Christmas and new year

The festive season has been marked here by another increase in load shedding and a lack of water, apart from a flood through the roof in the spare room. The upstairs door has been securely padlocked by the new landlord, so we had no access to find out what was happening. After a frantic hour trying to contact him, he appeared with our friend Dinesh and a plumber, who mended a burst pipe in the upstairs bathroom. Fortunately, there was little damage and David managed to dry out all his carefully prepared teaching materials that are laid out in ordered piles on the spare bed. This was shortly followed by the demise of our gas ring. Ravi’s brother, who spent an hour sitting on our kitchen floor dismantling and reassembling it, covering the marble with a lethal carbon and kerosene mixture, has repaired it.
Christmas Day started foggy and chilly, but a pale sun came through in time for breakfast on the terrace with our splendid dahlias. Schools were closed but I had a busy day training for primary English. ‘Learning English through activities’ is our theme, not without hazards, as most of the group are stout and in their fifties. Chhabilal pulled a muscle as he was ‘running to the board’ to find his word; Laxmi started to have palpitations and refused to ‘jump and down’ any more because of her heart condition. Manju wants to be my best friend. She is the most colourful, with her scarlet polo-necked sweater under a swirly orange and yellow sari, topped off with a fluorescent pink cardigan and an electric blue bobble hat.
Our best present was an invitation to Hanna and Josef’s for a hot bath / shower. Bliss; I had not had a bath since England and our last hot shower was in Kathmandu almost 3 months ago. After a traditional Austrian Christmas Day supper, we sang carols round the tree and exchanged small presents. An enjoyable evening and very dark cycle ride home. Back to Hanna and Josef’s for new year and games and fireworks with the boys. It is difficult for us to reciprocate their hospitality, as we are now confined to the candlelit small backroom to keep warm. The gas fire is working again, but the fumes are so noxious we have to turn it off before we pass out.
We have just embarked on the BBC War and Peace series from the 1970s. The sound and movement are not synchronised, its in a strange sepia tint and has Dutch subtitles. It is so dated – very stagy and overacted. The wigs are extraordinary and resemble the hairstyles of 70s football players. My hair does too, after 3 months without a visit to a hairdresser. We should manage to make the DVDs last until we go to India, as the laptop battery is very tired so we have to watch half an episode at a time.
Further increases in load shedding have started this week. On a good day we have 6 hours of electricity. Government administrative expenditure has increased 8 times since April – mostly on overseas travel for the new regime. The press has become more critical of the new government, and newspapers were interrupted for a few days this week after Maoists smashed newspaper offices and beat up editors. Headlines now focus on the power crisis and government plans to generate more electricity. The latest features plans for wind farms; however ‘the inaccessibility to identified project areas is a major stumbling block’.
Its now the beginning of the kite flying season. Small boys perch precariously on the rooftops with home made kites on the end of huge spools of string. A consignment of cheap badminton rackets has appeared in the market, so children are lashing ‘shuttlecocks’ made from rubber bands around on pieces of waste ground. More dangerously, they are using the railings of the central reservation on the highway coming from the airport as badminton net!