Spijkenisse

Ok, so to begin where I left….

We arrived at Spijkenisse pretty eager to see how a household in any other country is different from our families. I had actually never really been to any colleague’s house, who had three daughters (aged 5 to 8). So, there weren’t really any set expectations to compare with.
And so, with little expectations from the wife or the kids we entered a quiet and beautiful lane of neat looking row houses (and I thanked god that these at least weren’t some boring apartments.)

Mrs. RNSG was pretty warm and had a striking resemblance to one of my old time friend. It was really queer to hear the (now-familiar) Dutch accented English from a very Indian looking woman. And to hear the couple speak Dutch was even queerer.

RSNG knows a bit of broken Hindi and tries to talk in Hindi. He had told us that his wife speaks good Hindi, which had actually turned out to be a joke. Her Hindi was equally bad if not worse. They do understand a lot of it though.

(Again to enlighten you on the subject of languages spoken, Surinamese people speak Bhojpuri and not Hindi. The only Indian FM radio channel has RJs speaking in Bhojpuri and Dutch. Yes, it sounds bizarre and when you hear it, it’s quite funny too.)

We reached by 6 and the dinner was almost laid. The first real different thing from any family here in India. And I thought to myself, in India, it would have been probably a chai-with-samosa sort of welcome. But we were almost glad that it was dinner because we were pretty hungry for some real home cooked food (cooked by someone other than ourselves!). Dinner was nice. Daal, chawal, and aaloo mutter. Some pork to go along with it. It sounded like an Indian menu but tasted nothing like it. The pork was lovely and saved my day.

The daughters looked almost like triplets and very Indian with little gold earrings and big grins on their faces. It was a pity that they spoke no English or Hindi. CK was terribly happy to see them and instantly made friends with them. I on the other hand realized not only was I feeling like a 14 year old boy (hairy upperlip), I was actually behaving like one. Anytime they would come near, all I did was shake hands!! I haven’t been around children for a long time I think. CK kept talking to them in Hindi and English and they responded in Dutch and it was all very normal. I couldn’t for the life of me utter a word. I felt utterly silly. I don’t know why.

The house was pretty cozy and all three girls had a room for themselves and I thought, ‘what luxury!’ I didn’t have my own room till I was 24. The rooms of the girls were all pink and girlie spilling with dolls and soft toys. But oddly, all rooms had at least one picture of an Indian God.

Yes, RNSG is pretty particular about the culture stuff, which I believe a lot of Indians are when they are away from their homeland.

He decided to show us a bit of Surinamese culture and planned to take us to ‘Indian dancing parties.’ He described these as nice places to meet other Surinamese/Hindustanis (yes, that’s what they are mostly called, Hindustanis and not Indians.)

Also, he said, there was nice hindustani music mostly remixed with Caribbean beats. (The reason for which is think is that in Surinam a large part of the population comprises South Africans.) It did sound interesting. On the internet, he found out a club which had an Indian party. The theme was ‘Its good to be bad’. Err..ahem..yeah. We made a few jokes about it and decided to try it out. Mrs. RNSG decided to be at home with the kids and so we went with RNSG alone.

These sort of parties begin after 11:30 pm and go on till early morning (B’lore Administration…are u listening????? Jerks)

(Err…really sorry but I guess I’ll carry on tomorrow. I thought I would finish it this time but as you notice, I am NOT a woman of few words.)