Wednesday 9^th January

My nephew Will is a champion swimmer.  A winner, fast strong, competitive.  He is also very charming and popular, a hero to his younger cousins – Will is 17, in grade 12.  Last week he was at Kettering wakeboarding with some friends.  There were five of them in the tinnie and they were heading back to the jetty when – oh oops – they ran out of fuel.  The Bruny Island ferry was bearing down on them – what to do?  Not a problem, Will Superhero was in their midst!  He dived into the water, tied a rope somehow around his waist, and swam as fast and hard as he could to the jetty.  A tinny with four people and a big outboard motor is not a flimsy device, it was quite a challenge.  He towed the bat successfully to the jetty, got out of the water and received a standing ovation from the enthralled upper deck of the Bruny Island ferry.

His younger brother Tim is equally delightful and engaging, but in a different way.  When Will is off swimming in the icy and dangerous waters of Goats Beach and Shipstern Bluff, Tim is whipping up a batch of anzacs-with-a-twist, or working out a way to increase his capital.  He has a few sources of income, one of which involves delivering catalogues (Yes, the dreaded junk mail,) in his neighbourhood.  He often rings the manager with helpful suggestions, or to tell her that certain catalogues aren’t accounted for.  Andrea had a phone call recently, from a woman wanting to speak to Tim.  When she said he was out, the woman said, Well I wanted to ask him if he would like to be the area manager for Sandy Bay.  Andrea was a bit nonplussed.  “Ummm…you do know he is only 14, don’t you?”  The manager was quite stunned…

India #64

Jassi took us to see the huge and impressive Humayoon Mausoleum.  All very mysterious; some bits of Indian history we were slightly familiar with, others were a total enigma.  I decided early on NOT to get too stressed about my lack of knowledge. At one stage Mary and I were wandering around, trying to absorb what we were seeing, and trying to read copious amounts of information on big marble slabs.  I seditiously whispered to Mary, “You know, it doesn’t really matter if we don’t know everything about everything; there is NOT going to be an exam.”  She looked very relieved and we relaxed and just enjoyed ourselves instead of trying to absorb too much unfamiliar knowledge, which we knew would all just seep away in any case.

Tuesday 8^th January

Best Christmas Present Ever! 

On Sunday Dad and Fleur took a small family party to the Moscow Circus.  Just 27 of us in total…

Adrian Fleur Graham Pete Marguerite Pete Andrea Will Tim Chris Karen Kate Max Nicky Gavin Hamish Angus Claire Stuart Felix Jemima Katy Jeff Leo Eva Zoe Michael

There is a photo of the whole group, standing in front of the Russian-themed tents, and we look like a huge great circus troupe of our own, in our bright summer clothes, beaming cheerily.

The circus was great.  The very youngest of us was totally freaked because the opening sequence is extremely scary – why???  But the rest of us settled down after an initial fright and enjoyed it all extremely.  I think Michael (32) and Pete (66) were the most entranced, but I could see that Zoe, nearly three, was looking at it all wide-eyed, possible with a view to copying some of the tricks at home.  We will have to be prepared to catch her as she balances, tumbles, leaps, twirls!

India #63

On the big highway back from Rebecca’s “farm” we passed two camels, stylishly negotiating the traffic.  The one in the rear had a young rider snugged up, fast asleep on his soft saddle, while his trusty steed followed patiently on the footsteps of the lead camel.  We loved the camels.  Their owners always seemed to find nice shady places for them to rest and wait, and they would sprawl out on the footpath, looking out at the world with a most benign air.  I had always thought of camels as cantankerous beasts, but not at all, they were always elegant and courteous and calm.

Monday 7^th January

I wrote the following on Friday before leaving work…(we got early minutes because of the extreme weather conditions)

I hate aircon!

The forecast was for HOT HOT HOT.  39, in fact.  I dressed appropriately, in a light summer dress.  Ticketyboo, just the thing.  But…it was VERY cold in our office…the aircon was blasting an arctic breeze across the desks.  Poor Allan had the worst of it – a particularly lively air vent just above his head had him shivering and needing to MacGyver some sort of protection from the icy blast out of bits of A4 paper and stickytape.  I have a hideous garment in my office – a grey hooded number with tatty black fake fur around the edges.  Not very pretty but…warm and cosy for these bad aircon days!

There was, as to be expected, a lot of info on the radio about bushfires.  Extreme conditions; be prepared; go and stay with friends if you are anywhere near a danger zone.  And, OF COURSE, a blanket ban on any sort of deliberately lit fire.  So my friends Jane and Sam, who live on the side of the mountain in a beautiful, thickly forested little valley, full of tinder-dry trees, were more than astonished to have a visit from Liliana, a dear, darling ageing-hippy neighbour, who idly told them she had “just a tiny” bonfire going; I think the children were toasting tofu on it, or something (it would NOT be marshmallows; this is a very herbal, pure family.)  Sam said, quite firmly, that he didn’t think it was a good idea AT ALL to have a fire, no matter how tiny, and Lilliana went blink, blink BLINK and looked totally confused.

It didn’t get to 39…as was soon revealed, by lunchtime it was well over 40, the hottest day on record in Hobart.  And…there were bushfires.  There still are.  The little town of Dunalley is just about burnt to the ground; the school is gone, the sawmill, countless houses.  Nicky’s friend Bonnie, poor girl, was in town and then stuck at a road block, unable to get home.  David, her husband, was bushwalking in the South West and didn’t know anything about any of this until he got back yesterday.  Her brave mother, Tammy, spent three hours under a jetty with Bonnie and David’s five little children, keeping their spirits up and keeping them safe while the fire raged right to the water’s edge.  Bonnie and David’s house is gone, so is Tammy and Tim’s beautiful Potters Croft.  So many other houses and shacks lost on the Tasman Peninsula, and it is not over yet.  I suppose we just have to wait and see what we can all do to help in the aftermath. 

India #62

There are dozens of public holidays in India.  Always some festival about to happen, and presents expected for and from all and sundry.  I don’t think public holidays operate quite the way they do here; I am quite sure that Rebecca’s staff had to turn up, holiday or no, and that they were not paid double time… When Jassi, Lorraine’s lovely driver, picked us up, we asked him about the presents exchanging hands, and asked him if we could buy him something for the festival.  “No thank you,” he said, calmly.  “My biggest gift is your respect.  And I hope that one day in the future when you are in Australia you will remember that you once knew a man called Jassi.”  And I am quite sure that none of us will forget this remarkable young man.  The other women at the quilting group are all very envious of Lorraine; they want Jassi!  They have unreliable, untrustworthy drivers, who remove spare parts from their employer’s cars and replace them with shonky second hand bits, and one of the women in particular did not feel her teenage daughter was safe in the car alone with the driver.  (Her poor sixteen year old daughter is extremely miffed to have her mother accompany her everywhere in the car – she has been at school in Australia until this year and can’t believe how restrictive, if luxurious, her expat life can be.)  Whether these fears and suspicions are justified is irrelevant; the thing is nobody would distrust Jassi for one second, he exudes honour, honesty and integrity.

         

Jassi has a four year old son with some sort of global delay.  He is a beautiful, loving child, but can’t chew properly, or talk or walk.  Jassi also has a six month old daughter, so his poor young wife is very much stuck at home.  She has to carry both of them if she goes anywhere, and how can she do this?  We all agonised about whether or not some sort of pushchair would help, but then we know that they live in a one-room apartment upstairs – how would she manage carrying the children and the pusher?  All too hard!

         

When we were driving down the highway, jetplanes flew overhead.  Jassi said when he was a child he used to watch the planes, and dreamt of being a pilot.  I said, “Jassi, what a lovely dream that was,” and he said, “But I have achieved it.  I am now the pilot of this beautiful car.”  He loves Larry’s car and looks after it very well.  His job is to sit about in the garage under Larry’s office, waiting to take Larry or Lorraine somewhere or another.  Larry and Richard have other plans for Jassi; he is being trained to do office work – filing, computer stuff.  This all seems very logical and sensible to us, a good use of resources, but the other workers in the office – Indians – are outraged because Jassi is crossing boundaries – he is a DRIVER and should stay down in the garage!

         

He was a wonderful source of information, and gave us insights into the character of the Indian people.  For example, when we were driving along the busy highway one day, we saw a man with a huge teetering tottering pile of chairs on his rickshaw.  As we approached, the chairs suddenly collapsed and spilled all over the road.  Nobody tooted or waved fists, everyone just drove gently around as he started to reassemble his load.  “Look at that poor bastard!” said Pete, looking on with great sympathy.  “Yes,” said Jassi, “but please notice – he is still smiling!”  And indeed, there was no evidence of frustration or annoyance on the man’s face, he was perfectly calm and serene as he retrieved his wares from the highway.

         

We spent lots of time discussing begging, tipping, present-giving, with Jassi – major themes, in India.  He told us that one thing which is absolutely certain is that no matter how much you give, either to a beggar, or as a gift to one of your staff, it will NEVER be enough.

Saturday 5th January

So what is the perennial topic, discussed by women on boats?  Yes!  Seasickness!  Mal de mer!!  When Colin and Pamela were visiting on Thursday night, I cheerily broached this favourite topic.  Oh no, not an issue, for Pamela.  She doesn’t get seasick, not at all.  But…she has not yet done an overnight passage… I very much wish her well, and hope she is in the 5% of humans who never experience this debilitating ghastliness. 

I heard a program on the radio recently, where experienced racing sailors were discussing their own issues with seasickness.  One of them said, glumly, “the best cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree.”  Indeed….

India #61

The next morning Pete was ill.  Not a happy person at all.  We left him cosily tucked up in the comfy bed, with ensuite at the ready, reading Frederick Forsyth’s new book, The Afghan.  (I bought this book at Sydney airport and thought it was just dreadful, such pedestrian writing, but I think the others all quite enjoyed it.  Must not have been in the mood for it.)  How very fortunate that he was ill in such a nice place, and not on a sleepertrain!  Vish spent the morning very happily ensconced in the big CD shop in Basant Lok, buying esoteric bits of Indian music which nobody liked at all when he brought it back.  (Well I think I quite liked it but poor Vish wasn’t allowed to play very much of it before they all howled him down and forced him to pop the CDs back into their cases.)  He then went to one of the other cafes in Basant Lok and had two sharp shots of espresso.  When he came home he was literally bouncing off the walls, as high as could be on caffeine.

In the meantime, Lorraine took Mary and me to one of her quilting mornings.  She meets with a group of women just about every week, at different people’s houses, to quilt, chat, have morning tea, and she thought we would be interested to meet some of these women, and to see The Farm.  Her friend Rebecca, from Texas, lives there.  It isn’t a farm at all, of course, just a big house on quite a big acreage, not 20 minutes drive from Vasant Vihar, where Lorraine lives.  A different world to the rest of Delhi…

         

There were about ten women at the quilting group, and a team of servants to see to our needs – juice, water, tea, coffee, an assortment of light refreshments.  (Very happy I was, to find chocolate brownies, as American as could be – this was the closest I came to any sort of caffeine in the whole five weeks away.)  And three nannies to look after any children we might have brought with us.  And a lifeguard to supervise them in the pool, should they care to swim.  Rebecca has a staff of twenty four – 8 guards, 3 nannies, general cleaners and cooks.  She rules them with an iron fist, but, on the other hand, they are all welcome to bring their children to work with them, and the children are free to swim, and to play with Rebecca’s four year old twins.  She had sacked a security guard during the night.  She woke at 3am, and looked out the window at the silken expanse of lawn.  Hmmm…lots of dew and no footprints.  There should have been footprints around the perimeter area.  She put on her dressing gown and marched out to confront the guard at the gate.  He said that the other guard was busily patrolling and that he would go and get him if Rebecca wanted him.  “No no,” said Rebecca, firmly, “I will come with you to find him!”  The guard made LOTS of noise as they walked inexorably towards the shelter where the perimeter guard was peacefully snoozing on a chair, with an electric fan gently blowing the mosquitos away.  Rebecca sacked him on the spot; no second chances in her world.

         

We didn’t go into the house.  There are large guest quarters, which Rebecca uses as her craft area.  There is also an enormous play room with full-sized pool table, table tennis, all the toys a child could desire.  In a little house overlooking the pool the staff have built a lovely little temple.  One of the guards took Mary and me in there, to have a small ceremony (puja,) which was all very nice.

         

One of the women in the group, Jenny, had lived in Hobart for a few years, in Knocklofty Terrace.  She said it was the nicest place they had ever lived, and she was very sad they had had to leave.  Her husband, employed as a financial advisor to the government, had been working for a certain premier we had about twenty years ago, noted for his shady deals, and had refused to do something quite illegal.  The premier turned on him and said, “I will make life very difficult for you in Tasmania,” so they scarpered, never to return.  They are now living a very interesting life, in Canberra and now in New Delhi, but she sounded very wistful when talking about what their lives might have been like in Hobart.

         

Other than Jenny there were Emma, two Karens, and Anju, all busily quilting.  Although…were they really quilting??  Some of them had squares of material in their hands and were poking needles in and out of them, but I strongly suspect they were just there for the social occasion, and why not?  One of the women – maybe Emma, or maybe I have forgotten her name - was making the most extraordinary quilt, with complicated geometrical and three dimensional forms, arcs and parabolas.  She had worked as an engineer before becoming an expatwife and obviously needed a seriously scientific approach to this social occasion!  Goodness knows what Rebecca’s house staff made of it all.  Mad expat women, buying perfectly good material, cutting it into small pieces, sewing it up into other large pieces.  Rebecca showed me some quilting books and said maybe I should think of taking it up.  I showed the whites of my eyes a bit and said, “No, no, I am a knitter, don’t have time for another crafty activity!”  Well apparently there is an expat knitting group too… I’m sure there are all sorts of groups – tennis, aquarobics, book discussions, you name it.  An expat wife could be a very busychick if she wanted to be.

Friday 4^th January

Last night we had visitors from one of the yachts opposite us on the marina, Colin and Pamela.  They are living on board with an ancient blind and deaf Jack Russell terrier, much loved, who needs to be carried everywhere, and a cat.  They plan to sail up the East Coast soon-ish.  We had a very pleasant evening over a bottle of wine and several gallons of water.  Yes water!  A strange person came and impersonated Pete… This person kept coming up to the table with jugs of iced water with slices of lemon – not sure who this was. but the water was very welcome!  It could not have been Pete, surely!  He thinks water is devil’s work, usually.  But…it is very hot at the moment.  It got to 34 yesterday and is supposed to get to 39 today.  Not like Hobart at all!

We exchanged sailing stories, and I told them my salutatory tale about dropping two bottles of gin into the sea.  They could top this one.  Yesterday Chrissie and Hugh (I think that is their names; not sure, I haven’t met them, but I have seen some pleasant-looking people with a very lively small dog, maybe it is them…) went shopping to provision their boat for three months. They bought $1,000 worth of groceries and loaded everything into one of the marina wheelbarrows.  As they approached their boat – oh dear and oh no – the wheelbarrow tipped over and all of their groceries fell into the water.  Of course not everything sank; toilet paper floated, light rice crackers floated, but all of the heavy, expensive tins of tuna etc sank into the primordial ooze.  Hugh (?) is going to get out his diving gear and metal detector and go looking for his lost food but, as Pete discovered when he was diving for his phone the other day, it is very hard to find anything – zero visibility, plus thick mud, many metres deep, make it a thankless task.  Poor buggers!

India #60

On our train trip from Varanasi to New Delhi our carriage was extremely crowded.  We shared some of our compartment space with Adela and Joshua, charming, articulate young French students.  They were very friendly and interesting.  But...and this is a big but… They ate continuously – packets of chips, bottles of coke, this and that Indian delicacy in a foil container, and they hurled ALL of their crap straight out the window!  Not just their food scraps – we know to throw food scraps out of any window in India because there will always be a grateful pig or goat, mouth open, waiting to receive it.  But everything – all their wrappings, bottles, plastic.  We felt very obsessive-compulsive in comparison, because we always collected up every scrap of rubbish, put it in a bag, and carried it around, sometimes for hours, until we found a bin.  Mary was very tempted to say, “Would you behave like this in France?” but we thought this was a bit rude and confronting.

Once again we emerged from our train hollow-eyed ghouls (thank you for this useful descriptive phrase, Bill Bryson!).  We stood on the crowded platform near the entrance, as instructed, like little lost lambs waiting for our Tasmanian friend Lorraine and her driver, Jassi to find us.  We were apparently standing on the wrong side of the platform, but Jassi is, we soon discovered, an extremely competent and resourceful young man.  He told Lorraine to stand and watch out near one entrance while he scooted around to the other one, where he recognised us with no difficulty at all.  I’m not sure what instructions Lorraine gave him…look for four hollow-eyed ghouls, maybe?  We were all very happy to see Lorraine, looking so lovely, relaxed, acclimatised, and to meet Jassi.

         

As we were approaching the Polgalse apartment in Vasant Vihar, I was burbling on about places we had stayed so far.  “We stayed in some wonderful places, Lorraine, so beautiful!”  And as we walked into the apartment I had to add, “But not as lovely as this!”  She had told me they had a very small three-bedroom place, fairly humble.  Well maybe it was humble by the standards of some of the other expats.  But by our standards it was indeed fabulous!  Marble floors, beautiful (Indian) furnishings, cool rooms.  Vish and Mary had a lovely room on the roof, with access to a rooftop garden, just idyllic.  We had a spacious room in the main apartment, and the best thing of all was we each had our own bathroom.  This is more necessary than you need to know when you are in India… I would actually have preferred to have had a toilet of my very own, where nobody else ever had to follow… But we won’t dwell on this.  Lorraine and Larry are extremely hospitable.  They did everything to make us feel welcome and comfortable.  In our room, for example, Lorraine had provided us with a fluffy white robe for Pete, and a sarong for me, for moments when we might have felt like flitting around the apartment in a state of undress.  (Pete never did wear the robe; but I did, and also the sarong, at various times.)

We had arrived in New Delhi at the exactly right time for Pete and Vish to be able to go and watch the AFL Grand Final at the Australian Embassy.  Larry and his colleague from Kingston, Richard Herweynen, were waiting for them; they had about five minutes to have a shower, get changed and rush off.  I think they really enjoyed this but I fear that not much food was on offer, only beer, and they had missed breakfast.  So I think that Mary and I had a much more peaceful and leisurely, if not so sportingly exciting, introduction to New Delhi.  Lorraine took us to a new shopping “mall”, Basant Lok.  (“Mall” is in inverted commas because it is not how you probably imagine a mall to be; it had cows wandering about, and was not full of designer shops.)  But there was a LOVELY café, Chokola, all clean and shiny and selling espresso coffee and the most delightful fruit juice cocktails.  I think we were starved for vitamins because Mary and I perked up considerably after our speedy consumption of mango, apricot, banana, everything all swooshed up in a chilled glass.

Thursday 3^rd January

Over the last few days we had a few very nice moments at the Taste of Tas.  It was, as always, heaving and humming with a large cheery crowd.  We watched a few buskers, ate a bit of food, drank a glass or two, and chatted to the odd friend and relations.  The five Tasmanian families were out in force as well as many MANY travellers, tourists, sailors.

All of the food stalls were busy but…the busiest of all, with a long, snakey queue, was, as always, Fish Frenzy.  I always find this so astonishing; the actual Fish Frenzy restaurant is not 100 metres from the Taste venue – it is NOT a novelty!

One of the buskers, called something like Abracadabra, aka the Human Knot, was very popular with the crowd, and with Pete.  Not so much with me… I never really enjoy witching contortionists – it is ALL WRONG.  He put his head through his legs backwards – WRONG, did weirdo push-ups inside out – WRONG, and, worst of all, passed his whole body through an unthreaded squash racket.  This involved dislocating his shoulders and squeezing his ribs in a ghastly manner – WRONG WRONG WRONG!!  Fortunately we got an emergency phone call and couldn’t see the end of this act – Pete had new tenants moving into his house a day earlier than he had thought and we had to rush off and scrub, wash, bustle about with Jif and Spray ‘n’ Wipe.  Much more soothing than watching The Human Knot.

India #59

On our last morning in Varanasi we decided we couldn’t face the ghats and the crowds in the old city, so we all squashed into an autorickshaw and took a 45 minute (13 kilometres) ride out to a Buddhist area, where we admired the Buddha Tree at Sarnath.  It was extremely hot so we could only move around s-l-o-w-l-y.  The deer park, where Buddha did several important things to do with enlightenment, was closed, but we had a small moment of Nature Study.  I found, in a small canal filled with huge waterlilies, a darling little olive green snake swimming through the leaves.  By the time I had gathered the others to look, it had caught a small silver fish and was proudly preparing to swim off through its watery world.

Pete and Vish were a bit more energetic than Mary and Me.  We sat happily in the shade of a huge ummm…monument…tomb…statue…and watched family parties having their photos taken.  All very grim, this process.  We noticed everywhere that Indian people don’t smile for the camera in posed group photos; this is serious work.  They would gather in a giggly group, rearrange themselves, pat down their hair, laughing merrily, and then – DO NOT SMILE until the camera has clicked.  A young girl detached herself from one of these sombre groups, and came up to us, saying, “Please can I take a photo with you?”  Her father proudly took several of Mary and me with a now beaming thirteen year old girl.  She then asked, “Where are you from coming?”  Once again we were left wondering why on earth anyone would want their photos taken with us.  It must have been for a school project this time.  “Here are some people from Australia with whom I practised my English.”  Good girl, go to the top of the class!

         

It was pouring with rain on the way back to the Buddha.  All very fumey, with all of the dirt and the pollution in the steamy hot wetness.  Autorickshaw is a very nice way to travel, because you are right there, in the traffic, on the street, with very little to protect or separate you from the unfolding scene.  We were fascinated on this trip to see cows sheltering from the rain, calmly wandering into shops, heaving themselves up onto verandas, generally making themselves at home and as dry as possible.

When we got back to the Buddha to collect our things there was a whole tribe of monkeys sitting on the building opposite.  They were eyeing us in a speculative fashion.  We strongly suspected that they were looking for an opportunity to break in and run up and down the corridors pooing and weeing – we had EVIDENCE outside our rooms.

2nd January 20??

Wednesday 2^nd January

Back at work after such a lovely week of leisure and pleasure…

We are enjoying living on the marina.  It is all very uncomplicated.  The only a small degree of difficulty with early morning toilet visits in the ablutions block, which isn’t all that close by.  But never mind; this is only a minor inconvenience and very much a First World Problem.  We have made some nice new friends – everyone who walks by is up for a bit of a boat-y chat – but we all seem to have a healthy respect for each other’s privacy and need to lie on the couch without the need to socialise too much.  (I have developed a very big need to lie on the couch…)

Yesterday we too the boat out, just around the city waterfront and for lunch at anchor off Sandy Bay Beach.  We had on board:

Jo, Malcolm, Charlotte, Chloe and Kate from a farm near Merimbula (NSW)

Chris, Mary Lou and Tom from Brisbane Waters (NSW)

Katrin and Chris from Switzerland (on holiday; we met them because they were sitting at our table at the Taste of Tas and we gave them our phone numbers just in case they wanted to come out on the boat.  Surprisingly…they did!  And we loved having them.)

I, not very ostentatiously (ahem…) had the Saturday Mercury at hand, to show Pete’s and my illustrious family members, Chris Harmsen and Nicole Darcey.  Reflected glory is never to be taken lightly!!  NSW Chris was a bit puzzled.  “Both in the paper on the same day?  How come?”  His kindly friend Malcolm explained carefully that there are in fact only five families in Hobart and everyone gets a turn in the Mercury on a regular basis.

India #58

At some stage Raj took us for a drive through the university.  It was quite breathtaking.  Absolutely enormous, with many faculties, each as big as the whole of Tas Uni.  What was really remarkable about it was that it was cool, tranquil, leafy, grassy, green, and empty of people.  The rest of Varanasi is the opposite of this.  It is teeming with people, dirty, noisy, smelly, devoid of vegetation, polluted – how does this large and fragrant academic oasis exist at all?  We couldn’t see armed guards at the gates; why weren’t there entire families living under the trees, frolicking on the grass, sleeping in the flower beds??  I’ve just looked it up on Google – no wonder we thought it was BIG!!!

“The Banaras Hindu University consists of about 15000 students, coming from all streams of life, castes, religions and races. It has about 2000 teachers and nearly 5000 non-teaching staff.”

I still can’t fathom how they could protect 1300 acres from the multitudes in the middle of this crowded city.

Before we left the university we spent a few peaceful hours in a large, airy, spacious Hindu temple.  It was full of activity, with people wandering around, praying on the cool marble floors, playing music.  All around the walls were big plaques with religious stories in Hindi and in English.  We were charmed to find they were very similar to our Old Testament Bible stories – Noah’s Ark, Moses, Archie and Mehitabel (well not quite but you get the idea…) Just inside the door was a huge bell to be rung by all comers.  To ring the bell you either had to be quite tall or able to leap and strike.  This was a challenge; I was not entering the temple till I had rung that bell!  Jump JUMP!  All physical effort is more taxing in India because of the heat, but you will be pleased and proud to hear I managed to ring that bell!