DIY, Y, Y - Delilah!

It is always difficult to work out whether you may offend local sensibilities in what you do whilst in India. This is made no easier by there being a locally raging debate about what is appropriate ‘Indian’ behaviour in the 21st century, so that there are no real goalpost and/or they are possibly moving.

My attempts to cater for Vegans at our housewarming party suffered from the fact that in practice this also excluded (I later found out) anything that came out of the ground so my carefully assembled attempts languished wallflower like all evening whilst the beef and ham snacks disappeared almost immediately. Plus my wonderful mushy peas were assumed to be avocado – do I look like an avocado sort of person??!
Interestingly there are virtually no recognisable DIY stores as everybody who is reasonably affluent has workmen in to do things although often it is literally a workman (no tools, no equipment) that turns up. Most Indians I have met just cannot get their heads round why I would do my own cooking when we have a maid. I attempted a largely DIY approach to the event and the guests seemed to enthusiastically get the hang of the self service bar, but were less adept at noticing the direction to the toilets on the side of the fridge. I got quite a strange and frightened look when a young Indian asked about the location of the facilities and I just pointed at the fridge – he was much relieved at many levels when he found the directions!

Our DIY approach extends to my ‘haircuts’ which Mrs Reiver explores her shaping tendencies with electric clippers finding this both cost effective, relaxing and therapeutic. In the UK we would occasionally do it on the front step in poor white trash fashion, and I would then run around the garden twirling my shirt about my head – this suddenly sounds like a punchline to a poor taste joke so I will get to the point. Going for the ‘Easy like Sunday morning’ vibe today I had by hair cut by Mrs Reiver in her Jamas in the garden ‘biblical style’ with the Radio 4 Sunday service wafting over us and vivid butterflies circling. This took quite a while as she cannot help as a mathematician striving for symmetry, and rugby and life has rendered my head somewhat aesthetically unbalanced. Was this culturally insensitive or inappropriate? - we will probably never know what our security guard made of this performance, not because he is reticent to communicate, but because he was dozing in his slippers.