It is the last month of the year and we are almost two years into our stay in Bahrain. The two months in India did help in making it more comfortable, this year. The last year had stretched on with the heat of the summer getting to us in its full intensity, in the months of July and August even lasting till September. This year when we returned in September, it had cooled to a more bearable level. And the cold took a long time coming. It was only at the end of November, that the chilly winds came again.

I am planning to start on yoga again. More ways trying to keep fit at home. We walked a lot during the weekend which made me realise that keeping myself active at home does help during long walks. You want to be out more often in this chill weather with a little bit of bright sunshine in the mornings. I don’t want to take the lonely roads anymore. I want the crowded ones now. Maybe all this staying in the home alone has put me in a different frame of mind, when I like to be part of humanity.

After a week off, Krishna is back at school. He wanted to change the bus he was taking to school. There are two buses coming to this particular stop and he wanted to ride on the other one. At first, I wanted him to continue on the regular bus but relented, considering the long time it takes to travel to and fro from school. He might as well be with the company he likes best. He was waiting for the other bus at the stop with a heavy school bag for ten minutes and I did regret changing his bus.

Krishna came back from school annoyed. The teacher in charge of that bus had told him that he could not change over to that bus as they had sufficient number of students. He said that the bus wasn’t crowded at all and he had informed her that his friend had changed house and so his seat was unoccupied. It was that seat he had taken. But she had not agreed and Krishna had to take his old bus on the return trip. I felt sort of relieved at this turn of events and told him to take it easy.

It is another of that parent teacher meets at the school. They seem to have organised it better this time calling the first twenty students in the morning and the rest in the afternoon. There will be no more queues I hope, to get to the teachers. At least we do not have to wait hours at the school intersection, for the car to get to its destination. I am hoping to meet at least a couple of the subject teachers at last. I had almost given up on this interaction after the long queues, the last time we went.

It was a healthy interaction yesterday and I came back a bit relieved at getting through another PTA. There are issues to be discussed without challenging or putting the teacher on the defensive. It is a tricky task and one that takes a lot of patience and perseverance. Chandra preferred to wait outside the class and I don’t blame him, since I was the one doing all the talking. This is an area where I prefer his silent support. Krishna tried to get out of it by saying he would stay back at home, but his request was denied

There was yet another family wedding album online, when we were at the Saturday talking session. The strange faces were subject to a lot of scrutiny and delightfully identified as another cousin’s daughter or a grandchild. Some of the grand children looked a lot like what I expected my cousins would have looked like at three or so. Some had put on weight and some looked a lot older than I expected. It takes sometime to get used to the age you are. I think this is good thing; not limiting ourselves to the immediate reality as we age.

Krishna was out of the door and on his way down, when it started raining heavily. There had been rain the whole of yesterday. In the morning there was hardly any light and when it suddenly looked bright, I could foresee the rains coming. But I was unprepared for the sudden downpour. I asked Chandra to rush down with the only umbrella we had. Krishna had a jacket with a hood on, but would still get wet without an umbrella. The search for the umbrella was frustrating and we found it after Krishna had left in a friend’s car.

I don’t like a wet Bahrain. It is truly itself with brilliant sunshine. But sometimes, you wish the heat was a bit toned down. The rain actually made the weather a bit warmer from the cold we witnessed for the past few days. Today it is a bit cold, but a day with promising sunshine. This is exactly how I like it. My place in India Coimbatore was also a cool place, with less heavy rains unlike other parts of India. But things have changed and we see days of continuous heavy rain there. A drizzle is more pleasant.

To have a busy road right under the bedroom window is a worsening problem. The last two days have been particularly stressful. Just when I am getting to sleep, the young boys start practising on their skateboards on the road. The dashing of the wooden skateboards on the concrete road is one of the most irritating bangs, I have ever known. In the middle of the night, there is a group of young people who pass by talking and laughing loudly, shattering the stillness of the night. There is a girl too in this group, rare in an Islamic country.

There’s rain again and the place looks drenched with three days of moderate rainfall. Stagnant water adds to the drenched feel as there is very little area where the water can drain into the soil. The whole town area is cemented with little or no drainage for water. That is the problem here. They do not expect rains like this and climate changes are bringing in unwanted problems.
It felt good to hear the patter of the raindrops on the air conditioner in the darkness of the morning. The wood doves were already cooing adding to nature’s melody.

The roads are getting louder at night. Yesterday after 10pm there was one crazy motorcyclist whose idea of fun was to roar outside on the road at intervals till 12pm. And the police are just fifty feet away at their station. Maybe the rules of the land are for expats only and it is trampled for the fun of fellow countrymen. The garbage truck came after midnight and the clanking and clattering would have disturbed hundreds of people in the nearby flats. And we were the nearest to all this commotion, being right above the road on the first floor.

The disturbance continued late last night, as some drunks created havoc with their loud talk and continuous arguments. I have hardly slept peacefully, these last few days. Maybe the island is getting too crowded. After about an hour of their rowdiness, somebody called in the police, who took them away. It was past 4am when it got silent and the rains started again. I told Krishna to start well ahead, to reach the bus stop between showers and he did. But the bus was unusually late and he had to wait in a slippery wet bus stop, for fifteen minutes.

There are a few holidays coming up this week and combined together with the weekend means a lot of time. It is really never free time for me, as the housework piles up faster when everybody is around all day in the house. We are thinking of visiting the Saudi causeway which we haven’t seen yet. It will take a few hours to and fro and with some time to see around, it will fill up one day. When we return, we have the interesting job of uploading our pictures on the net and sharing it with the family.

The national day celebrations here are for two days. There is a lot of beautifying and flag flying to celebrate this event. The flags poles around the Gosi car park are fluttering with the red and white Bahraini flags. I have seen institutions in India hoist one flag usually at the tallest point of the building for national celebrations. But here it is more flags and flags everywhere. I even saw a student with a flag wrapped around him as he came to the Gosi building. One patriotic student perhaps, of the university on the upper floors of the building.

There was a group of cars in a procession of sorts circling the block. With loud honking and a flurry of flags they were obviously celebrating the national day. Some cars moved slowly with loud shouting and laughter, while some screeched with speed. There were a few young people with their bodies stretched outside the car windows, as the cars moved some faster than the rest. Even veiled girls were hanging their upper body outside the car window and in one car, I saw two veiled girls leaning outside both the back side windows. Outright dangerous with their loose clothing.

We went to see the light decorations in Riffa, close to the King's palace. It was one of those rare night drives for us. There was chillness in the air and at the Pearl roundabout the light and water effects were dazzling. The Riffa clock tower roundabout was a wonderland with palm trees draped in minute coloured lights. There were a lot of Indian families already there and one siding was fully packed with cars. People were all about the side walk taking pictures and there was one man with a camera on a tripod. It was a refreshing experience.

Sitting at the window during the afternoon hours of a holiday a few stragglers pass through the car park. There were some young East Asians walking towards the road and there was a frail looking girl with them. Suddenly in jest one of the young men jumped onto the back of the frail girl and she took a few tottering steps forward as he clung to her piggy back style. I was absolutely horrified because the boy looked at least ten kilos heavier than the girl and if her frail back could handle this bulk even for a few seconds.

There was a thunderstorm on Friday morning and we decided not to go to the Saudi causeway in such weather. The winds were strong too and the clouds would block our view of the Saudi landscape. Thunderstorms were common in Asaba and the ear splitting deep rolls would reverberate through the land and river. Streaks of lightning would bath the countryside with an eerie glow. I was so disturbed, that we decided to put a lightning protector in the compound at the highest point. This was the top of the overhead water tank. A wire led to the earthing pit.

When there is talk about matchmaking the family connections are in focus. The girl who is considered for a nephew is related to a cousin by marriage. Having heard a little about my cousin’s in laws, I am now interested in knowing more about them. There is one particular name or nickname, that I have heard a couple of times in family conversations, but never bothered to find out more about the interesting lady. She seems to be a matriarch of sorts in that clan. She is still beautiful at over seventy five is the latest I’ve heard.

I am getting concerned about my weight. I wasn’t obsessed with weight loss or diet, though I would have liked to keep away those few kilos that have been deposited unnoticed. I am beginning to think, I need a serious plan as health issues are getting complicated. Blood pressure was an issue that I dealt with quite quickly and when I was diagnosed with diabetes recently, I really had to get serious. I didn’t cry about it and the family felt I was taking it light. I wanted to go forward; deal with the problem and move on.

The whole of yesterday evening was spent in making “Cheedai” the crispy spicy little rounds usually reserved for the Krishna Jayanthi festival. It is laborious task to make the dough and then roll every gram of it into tiny balls, which have to be deep fried in hot oil. It took almost four hours to finish the task and I was annoyed when the family refused to rush to my every command. Appreciation had to be shown not only in words but in kind gestures I felt, as I rested my tired legs. A lot more to be taught, perhaps!

Everyone leaves the house by 8am and I sit for a while before the TV as I plan my day. There is no thrill of rushing around to complete tasks and everything gets done in my own time. At one time, I thought it would be just ideal to spend the day exactly as I pleased. But you never have days like that. Every day there are meals to be served and chores to be done and the spare time feels like time wasted, as you are never out of the home and doing exactly what you wanted to do.

Krishna is catching up with a friend at a snack place. I was hesitant to send him as he had a cold. He was up almost all of last night with a blocked nose and cough. But he was determined to go and was not willing to listen to advice. I hate people sneezing when others are eating and are you sure you can manage your time there without disturbing others, asked I. I was thinking of the plane journey next to a boy with a cold, who sneezed as the food was served. Spices perhaps, but it is irritating.

It is Christmas Eve and it is past 10.30pm in Bahrain. I see no excitement here in our immediate surrounding area for Christmas. There are churches and a lot of Christians among other nationalities in Bahrain and maybe there are pockets of celebration. But I am sure around the world this is an important day. I spoke to my sister in Vermont and she says it is a white Christmas there. There are holidays for Muharram also and so not much traffic on the road. It is perfectly silent as I type these one hundred words. Happy Christmas everyone!

We went to the carpet shop in Exhibition Avenue. We had passed the shop a hundred times before, but this was the first time we stepped in. I never thought carpets shopping would be interesting, but I was truly surprised at the variety and colours. The shop was larger once you stepped in and had a first floor extension also. The handmade Persian carpets costing a small fortune were breathtaking in the intricacy of their design. On a wintry evening with a chill breeze outside, the shop with its multicoloured comfortingly soft carpets was a nice place to be in.

I am sympathetic to the stowaway who hid in the airplane from Medina, Saudi Arabia to Jaipur, India. It is scary to have somebody undetected on an airplane in midair on a long distance flight. In this case, it was an almost childish adventure (misadventure??) to get away from a sponsor, who took away his passport. A few months back, we had a transit passenger from Saudi Arabia at the Bahrain International Airport refusing to board a connecting flight. He was an educated man but was mentally disturbed and when questioned revealed, that he was terrified of his Saudi sponsor.

The school is selling tickets for the annual fair and Krishna has been handed a book. Since there are a lot of children in the apartment with similar books of tickets to sell, I told Krishna to take it to his father’s colleagues at office and try some sales talk. It is past 6pm and quite dark and I was hesitant to send him out. But there were people about, after empty roads for the past two days, because of the Muharram holidays. To meet people before they leave after work seemed the right time and off he went.

Discovered a green vegetable that all of us like and that’s lettuce. Lettuce is not commonly available in India. We have often come across people eating lettuce for salad in Enid Blyton books and it did feel sort of likeable. When I had to depend on the nearest supermarket for vegetables, I had to go in for the fresh unfamiliar ones. At least, we had heard about lettuce. Salad dressing is also unfamiliar to us and I disliked the ones served on the airplane, so I improvised with crushed groundnuts and chillies. A healthy snack for the early evening!

The end of the year does bring back some regrets. Another year gone and less time on the planet for us and so much more to do. I think this is the life spirit which keeps us going. I think I am short on self pity, now that I see thousands of Indian labourers staying on and slogging it out in a strange country away from their families. And they live in trying conditions sharing accommodation with total strangers. They don’t get paid much for the deprivations they suffer. All undertaken to provide better, for their families in India.

I haven’t really thought of New Year’s Day as a landmark, for the New Year we celebrate is in the month of April. But this year end, I have more time to think about what I want the New Year to be. Maybe the intensity of our thoughts and the positive energy we channel into it will bring back positive energy to the world. I do not want to focus on the negative energy which has been here, but expect it will reap negative reaction and destroy itself. I wish people will follow the path of Mahatma Gandhi.