Christmas Eve and the Indian Post Office

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Friday - Christmas Eve

I woke up at Kelly's after a pretty bad night's sleep. Her bed is quite hard and even with ear plugs in, I can still hear people/animals/things outside. Someone came to brush their teeth pretty much outside her window at sunrise (around 7am),which would have been fine if it was as simple as that, but the norm here seems to be to hack one's lungs up at the same time to clear any phlegm inside. Nice.

*Toilet talk alert*

I usually don't have any problems doing a nice big poo in the morrnings, but today I just couldn't move anything. Usually a cigarette helps things on their way if there are any 'blockages', but even this didn't work today. I was also made a cup of black tea by Kelly's neighbour, but nothing. Oh well, the bloated, uncomfortable feeling had to accompany me to the centre.

So, I arrived at the centre in good time, a little sleepy as I hadn't pooed yet and that normally wakes me up, but got to work walking the dogs in kennel 4 today. The dog in cage 74 had a tick on his eyelid, but as he was quite a quiet, calm dog, I didn't try to remove it, as he may have been a little sneaky bitey snappy dog really. I told one of the workers there and he went in to sort it out. Poor doggie. This isn't an uncommon issue. Many dogs have ticks and fleas etc. I did remove a tick from a dog in Apana Punjab with a piece of tissue though... eeeeeeuuuuuuuugggghhhhhhh!!!! It was fine and still alive in the tissue, until Kelly squashed it and LOADS of blood came out of it! gross gross gross!!
After walking kennel 4 (with the help of the resident dog walker), I went to the overflow kennel to walk my 'friends' in there with Denis. One of the new dogs in there (the replacement of the yappy dog who scared the black dog the other day) had just come out of surgery, but there didn't seem to be a tag on the cage, so we only noticed when we took her outside and she couldn't stand up properly. She was also dribbling a little bit. Bless her. She was so small and obviously really young, but hopefully would be on her way to a better life once she was out of the cente with no possibility of having puppies to look after.
Whilst I was walking a dog, I chatted to Linda about having to find somewhere else to stay after leaving Robert's place and after realising I couldn't stay at Kelly's because of her bed and the noise... It was lucky I spoke to her about it, as she'd just been talking to her landlord who had a spare room to rent... with a kitchen!!! i was very excited so told her I'd follow her and have a look anyway.

After walking all the dogs in excellent time, Denis and I followed Linda to her house where there was a spare room. It was massive!! 8 people could have slept in there easily! There was a stove and a gas bottle, a table, some chairs, a double bed all for me, an en-suite and a fridge! Perfect for 500 rupees. I told Benny (the landlord) I'd move in later today. Denis and I then took the somewhat long route to Chapora to have a juice at Scarlet juice bar, although I ended up having muesli, strawberries, curd (what yoghurt is called around here) and mango ice cream... for lunch and for 80 rupees :-) The prices for everything were on the board outside the shop where a few crappy tables and chairs were sitting, but the woman in the shop tried to charge me double for what I'd had, saying that the ice cream was much extra...it wasn't. She was just trying to diddle me so I argued until she relented. I told her that if the board said a certain price, she had to honour that price... so she changed the price on the board. Fair enough.

My plan today was to go to the post office and send what I hadn't managed to in Mapusa. Kelly had been waiting for me at hers because she only had one set of keys for her house. I got there and she left immediately to try out a vegan restaurant she'd seen near to Anjuna market. I collected my things and headed to the post office before realising I'd forgotten my passport (which is needed to send a package for some reason), went back, picked up the passport and went back to the post office for 2.55pm... the post office re-opened at 3pm. I entered the post office and found a man sitting behind a desk full of paperwork, files, folders, scraps of paper. Next to him at another, bigger, more important looking desk, was an old man who looked very grumpy. I did my best to smile my way through it whilst being very polite so they'd help me as much as possible. I asked how I could get my parcel packed and I was told by the younger man that the packing department had gone home so I couldn't post anything today. Right. This was going to be harder than I thought. I was under the impression that if the post office was open, things could be sent, so therefore, the packing department should have been available... This is India however, so no impression of anything should ever be created. I asked what was expected of the packing and he told me it had to be white fabric, sewn up like a pillowcase. I asked if there was any other way I could get this packaged and he suggested I go and find a tailor on the main road, but the old man added that I had to be back in half an hour... even though the post office was open until 5pm. Luckily I have a scooter, otherwise all of this would have taken so, so long.
OK. I drove to the main road and asked a lady sitting at a stall by the side of the road if there were any tailors nearby. She said no. Good start. I followed my head and went further down the road, where I saw a few sewing machines sitting under the verander outside a proper shop building. Possible result... I asked the guy there if he could help me package my things so I could send them home. Ater about ten minutes of faffing at anothe stall, asking various people, he decided he couldn't help me in my alloted time as he had no white fabric and the only white fabric he knew of was in Calangute, about half an hour away. He was a nice guy and seemed like he wanted to help and that it wasn't a big deal for him, so I decided to go back to the post office and beg for more time - time enough to order the fabric from Calangute.
The old man in the post office was not impressed. It was asking far too much for him to have to wait until 4.30pm (even though the post office was officially open until 5pm). Eventually he agreed whilst telling me to 'come fast, come fast'.
I sped off back to the tailor, who's name turned out to be Raj (although he pronounced it Russ) and told him all systems were go and to order the fabric from his friend in Calangute. Raj said something to the young boy who had been there when I first arrived and he an off with a young girl. i understood a few of the words he was saying to them in Hindi, from when my Dad and his family would speak Punjabi around me... it was something like 'Go, hurry!'. It felt really nice that someone had actually taken me seriously and was doing so much to help me. I sat and chatted to Raj while we waited for the kids to get back with the fabric. Eventually they turned up, along with another man, who I think was trying to sell Raj some more expensive white fabric... it didn't work. Raj was streetwise and picked the cheaper, then measured my parcel (which was quite big). We were inside the stall next door to Raj's embroidery shop where a young girl called Snnbano worked on her sewing machine. I think she said she was 16 years old, but she looked around 12. This was her shop and she had made all of the clothing in it: Trousers, skirts, dresses, tops, all on a pedal powered sewing machine that looked like it had taken quite a beating in its time. She had a younger sister called Sonam who had the prettiest smile I think I've ever seen. She was around 8 years old maybe and was a capable as her sister on the machine. It broke whilst they were hurriedly using it, although by that time I was so entranced by their skill and talent, that if I got to the post office too late, I wouldn't have cared less. They quickly fixed it - the problem was the pulley system from the pedal to the wheel that moved the needle up and down. The cord around the wheel was too loose, so Snnbano quickly made it shorter by sewing it up an inch or so. They got to work and a pillow case type thingy was produced that my postage stuff easily fitted in to. I was so impressed and extremey grateful so I gave them extra cash for all the help they'd given and the way they'd been so enthusiastic. I guess I was one of very few customers for them.
The time had come to return to the post office. I got there at around 4.30pm and thanked the two men for letting me post something at such a late time... even though the post office was still open for another half an hour. I quickly photocopied my passport, wrote my Mum's name and address on the parcel in red pen that was running out, paid the money (around £15 for 6Kgs) and left the building grinning my arse off! It was slightly contagious I think, because the old man gave me a little smile!!

Because Raj, Snnbano and Sonam had been so helpful, I had already decided to go and buy somthing from them. Raj had told me about his business of embroidery and clothing manufacture, plus, I'd seen these amazing bags in quite a few places around here. They were embroidered in any colour you could think of with any picture imaginable, usually on a black background. He also said he could make any design into an embroidered picture... For something personal to me and as a proper souvenir, I decided to have a shoulder bag made with my tattoo design on the front... and all of their names on the back so I would never forget them! No problem. I sat in Raj's shop, with his friend Manoo and we chatted whilst they drew over my tattoo on a piece of paper with a pen... very roughly. I wondered whethe the design on the bag would look as good as the real thing, but resigned myself to liking whatever happened as it would remind me of a special time that could have otherwise been rather frantic and stressful. While I was sitting with them, they taught me a little Hindi, gave me a cup of tea and in return, I taught them a little English and gave them a cigarette. We also chatted about wholesale in the UK and how it would be possible for me to order whatever design I wanted, them send me the items within 3 weeks and me sell them at festivals etc. Definitely a possibility!! I had to go back to pick up my bag tomorrow, which I was looking forward to, as they were such nice people and it would be interesting to see how the bag turned out.
Whilst I had been chatting in the shop, the sun had gone down! I still had to move my things to my new place, so I went to Kelly's where she had been waiting for me, got my things together and drove to Siolim where my new room was... it was so much futher than I remember it being.
After showering, getting changed and getting things together, kelly and I headed out for the Christmas eve party on the beach we'd heard about that was the only party not to involved trance. It was a reggae night! GET IN!
We arrived at Cafe Lilliput's in time to be able to have some food and sit down for a while before Rob turned up and before we spotted Denis with some girl at one of the tables downstairs. We all sat outside at tables on the beach and drank, laughed, chatted, moved elsewhere because of the clashing music with another bar on the beach, moved again because it was too loud, paddled in the sea, smoked cigarettes, drank more... Denis and Claire (the girl he was with who'd just turned up from England and who seemed like she'd be wasted in an hour or so) disappeared so Rob, Kelly and I decided (by tossing a coin, although we had no coin so we tossed a note) to get a bird's eye view of the carnange happening on the beach. The party had really livened up and lots of people were dancing outside the cafe in the sea, on the sand with no shoes that were being washed away, a drunk man picked up a dog's front paws and made him dance for a while (the dog went along with it until he had a chance to sneak off), a man who LOVED dancing and made a HUGE deal of it, another man who danced like an African tribesman, a drunken Father Christmas dancing waist deep in the sea, a load of fireworks going off on a rickety old wooden table situated IN the sea, exploding massive fireworks directly in front of palm thatch roofs... etc etc. It was a fun party, but could have gone wrong at any point... possibly a good way to sum up India in general. It was highly entertaining and we laughed a lot at the spectacle before us. We danced inside right next to the Indian DJ who was playing some excellent electro/breaks/housey type stuff, even mixing in a few samba calls and responses for good measure! People dancd, it was messy, Denis turned up on the dance floor VERY messy and we had to disown him at that point, Indian men bobbing away to the music whilst being a little bit weird, flashing stage lights and lasers in yer face and then the dubious drive home to kelly's in Vagator and then the almighty schlep (as Andy Matthews says) to Siolim where my room was. All this a bit drunk and in charge of a motor vehicle... UMMMMMMMMMMMM, I'm telling!!!!!!

I had a good time that night. It was nice to see people having such a good time and letting their hair down. The music was good, the people were pretty OK and the laughter was very welcome.I wondered how I was going to get up early enough to spend Christmas morning with the dogs at the centre.

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