When we talked about coming to India, we knew that we would have to quarantine for 14 days after landing. And thankfully, Kapil's family has two homes in Bangalore that we could do that in. There's Chetul and Hebbal. Chetul is the older home and Hebbal is newer. Both locations were quarantine safe because everyone works from home and this country takes the number of covid cases very seriously. They are not afraid of passing curfews, lockdowns and ticketing people who are not following mask mandates. It's a nice feeling to know that no matter where we would be, we'd be safe.
Chetul is where Kapil grew up with his brother, mom/dad, his five males cousins and their parents. It's...a big house. Three stories, 8 rooms and 6 bathrooms and rooftop terrace. It's where his parents currently live along with his dad's aunt Didi, Kapil's brother Raunaq, his wife Vipasha and their one year old Asmi.
Hebbal is the newer spot. Kapil's dad and his 3 uncles got together around 15 years ago and bought the property and built up the place to be a freaking condo for the extended family. Four floors, each floor with two 3 bedroom 3 bath apartments, elevator, basement parking garage and HUGE rooftop terrace. Each son in the family was 'gifted' an apartment for their future family whenever they were ready to make that move. Currently, two of the four families reside in two of the eight condos.
So when we talked about quarantining and staying here in India for an extended period of time, we always thought we would be at Kapil's Hebbal apartment (201). This was Kapil's gifted apartment and would eventually be our home in India when we traveled to visit or stay for extended periods. We figured might as well start making it home as soon as we landed. Especially with the monster coming in a few months. In fact, up until we landed at the airport, I was confident that was where we were heading. But what wasn't communicated to me was that apartment 201 was completely empty. Like, nowhere to sleep, no appliances to cook with, no wifi, no where to sit and watch endless tiktoks on your phone. And after spending the last 4 years renovating our townhome in Durham, it was our plan to use this India trip as an opportunity to save our money for a new home in 2022/23.
Moving into Hebbal 201 would mean spending money on food delivery, furniture, appliances, utilities; we'd pretty much start from scratch. Now, I love a good project but this isn't the land of Home Goods, Lowes or Pottery Barn. If you want a new couch, a set of shelves, or a fridge, you're going to have to spend 2-3 times longer looking at options and finding carpenters/delivery/install people. India is a custom-made, all-service country. This is not the DIY America where I can walk through Lowes, buy some wood and put a set of shelves up in the pantry in a weekend. For a daughter of an engineer and contractor, this is extremely frustrating.
But it is what it is, so we spent our first month at the Chetul house in India. Fully furnished, comes with homemade meals and snacks whenever we need/want, extra hands for laundry and cleaning. Sounds like a dream. Although, I couldn't help but feel like it was at odds with what we originally planned. Yes, we planned to save money and Chetul supported that. But we also planned on building our home bit by bit in Hebbal...which Chetul did not support.
Two steps forward, two steps back.
Fun fact, Kapil can read frustration on my resting bitch face three days ahead of me blowing up. And it felt like that first month at Chetul was a daily communication struggle between the two of us. I kept trying to internally rationalize why our plans diverted while also trying to make the best of the situation even though I had hoped to 'nest' at Hebbal. The amount sitting in my amazon wishlist was overwhelming.
On top of that, I've spent the last year living in a bunker with Kapil. I've gotten accustomed to my own space and own time. Eating when I was hungry and making meals when I wanted. And while the change from Durham bunker to Chetul was easy for Kapil because it was what he grew up with, for me it was a challenge to my independence. It came off as ungrateful, and it made for some heated discussions between us. Second fun fact, when you're 8 months pregnant, heated discussions mean impromptu sobbing.
It didn't help that the day we flew out my mother sent us an email sharing her traumatic birthing experience in Lebanon and claimed that I would grow to hate the cultural differences of giving birth in a foreign country. To the point that it would drive a permanent wedge between Kapil and I, the way it did between my mother and our Lebanese family. That email wedged itself in both our minds and with every detour we had to take from our original plan the mother-shaped wedge would sneak it's little head out just to whisper "this is it, this is the thing that will break you and bring you back to me where I can control your every action."
The hell it will.
Long month short, I'm writing this sitting at a plastic picnic table inside our Hebbal house. We bought a bedframe, a memory foam mattress, a set of sheets, a work desk that we're alternating working at until we can get a carpenter to build the second one, and there are shipments of kitchen appliances/supplies coming in each day. A carpenter came a few weeks ago to update the bathroom fixtures and tomorrow the carpenter is coming through to hear all my ideas for shelves and furniture.
The post today has silver lining. It took us sometime to wrap our heads around how we'd make it work, but we are making both our plans work. We are saving money, we are spending money, we are building our Hebbal home, and we are spending time at Chetul (before night curfew kicks in) with family for snacks, meals and Asmi play time. And today I built an office chair without calling an install person.
No comments:
Post a Comment