The Monkey Temple

I Love the movie The Jungle Book.It's one of my favorites, and one of my favorites scenes is the one in which Mowgli is carried off to King Louie's lair in the temple ruins. I was pretty excited when I saw the pictures that Norm brought home from one of his latest adventures.This temple looks just like the one in the movie.
This our friend David. I am not sure I would stand under there. Look at the next shot.
On his next trip, he got to see the monkeys. Can't you just picture them at the temple singing "Oobie Doo, I wanna be like you...!"

It's Quiet...Too Quiet

Wow! I'ts quiet around here. Well, as quiet as it gets in an Indian neighborhood. The horns are still honking, and the wild dogs barking, and the vendors plying their wares. An argument will probably break out on the street soon, there is a least one a day. But I digress.

My house has no children in it today. Bee has gone to spend the night with a friend, and the boys are in school in Thailand so our house is empty. Except for Norm and I, of course. It's very strange. I feel like I should be looking for someone or something. After taking care of kids for seventeen years, It's really weird not to have at least one of them around. All of this quiet has made me think. These thoughts are pretty random, but I decided to stick them in this blog anyway. So here you go, the ramblings of a mother face to face with the reality of her kids growing up.

At breakfast this morning I was thinking wow, in just three years our house will always be like this. If Bee decides to go to boarding school like the boys, and she already wants too, she will start in ninth grade. Just three years away. I don't know if your life seems to be moving as fast as mine, but whoa! three years doesn't seem like much time to me.

That thought lead to the next one which really blew my mind. In five or six years I could be a grandmother. Sooner if AJ gets married as young as we did. But, I am hoping he will wait until after college, so I am going to go with at least five years. Only five years! SLOW THIS TRAIN DOWN, I WANT TO GET OFF! I am still a kid at heart, I have no business being a grandparent. I am only 37 years old for heaven's sake. But, we had our children young, and now AJ just turned 17, so in reality it could be soon. Much too soon. Honestly I still think of my sons as little boys, don't all mom's? Every time I see them again, I am shocked. They are both over six feet tall, with broad shoulders. The have big muscles and facial hair. When did all this happen!Frankly they are beginning to make their dad look small, and he is not a small guy.How in the world did this happen?

I am so thankful that for school next year we will all be living together in the States, one last year of family life. Then, AJ will go to college, Mace will be in Thailand and Norm, Bee, and I will be back here in India. When I was a young mom with three kids under five years old, I had some long days. People kept telling me that my kids would be grown up before I knew it, and I really couldn't fathom it. Now, today, sitting in an empty house, I see that they were right. Time flies when your having fun, and we have had a lot of it. The boys are coming home in just a couple of weeks. I am going to make sure to savor the remaining times we have together.

The Case of the Missing Meat

From the files of C. Seeley, Private Eye. (We all know mom's have eyes in the back of their head)

*The picture at the left is not the actual criminal, but only a reasonable facsimile. The actual thief is much larger, meaner looking, and bears the scars from a hard life on the streets of India. Not a cat you'd like to meet in a dark alley, or in your kitchen for that matter.
It was a breezy day in India, and my daughter had a hankering for Hamburger Helper. I'm not partial to it myself, but I try to please my clients. It just so happened I had a supply of ground meat in stock so I slipped a bag out of the freezer and left it on a plate in the kitchen to thaw. Later when I returned to prepare the above culinary delight. I found the meat was gone. Stolen. Purloined. Absconded with. A case of burglary right on my own turf. I identified two primary suspects right away based on their previous record. A three-year old yellow lab, and an obnoxious grey striped tabby. The lab had just finished serving a sentence for a similar offence in which a pot of stew and a plate of biscuits disappeared from the dining room table. However, the case puzzled me for two reasons. First usually when the lab steals things off the counter he knocks down the plate that contained them, and the plate had not been moved. Second, when the tabby strikes he usually chews a hole in *Above is the mug shot of the Lab. the bag and eats it right at the scene of the crime. Some legwork was called for so I searched the crime scene and the surrounding area for evidence. I found nothing. No pawprints, no tell-tale remains, and no empty ziploc bag. I had nothing to go on, and no evidence to make an arrest. I decided to table the case and wait for further developments.

The next day I got a break. Again the juvenile female requested Hamburger Helper. Again I placed a bag of frozen meat on the counter pushing it far to the back where I was sure the lab couldn't reach, and banishing the tabby to the out of doors. However as luck would have it our premises were visited that day by a famiy with two small boys. Small boys who tend to go through doors and leave them open, as most juvenile males do. This day was no exeption. The back door leading to the kitchen was left ajar. Hearing a noise we sent the female juvenile in to investigate. We were surpised when the air was rent by an ear-piercing scream. The girl ran out of the kitchen to report that a large, black and white Tom cat had made it's way in the above door, and ran off with the meat, bag and all. He was last seen making his get away along the top of the wall behin our house with the bag hanging from his mouth. The case was solved. The Lab and the tabby were cleared. It's true what they say: criminals do return to the scene of the crime, especially if they think they might get their second meal in as many days.

Tollywood Dreams

Lights....

Camera....

Action!

Tollywood came to our door recently! Tollywood, for those of you who do not know, is a take off on Bollywood. The nickname of the Hindi film industry. Tollywood is it's Telugu counterpart in Andhra Pradhesh, where they speak Telugu. Tollywood films are full of romance, violence, song, and dance. We took these pictures from our front yard because the movie company chose our neighborhood to film in. They invaded our streets about 7:00am with their vans, trucks and equipment. The extras filed into the courtyard of our next door neighbors, and sat on the ground to do each other's hair and makeup. The stars were treated a little better. They had a trailer parked down the block to wait in. They were also followed around everywhere they went, by little guys holding big, black umbrellas. The pretty lady you see is Trisha the heroine of our film, and her hero, pictured below is Nagarjuna. A big star here in A.P. It was fun to watch the process, and stare at the actors. To hear the director shout ACTION!, and know that when the movie comes out our house might just make it on screen. Nojo thought we shoul leave our laundry hanging out on the terrace just so we could show people our underwear when the movie came out. I vetoed that idea. By the end of the day word had gotten out and our securtiy guard were having a hard time holding the large crowd at bay that had gathered at our colony gate. Everyone around here was pretty star struck, and we can't wait for the release of the movie.

Never, never boring

Life is never, never boring here. I got to experience another first in my life yesterday. On our flight from Bangalore we were in a turbo prop plane. Nam has ridden in them before, but for Bee and I it was our first time. It was definitely much smaller than a jet. While we were at cruising altitude it was pretty smooth, but we had to pass through a cloud layer on the way up and the way down. My stomach didn't appreciate that much. The craziest part, was walking down the little set of steps onto the aiport apron. No skywalk for this plane. Just another chance to say. Yeah, I've done that before.

Tiger Kingdom

Isn't this a great picture? Bee looks a little nervous doesn't she? While we were in Thailand this summer Bee got to go to go to a place called Tiger Kingdom. Yes, they got to play with tigers. She got to pet the babies, and adolescents. This was the biggest one they got to get up close with. Plenty big enough if you ask me. I would have been a little nervous too! I was excited for her, not everyone gets to play with tigers.

One night in Bangkok...

The airport in Bangkok is an anthropologist's dream. There is an amazing number of cultures represented there. If you love to watch people it is the place to be. Last night I sat next to a woman returning to Sydney, Australia. I ate my last cheeseburger at Burger King adjacent to a couple speaking German, and I passed an entire tour group who appeared to be from Korea on the walkway. There are usually Russians, Spaniards, Germans, Brits, Chinese, Korean, Australian, various Scandinavian, and even some American tourists milling about.
Last night there were a large number of Arabs in the terminal looking especially wealthy in their long, stunningly white robes and headgear. The black head bands contrasted startlingly with the cloths on their head. Their wives and daughters were dressed in burquas of rich materials, and sporting fine jewelry, designer handbags and expensive looking shoes. They really did make quite an impression.
However, the image that stuck in my mind was of an older Islamic gentlemen, probably in his sixties or seventies. He was wearing the traditional kurta and pants. A soft grey color instead of white. His most striking feature though was the baseball cap that was perched backwards on his head. I had to do a double take when I saw him. He was strolling in front of me down the concourse with his wife covered from head to toe in her burqua. He looked like an Arab homeboy. It was the most unexpected blending of Eastern and Western culture that I have seen in a while.