A bit of India in Israel

This post is not being written from a grubby internet cafe, but from the tranquil cleanliness of our own home. Sad but true, we are no longer in India. Our last days passed like a mirror image of the first ones. We spent the last three days frantically running around the city, shopping for all the things we saw on the first three days and planned to come back for. We sacked the kitchenware stores of Crawford market, bought our body weight in CD's and DVD's, purchased half of the stock of Fabindia (some of it, admittedly, as gifts) and made one or two (OK, three) last minute trips to different tailors throughout town.
Finally, satiated from shopping- or, more specifically out of time to shop and space in the suitcases- we decided to spend the last evening in Bombay as we had spent the first. We walked along Marine Drive, watched the sun go down in to the Arabian sea for the last time, and then went to have dinner at one of our all time favourite restaurants, Soam. There was a special "fasting menu" in honour of the several holidays, both Hindu and Jain, that are taking place this week. Now, the concept of a gourmet fasting menu might seem like an oxymoron, but the fasting concept is more about avoiding certain foods rather than not eating. Rice, wheat, and lentils seemed, from what we could ascertain, to be the main foods that were avoided. As you can imagine, this puts severe limitations on the average Indian diet. Fasting food, however, has been raised to an art form in Soam (and likely in many Maharastrian homes, in which we unfortunately were not able to partake). We ordered exclusively from the fasting menu, much to the puzzlement of the waiter, and it was certainly like no Indian food we had had before- no rice, no dhal, no chapattis- tapioca pearls, yam, and pumpkin figured prominently. We suspect that the waiter and manager came to the conclusion that we were restaurant reviewers because once they got over the fact that we weren't interested in the normal menu, they were very friendly and gave us a complimentary jar of chutney when we left...just in case.


After a very short "night"- two and a half hours- we headed out to the airport for our flight to Jordan. In Jordan, we ate in "Al Kuds" - the very same restaurant we ate in on our way to india, and then took the bus home. Crossing the border back wasn't easy or fun: there was having to stand in line at both Jordanian and Israeli sides of the border for about two hours, participating in a new Olympic sport called "the mass luggage- trolley slalom" and what was probably the worst: having to unpack Kim's bag (a one-way operation) because of a highly suspicious Ganesha bronze inside. We know that Ganesha is a "remover of obstacles" and helps you with traveling, but were not so sure after having to excavate him from the overly full knapsack, and then trying to repack the bag while being reminded that the whole bus was waiting for us.

So, we are finally home. We like to think we brought a bit of India with us, not with all the shopping we did, but rather in the way the things that we saw and learned in India have an effect on our life here. The cat was a bit suspicious and showed signs of needing affection on one hand, while being pissed off with us on the other, but after the first night he was more or less back to normal. He loves exploring all of the stuff (especially the bindis) that we brought back from India, with all its exotic smells. We seem to have acquired a whole new Indian kitchen, and are eager to experiment with all of the new recipes we got. Cooking is strange to do after two months away, the first time we made coffee we managed to get it all wrong! Washing dishes is also strange to do again, we certainly didn't miss that the way we missed cooking. We have also been enjoying using our washing machine, no need to wring things out by hand anymore.

Everyone who sees how much we enjoyed India asks us when we will go back. Of course we would love to return to India, but it doesn't look like it will happen in the next year or two. It might take a bit more time, but we are sure we will, we still have to learn the second part of the piece we started with our Mridingam teacher, have a few more states to explore, and after all, there is the matter of the two rupee coins in the Shiva temple in Mahakoota (see our trip to Mahakoota if you don't know what this is all about). We promised to come back when we have children and pay Lord Shiva our respects and thank him, so really, we have no choice. Hopefully the little ones will enjoy India as much as we do. It has been really fun writing our blog, and we want to thank everyone who read and commented and participated, writing it was certainly one of the highlights of our trip, all the more so because it let us feel very connected to our friends and family even though we were on the other side of the world. We still haven't decided what the future might hold for Lime Soda... we might use it to post some recipes after we try them out, or just to keep people updated on our lasted adventures.