A session with Yoga Guru-Ji...

We’ve signed up to the local yoga classes held in the temple opposite our house. Three times a week we trot off for a session that always proves to be highly entertaining thanks to our teacher, Yoga Guru-Ji.

His name says it all. It conjures up the image of a mystical Gandalf like figure that levitates into the room in the perfect lotus position. You could not get further from the truth. He tends to arrive 10 minutes late, sporting a bushy moustache, 5 o’clock shadow and a bomber jacket over his kurta. In the meantime, one of our fellow classmates tends to take over. She’s sort of the Dot Cotton of our class, as they tend to be women in their 50s and insists on doing warm up exercises that involve rolling your eyes “clock” and then “anti-clock”.

The class is held in the courtyard of the temple which is beautiful, but extremely noisy. The prayer bell is rung throughout so Yoga Guru-Ji needs to shout fairly loudly. His technique tends to be a mixture of yoga and 80s jazzercise. His training must have involved a Rosemary Conley video at some point. We firstly start with a warm up of ‘sports marching’ that involves marching on the spot with coordinating hands to knees. Then when we do exercises on the floor. He insists they are done “spiritedly” which involves him either manoeuvring your arm into the right position using his vice like grip or flinging your body from side to side.

He likes to tell us which part of the body each posture improves. Apart from the third eye he’s always keen to tell us about the healing properties to our rectum, whilst burping loudly. We also do laughing yoga which I seem to be very proficient at, especially when he keeps telling me "Nikki-Ji cheating" when I fail to dislocate my body into the cobra pose.

He must have been a great fan of 80s films, as my favourite exercise involves some classic Karate Kid moves. We perform the Mr Miyagi ‘healing hands rub’ at the end of every session. After rubbing your hands together to warm your palms you then, um, rub yourself all over. I have no idea what the local prayer goers think, it must be very amusing for them to watch us. It’s all highly enjoyable, particularly as apart from getting a little bit bendier, it only cost us Rs200 (£2.66) a month and the whole class is done in mainly Hindi. You will be pleased to know that my language skills are improving so much, that I can tell you the word for rectum is exactly the same in Hindi as English...

Highlights: Reaping the benefits of the endless queuing for my resident’s permit and only paying Rs5 to get into Tughlaqabad Fort for our jolly day out picnic (we volunteers know how to put on a good spread), discovering ‘eat as much as you can sushi and drink as much Tiger beer’ special at a local posh restaurant for only Rs599 (a real treat on our budget, when 10 of us descended the waiting staff realised within 5 minutes we were there for the long haul and it was best to bring over buckets of beer... ), it’s February and it’s 26 degrees outside (‘nuff said!).

Glass half full or...

… glass half empty? Nowhere is perfect and having been here for three months, I thought it’s a good time to look at some of the daily things that make India both incredible and infuriating.

It’s not easy being green…

Well actually, in India, it is most of the time. You can instantly be an Eco Goddess by not really doing too much. Firstly, you only heat the water you need. You switch on your geyser 20 minutes before you have a shower, go back to bed, hit the snooze button to awake to warm water. Power showers haven’t quite made it over here yet, so washing your hair is done with a couple of jugs of water like a retro Timotei ad, but it does the job whilst you save water.

You don’t need to worry about recycling as everything that gets thrown away gets recycled by hand. We pay the going rate of Rs50 (about 66p) a month for someone to collect our rubbish from our front door. They take it to the local tip, sort through it and sell on the recycable items for a bit of profit. We hadn’t realised how much of a high commodity beer bottles really were at Rs2 each until we had a box of empties from a party. We left them outside in the afternoon for the morning collection and in an hour they had mysteriously disappeared… so even drinking beer is good for the environment and someone else’s pocket, love it.

But all this easy eco living only tends to be in the confines of your house. When you get outside, rubbish is everywhere. Even in the nicest areas of town you will find piles of the stuff. It’s not really helped by the fact everyone seems to be obsessed with sweeping. Dust is everywhere and if you don’t sweep your flat every day a delightful black layer appears on every surface. On the street everyone meticulously sweeps outside their house or shop but fails to do anything with the swept matter. You will find a strategically placed pile of rubbish outside most houses, the breeze then picks it up and deposits near by so just spreading the love around…

By the time you get home at night your hair is dusty, your skin is dry and you cleanse off a thick black layer of grime. You are then in need of another shower to get clean, hmmm, so perhaps not so green..

Domestic help required…

In order to deal with the dust inside your house, everyone tends to have a domestic help. Sweeping everyday is pretty time consuming and if it means a job for someone else I’m all for the cause. Our cleaner, bless him, tries his hardest and I’m sure we are not the easiest of people to deal with. He’s supposed to come at 8am everyday but tends to work on a rolling 2 hour start time which is a tad frustrating. In a world where as a female you have to be covered up at all times, it’s not the most convenient if he arrives late and you are in the shower. You sadly can’t pop out and open the door in a towel. I’ve had to jump out the shower fully shampood then put my pyjamas back on to greet him. With my morning scowl, dripping pyjamas and foaming hair I don’t who was the more startled when I opened the door.

We’ve managed to get him to come within a 30 minute window now, but when he does arrive I then turn slightly OCD and follow him around like a possessed banshee. He has a unique style of cleaning. He tends to favour using toilet bleach and dirty cloths for most chores. We’ve trained him off the Domestos for floors and kitchen surfaces. My particular bug bear is his style of washing up which involves a running tap and lots of noise. I would not mind if it was effective but the end result doesn’t pass my hygeine test. I’ve happily demonstrated several times to him, like Nanette Newman in a Fairy Liquid ad, the harmony and sparkling results of a washing up bowl, hot water and a scrubbing brush. But he favours his style. Every morning it’s a battle of wills by the kitchen sink. I tend to inspect every plate as it goes into the rack then return it to the pile, it’s like some bizarre circus plate spinning game where nobody seems to win…

Highlights: spending the last two days with my colleagues at Techshare a technology and disability event (laughing a lot and meeting lots of fans of our radio programme was really great), finally getting my resident’s permit (it took 4 hours, minimal queuing, whilst being entertained by a very charming retired German professor, you have to love the system), sunny times on the balcony or anywhere (it’s getting to a lovely temperature in the day, sipping chai outside the office is a nice afternoon activity and way to pass the time when there is a power cut), being caught in a thunderstorm and getting a subsidised lift home (stranded on the side of the road, no brolly, trying to keep my laptop dry a kindly auto driver only charged me half the usual rip off price to share a rickshaw home), discovering ladies night at the local bar where there are free mojitos and beer for the fairer sex (the quality of the alcohol is yet to be determined, by the third drink I was quite enjoying the stinging sensation with every sip...)

Police, pyjamas & plumbing…

Just another average weekend in Delhi? Quite possibly, here’s how my weekend shaped up…

I was determined to have a relaxing one, sleeping and making the most of the glorious weather that has now arrived. In a few days it has gone from ‘Ice Age in Siberia’ to ‘Springtime in Provence’ (substitute the smell of lavender for the occasional waft of rubbish and you have the picture). It’s a relaxing 24°c in the day and it should remain this perfect temperature for the next month or so before it starts climbing a degree a day to get to ‘Meltdown in Morocco’ weather.

Saturday morning was all about the lie in. Until I was bought back to consciousness by our doorbell. I decided that ignoring it was the best tactic if I was going to get my prescribed 12 hours of sleep. Our doorbell often rings and is opened to a phantom no one or the guy who collects our rubbish concerned that after the previous day’s profitable mountain of empty beer bottles, there’s nothing on the doorstep for him. It rang again, so mildly irritated I opened the door to be greeted by two moustachioed gentleman. Through my fug of sleep, I recognised one as my landlord and the other sported a more official moustache. It was the policeman from the foreigner’s registration unit come to check up on me.

So we conducted my interview in my pyjamas with me looking like an honorary member of the Hair Bear Bunch. I’m sure he’s seen worse. Hopefully he’ll view my nightwear as an attempt to wear a more traditional salwaar kameez and dully give me my temporary resident’s card.

Now fully awake, it was off out to do some shopping in the neighbourhood. Pottering about at the weekends there’s always something going on out on the street. If it’s not a wedding at the temple, cricket being played on any available open space, then you notice a few interesting services available (see poster on the right). I decided I needed some exploring and quiet time in the afternoon and headed off to the Lotus Temple, 20 minutes walk from the flat.

The pictures really say it all, as it was a trully amazing place. Situated between a park and a building site that is the constant development of the new Metro, it is an oasis of calm in the desert that is Delhi. Having removed my flipflops I queued up with the other visitors and padded in barefooted. Inside was just as stunning as the outside. Made entirely from cooling marble, I sat on a bench in a pool of sunshine and enjoyed the silence. It has to be the most peaceful spot in Delhi and I enjoyed the fact that for once I got to be the starer not the staree as I watched people file in for some quiet time and contemplation.

Sunday was just as relaxing, spending time reading the paper on our roof terrace whilst soaking up the sun. Catching up on world news, Bollywood gossip and my favourite, the matrimonials section. Whatever you are into there is a bride or groom for you out there. Akin to property ads replace ‘gch’ with ‘tall, handsome, smart ‘ for any groom and for prospective brides they all seem to be all ‘fair, beautiful, slim’.

Then in the afternoon to our great excitement our washing machine arrived. We’ve been holding out and finally the second hand top loader automatic 1994 TVS washing machine of our dreams is ours. To get it working we needed to do some basic plumbing. Armed with my trusty travel tool kit (that would be a pink special edition Hello Kitty Swiss Army Knife) I turned the nail file into a screw driver and after much sighing and tap fiddling between us , my flatmate and I put a load of washing on. So all in all, just an average weekend…

Highlights: Having my Indian bank account set up by a colleague in a matter of days (I’m still in shock at the efficiency and lack of queuing involved on my behalf), being maybe one step closer to getting registered and my temporary residents card (or at least I’ve prolonged a visit and queuathon at the foreigner’s registration office for another few weeks), no longer looking like a goat herder/hiking instructor (finally being able to not have to apply five layers and choose from a range of non-fleece based items from my wardrobe is a joy) , discovering you can get home delivery from the local beer shop, gone are the days of a complimentary grope with you bottle of beer…