spider webs are at every corner of the house. It's nothing strange. We slept on straw mats on the hard floor and we were given a pillow each. Poor Farah who has a habit of getting up in the night to look for me and once she sees me, she would plonk her head back onto the mattress and go back to sleep, had a few bumps on her head during our stay there. Father in law had wanted to give up his bed for us but I told the spouse it was really unnecessary since father in law is not in the best of health and it was better for him to keep the room.
Anyway, we spent our last day in a mosquitoe infested hotel in Madras. It was so hilarious. We decided to leave the village a day earlier, leaving on late Saturday night and spend a day to shop in Madras. When we reached Madras, it was 7am and most of the hotels only allowed us to check in at 12noon.The kids were too tired and sleepy and we needed a room badly so, we headed for a budget hotel. As soon as we stepped into the room, mosquitoes swarmed everywhere. We requested for a few room change and finally got one that had no mosquitoes, we thought. Then, when we tried to sleep, the mosquitoes came. One at first and I killed it, then another came, and I killed it again..and then, 2 mosquitoes came and the spouse exclaimed, "You killed one, you invited the whole family."
That evening, we spent an hour killing mosquitoes. All of us caught a fair share of them, even little Farah joined in the fun by clapping her hands in the air and exclaiming loudly, "I CAUGHT!!"
Ok...no more bragging about our murderous feat lest we get into trouble with IPCA (sister of our Singapore SPCA in India).
Anyway, Madras was boring. The shops were closed on Sunday and whatever shopping we had wanted to do was all wasted. We ended up going to Spencer Plaza to have our lunch at Pizza Hut. After a whole week of hardcore Indian food, we were all craving for fastfood and I was so happy to see the kids eating 2 slices of pizza each and having ice cream and brownie. Hahhaha....even Farah finished a slice of pizza and had ice cream.
I didnt shop in India. I was quite disappointed because I had a few things I wanted to buy for the family. Even my mom was asking for some things from India but we did not get any, unlike our last trip during our Honeymoon, where we had to buy another luggage just to put in the gifts we bought for our family and friends.
But, I was glad that the very first trip we had with the kids were still good. The spouse did not lose his temper and the kids were pretty much okay in their behaviour.
We are looking forward to another family trip. But I hope this time round, it's not to India.
