{"id":160,"date":"2007-06-14T11:12:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-14T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2007\/06\/houseguest-tales.html"},"modified":"2013-12-04T16:48:17","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T21:48:17","slug":"houseguest-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2007\/06\/houseguest-tales.html","title":{"rendered":"Houseguest tales"},"content":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”B0020PKTAE” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]\"THE[\/amazon_link]I’ve had guests from India in large numbers recently; I had mattresses down in every corner of the house. Kith-and-kin and friends of kith-and-kin. Living here for a while now, makes you aware of how high-maintenance desi guests are. The kind that I encounter at least .<\/p>\n

Here, there are no servants. There is a maid service, but that’s like weekly. The rest is upto yours truly. Not only did I get told numerous times that we don’t do any work in India (I wanted to remind them that this was America), I was also reminded by some folks that they couldn’t eat meals unless accompanied by a salad. How I wish that people who have such culinary demands would stay in their own homes, where they would have access to large amounts of salad whenever they wished. I thought it; I didn’t speak it out loud. My saving grace (or one of them).<\/p>\n

My philosophy on cooking is you cook it, and serve it, in large (and hopefully beautiful) serving dishes, with appropriate cutlery etc.. From the serving bowl toy one’s stomach is not my job. I don’t go around serving hot chappattis, or offering to refresh sabzis, when everyone else is perfectly able to do it by themselves. Really, I miss the bad-girl\/housewife\/bahu tag by just this much.<\/p>\n

I know that in India you sort of carry food with you when you embark on journeys. Mostly because you don’t trust the food available at stations, or you think the water might be contaminated. Fair enough. But here, I have never actually packed food for anyone. And apparently that was the expectation. Logic fails me. There is no famine. Clean food is available in plenty, in airports, in restaurants, everywhere ! Why would you expend labor on something so easily available ?<\/p>\n

Apart from the cooking\/chauffeuring I recently discovered that someone had changed my Internet Explorer settings, so now they all pointed to various India pages, and downloaded a bunch of software on my PC. Not that I would have refused but asking wouldn’t have hurt.<\/p>\n

I am reminded of an excellent essay by Chitra Divakaruni in the book “The bitch in the house”<\/a>. It’s a collection of 26 essays, and Divakaruni’s is about “Houseguest Hell”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”B0020PKTAE” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]I’ve had guests from India in large numbers recently; I had mattresses down in every corner of the house. Kith-and-kin and friends of kith-and-kin. Living here for a while now, makes you aware of how high-maintenance desi guests are. The kind that I encounter at least . Here, there are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-society","category-india","category-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":9,"uagb_excerpt":"[amazon_link id=”B0020PKTAE” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]I’ve had guests from India in large numbers recently; I had mattresses down in every corner of the house. Kith-and-kin and friends of kith-and-kin. Living here for a while now, makes you aware of how high-maintenance desi guests are. The kind that I encounter at least . Here, there are…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3119,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/3119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}