Learning how to live in a new (foreign) place is interesting. It’s one of the fun aspects of staying somewhere for weeks or months, rather than being a tourist, only meeting taxi drivers, hotel receptionists, waiters and the like.
We woke up to issues – no water in the bathroom sink or to flush the toilet, but everything else (shower, kitchen taps etc) fine. Oops. Chris WhatsApp’d an SOS to his school contact (it being a CMS apartment) before heading off to run his morning drama workshops.
Ding-dong – I made myself presentable and opened the door to a uniformed man, who I guessed must be site maintenance. And as he knew not a word of English and I have no Hindi, I waved for him to come in to look at our plumbing. He looked petrified … no, no, no, he gestured. Luckily the person in the flat across the corridor opened his door and handed over his rubbish, neatly separated into ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ (for recycling). Ah – understood. Not the plumber at all.
Ding dong – get presentable again and open the door. It’s a lady, explaining in broken English that she’s the cleaner, Nenda. Ah excellent. I didn’t know we had a cleaner, but please come in. Pity I’d already swept the floor and washed up! But silver lining – we had time to sit together to share photos of our families. Her son is an engineer in Chennai, her daughter’s wedding pics were beautiful, I showed our family holiday in sunny Portugal, and it turns out we’re both going to become grandmas in the next few weeks. Wonderful. Thank you Nenda, see you tomorrow.
Ding dong – Nenda again, this time with two site maintenance men. All four of us trooped into the bathroom, each of them trying various taps and flushes. It was getting a bit claustrophobic, so I squeezed past, leaving them scratching and shaking their heads. Puzzled, muttering in Hindi they filed out again, looking a bit sheepish. (Most appropriate – were they auditioning for Aesop? – Chris)
Ding dong – the man at the door had what seriously looked like a plumber’s bag in his hand. He politely made his way to the offending plumbing, did his stuff and then insisted on showing me every tap and flush operating beautifully. Thank you so much, good-bye.
Rat-a-tat-tat. OMG exhausted, I got up to unlock the door. It’s Chris back from work. “Have a nice day?”, he asked. “Drama of my own this morning” I answered … “like Piccadilly Circus”.
Val Jonas
