A year of firsts…

I was BBMing a few friends the other day about life in general, and my amazing paneer masala, and suddenly realised I have now settled into life as some kind of “aunty”. (Settled is the key word there. Not aunty.)

This is not good.

This year has been about a lot of firsts:

• First year alone in our flat
  We survived it! I am officially a queen at doing everything on my own now. Woop de doo. To those of you that doubted that, well you can suck it.
• First battle-to-death with cockroaches and reptiles
  I won. It was difficult, made me sweat, and gave me frown-lines but I did it. That is all.
• First entire meal cooked by me
  I think I’m Nigella now. Minus the oven, the cake, the chocolate, the… Ok, so I’m not Nigella. But I could be. I think I’m pretty good at curry now. I make pretty decent rasam too. And pulau. And garlic RULES. N, come over, I’ll feed you. You’ll need to bring me Krispy Kremes though.
• First (and not last) screw-dinner-lets-go-out night
  I love that we can do this. We can just decide randomly when we want to not eat at home, and just go out. No one else depends on me cooking. It’s fabulous!!
• First where-to-find-a-maid panic
  Yea, this one is tricky. It’s weird how it is such a big problem in India. You would think that with over a million people below the poverty line, there would be more people you could get to work for you, and be nice. Yes, I know that sounds awful, but hey, it’s a way of life here okay. I did manage fine on my own until I finally did find a maid, and then life just got so much easier! Like, I could come home and actually not do a thing till it was time to make dinner, because all my washing and cleaning was done!! A-mazing. And then that fell apart because the maid was a pain in my arse. So we fired her. And I went back to doing the cleaning. After you take a break from cleaning up for a while, you really find it hard to go back to! So we found another maid, and turns out, she’s crazy. Her family has every single ailment possible. Her mother-in-law has a swollen foot, her first kid had typhoid, her second always has a fever, or is hurt. Her husband has numerous health issues, ranging from fevers to warts on his back. She so far has only had the common cold, but you never know when that will change. She’s often late, and has a habit of deciding she just won’t turn up very last-minute. Unfortunately, she’s great at her job and I can’t lose her. And this entire section dedicated to my maid and maid-troubles makes me officially “Indianised”.
• First IPL match
  On TV, not at the stadium. But I did enjoy it. Not too bad…
• First traffic ticket
  This I was very proud of. It’s on my fridge now, the prime spot for silly things. I took a “free” left where there wasn’t one and this fat cop got me. And after asking for a fine, which he reduced as well when I was all like “aww I’m new here” in my English-Tamil accent. He then let me go and apologised for stopping me and taking my money. Nice cop. Ha. However, not so nice if he is the same cop that has to deal with all the assholes I want murdered on the roads of Chennai.
• First trip away alone
  To Cambodia to see Hannah, which was amazing!!
• First job (in India) for over a year
  Enough said!Yay!
• First successful homemade pot of yogurt
  Now this took skill alright! And now I can’t stop either, or I’ll lose the “culture”. Ridiculous! But oh so yummy.
• First ‘as a married person‘ advice given
  Yea N, you. You can look forward to a lot more wisdom heading your way, because I am truly all-knowing. Starting here.
• First drive in the rain
  By rain I mean storm. By storm I mean end-of-the-world type crazy. It’s like the magic water from the sky makes people around you go insane and everyone turns bad-driver. Buses want to drive into you, cars want to avoid mini puddles so their wheels stay dry (which is f-ing stupid, it’s already raining!), and people walk in the middle of the road because they start to believe that they too are vehicles, just walking ones. Road rage increases by a few 100 points, hair greys by 60%, however a cup of tea solves all problems.

I think I like Chennai now. It’s shabby, frankly quite dirty too. And when it rains, it smells like sewage. But today is an amazing day. It’s a blue sky, perfect ratio of Sun to cool breeze type day and it’s amazing. Unfortunately, being at work and facing the wall ruins it.

Some things just can’t be helped.