The Case of the Stinky Clothes – Or why a Clothes Rack is IMPORTANT (Ahem Daddy G!)

Listening to: Zoobi Doobi from 3 Idiots – seriously, a great sone

Mood: It’s Monday, so…as good as can be expected.

A few weeks back, I went to hang out with Daddy G on our bed while he worked. I am smack dab in the middle of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, so I thought I could make some progress. A few minutes later, Daddy G turned to me and said “Ugh, woman. Go take a shower. You smell.” Because, you know, Daddy G is the epitome of tact when it comes to me.

Horrified, I turned on the geezer and took a shower. I didn’t even realized that I was smelling funky and I had gone for a doctor’s appointment earlier that day. After I was done, I picked up my dirty laundry and noticed the smell was coming from my clothes, not me. I didn’t cook that day, wasn’t sweating much at all, and the clothes were clean that morning. Thinking how strange that was, I just threw them in the wash and went on with my day after giving Daddy G a hard time for his incorrect notion that I stunk.

A few days later, Daddy G came home smelling the same way my clothes had the day before. He was pissed that he had gone through the day smelling of bad cheese and just stink. He knew it was his clothes and was mad. I asked him why he had worn those clothes in the first place if he knew they stank. Apparently, he was in a hurry and didn’t notice it in the morning. A likely story, the same thing had happened to me. I urged him next time to just throw the offending piece of clothing in the wash. I do wash almost every single day anyhow, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to get it washed, ironed and returned. Trust me; he has plenty of work clothing.

I asked him if he knew why our clothes smelled funny because in the past 30 years of my life, I’ve never run into this before. He told me that in India if the clothes weren’t dried completely, they generally got to smelling bad. Cue the lightbulb. A load of dark clothes and pants was put away with a few seams or something damp.  I had never run into this in the US. Even if the clothes were damp, the air is generally dry enough, except in the middle of summer in NY (*Shudder*) that they won’t smell and will dry by the end of the day. It may be something in the recycled water that is used for the washing, or just the rain in the air lately. We laughed a little about how people must have been gagging behind our backs and I took the opportunity to poke Daddy G again about that hanging clothes rack that will probably never materialize at our house unless I go buy it myself.

Well, today I opened the armoire and a wall of clothes stink hit me. After valiantly fighting back my gag reflex, I went through the closet piece by piece and ended up washing most of Daddy G’s pants. Hopefully, I’ve found them all. Ugh.

Becky

Well Now That’s Just Disgusting Part II

My inlaws live in a very nice small neighborhood off some decently busy roads that cross Hyderabad. The small grocery store is about 2 blocks away, and the husband and I occasionally walk down there to pick up some cereal, jam or other such things.

As I have already noted, Indian streets are crazy jungles of activity that require the utmost attention to navigate. This goes double for pedestrians as you are the smallest, weakest thing traveling on the road. There are very few places where there are sidewalks, people just hug the edge of the road. There is also the honking method of communication to be considered, but we’ll get into that in another entry. I guess it’s pretty apparent that you need to watch what’s going on around you.

The fun part comes in when you realize that you have to watch the ground in front of you also. There are stray dogs to be avoided at all costs, potholes, mysterious puddles, bugs, and trash, not to mention the people and random cars/autos parked on the side of the street. 

One of these fine evenings, I was walking with the husband and we needed to cross the street. I decided that watching the cars was the prudent thing for my eyes to be doing at that moment. This was where things got hairy. I had not noticed that something had used the bathroom on the side of the street. I turned to cross the street and didn’t notice it until my sandal clad foot had sunk in nice and good. Thank goodness I was wearing heeled sandals, otherwise I might have had Hepatitis nightmares for weeks – after all, I didn’t even know what left the pile of crap in the street.  Husband, after he finished being mad that I wasn’t watching where I was going and then laughing hysterically, assured me it was just from a cow. This is totally reasonable because you do see the odd inexplicable herd of cattle wandering down the street with the cattle herd in the middle of super busy neighborhoods/streets. I just wonder where they keep them…it’s all houses, where do you have space for ginormous cows??

So came home and thoroughly washed off my sandal, thankful that this lesson didn’t come with skin contact or any exotic disease. But still. Ew.

Becky

Well That's Just Disgusting

Listening to:  Lit up-Buckcherry

I recently had something happen to me that was so disgusting I never want it to happen again. Before we get into what it was, let me reassure you that India has tons and tons of local bug fauna. Blows the US out of the water when it comes to insects. For example, we have at least 3 types of ants in the house at a time, and I’m not talking about the kind that pinch your cheeks and kiss you lots.  There are small black ants that love sweets and grains. There are teeny tiny red ones that love bread and cereal.  Then there are the absolutely evil red ones that bite. *Shudder* Thankfully, those are mostly more interested in being outside hunting bugs and eating them. Because that’s what evil ants do. Occasionally we see them in the house if a bug has died somewhere. Another thing about ants is that it’s never one or two. By the time you notice them in the house, there are at least 500.

On to the disgusting part. In most Indian Hindu houses, there is either a dedicated room or at least a corner nook with statues and images of some or many of the gods, depending on how pious the family is. In my inlaws house, we have a dedicated room back by the kitchen. It does also happen to be a pantry/storage room. In honor of that being a religious room (a puja room) for the family, any type of shoes are not allowed. Most people (unless you are too poor to afford it, which is more people than you think) wear rubber type slip on sandals (cheppals) all the time, even in the house. This is because things get dusty and by the end of the day, your feet will be black otherwise. One night, I wandered barefoot into the puja room to grab a jar of jam. I did flip on the light but didn’t pay too much attention as I wandered back through the room. 

All of a sudden I felt some odd crunching beneath my feet and wondered what spilled. I looked down and the entire floor was crawling and moving rapidly away from my feet. Someone had spilled a little bit of whole grains in the puja room earlier in the day and the entire floor was absolutely covered with black ants. I literally have never seen so many ants in one place and I stood fascinated for a minute before I realized that I had many, many ants climbing up my legs. This was like a movie type action scene where there are so many bugs moving in one direction it looks like they are just spilling over each other to get away.  Ew. I still shudder thinking about it. It took a good 5 minutes of stamping my feet in the hallway before I got all of the ants off my legs, because I was wearing pants and couldn’t just brush them off. Let me tell you, I look down now before I enter a room.

Becky