The Joy of Giving, Part II

Dear dedicated reader,

I can now understand why Ganesha, the “remover of obstacles” enjoys such popularity as a recipient of worship.

After the principal assured me that Sandipbhai would take my packages to Bardoli to send them by courier, I alerted Melissa who also had Christmas gifts to send so she could jump on the efficiency train and mail her package at the same time in the same trip.

Sandipbhai recovered from his mysterious illness within two days and on very morning that he showed up at school to teach his waiting class of third standard students, Vikrambhai came to the house and told me to take the packages to the principal’s office around 3 o’clock so that he wouldn’t forget to call Sandipbhai to take the packages. I obligingly did so and the minute they left my hands and were sitting on the floor of the principal’s cluttered office, I felt as though a burden had been lifted from my aching shoulders.

Note to the uninitiated: never celebrate your success too early here in India or your hubris will be punished by the vengeful, bureaucratic gods. We were dispensing books on our porch to awaiting 9th standard students after our post-school Spoken English class when the principal’s wife came to tell us that we had a call. We shut down the library and went to the principal’s house, where the principal’s son informed us that he was on the phone with Sandipbhai, who was currently at the courier service with our packages.

“He says,” Jaydeepbhai explained, “that to send all the packages to the same address will be this much money,” he wrote the figure down on a piece of paper for us to be clear, “and if you send to two different addresses, it will be THIS much.” Underneath the first figure, he wrote another figure that was almost twice as much and way more than we had been quoted previously.

“Just to send the packages to different addresses? Why does that make any difference whatsoever?” I muttered, then checked myself. Requests for logic hold no weight around here. Aloud, I said, “So, what should we do? Will it be less to send it by post?”

The principal’s family discussed this query in Gujarati for a few moments before confirming that yes, it would be best to send it by post from Kadod.

I sighed and resigned myself to the possibility that I might never send these Christmas gifts.

The next day, the packages were returned to me from Sandipbhai and at the beginning of the lunch break, the principal approached me to tell me that Pradipbhai, one of the other peons who had thus far not been involved in this arduous and lengthy process, would accompany me to the post office to send the packages myself.

He showed up outside the door of the house on a motorcycle that he had borrowed from one of the other male teachers. He placed one of the packages in front of him on the bike, then indicated that I should sit on the back. I shook my head in a vigorous ‘no’. Despite having achieved unprecedented comfort levels in performing such complicated actions as walking up and down stairs, negotiating sitting on chairs, standing on tables and other such feats in a sari, my list of accomplishments did not include riding side saddle on the back of a motorcycle while carrying three large packages and today was not going to be my day to start.

He gave me an exasperated look and indicated the back of the bike again.

“We can’t just walk?” I pleaded. The post office was only a seven minute walk. He revved the bike’s motor in response and looked at me impatiently.

With numerous students having been attracted by the commotion in the schoolyard and the entire male teaching staff looking on from the upstairs balcony, I carefully hiked up the bottom of my sari and settled myself on the back of the bike, I tried to rest the packages in my lap, but I couldn’t manage this and still cling desperately to the back of the bike, so I settled for them falling over the side of the bike an unbalanced way. Pradipbhai revved the bike and started uneasily off.

It only took going a few feet to realize that this unequivocally wasn’t going to work. The bike was completely off-balance and after a jerky start, nearly toppled over to the great amusement of all the onlookers. I tried to laugh but was inwardly mortified as my students and co-workers saw me in this undignified position.

“You can’t ride side saddle?” Pradipbhai asked me in Hindi accusingly as he dismounted the bike in disbelief.

“I’m American,” I said, and shrugged. “And anyway, I warned you…” We started off towards the post office by foot in a frosty silence, Pradipbhai feeling cheated of his ride on the bike.

The Kadod Post Office itself looks as if it has been lifted from a Dickensian novel: Painted a dusty, dung color, the stacks of yellowing papers piled high around the obscured, unused computer underneath the face of clock eternally frozen at 7:20, the wrinkled clerks look over their glasses in a pinched way at long, faded tables written by some post-master from better days, a cup of fresh steaming chai sitting by their side which they sip in a distracted manner. As Pradipbhai and I entered, it took several minutes standing at the counter before the man sitting there looked up and acknowledged that, in fact, someone actually wanted to send something somewhere.

After his cursory acknowledgement, Pradipbhai launched into a long explanation of my packages and where they were going and then passed them over the top of the counter for, apparently, inspection by the entirety of the postal staff. Each person took the packages in their long fingers and turned them over carefully, perusing each side of the package with care.

After a few minutes of this perusal, some dusty papers were removed from an old rusted scale onto which the parcels were placed one at a time. I watched as the post-master shook his head in disbelief at each one. What did it mean?

He turned back to Pradipbhai after ten minutes or so and pronounced that not all of the packages could be sent. Only two could be sent and the other two would have to go to Bardoli.

I listened in disbelief. “Why?” I said carefully, trying to control the modulation of my voice.

“They are big and there isn’t enough postage to send all four of the packages,” Pradipbhai explained to me as if this were obvious.

“The POST OFFICE doesn’t have enough postage?” I said incredulously.

“Exactly, they can’t send them all at the same time. But, if you go to Bardoli, you can send two of them from there.”

I explained with as much patience as I could muster that as I worked at the school, didn’t it seem a little impossible that I would be able to take them half an hour away to the Bardoli post office when the hours of said post-office coincided with those of the school, especially when I had no car? Pradipbhai admitted that yes, this could potentially be a problem and relayed it as such to the post-master.

The post-master looked at me dubiously. “I suppose,” he explained in a Gujarati that was then translated to Hindi for my benefit by Pradipbhai, “that if you come back on Saturday that you can send them at that time. We’ll have enough postage by then. In the meantime, you may send two packages.”

The post-master then proceeded to order a cup of chai, sit behind the counter and do nothing for half an hour under the guise of selecting which of my packages would be prepared for their US departure. I sat on a ripped, dirty couch for reserved, I supposed, for the ranks of over-ambitious post office visitors such as myself. After half an hour’s time of doing nothing, the post master handed me four forms which I was to fill out in triplicate for each package.

I have to admit that I have cultivated a bad habit since coming to live here: because I know that most people in town barely speak English at all and almost no one can understand when I speak with an American accent, I have a tendency to mutter when I get frustrated. I spent the next two minutes doing exactly this while filling out these forms under the watchful eyes. “I’m so glad,” I said, more to myself than anyone, “that you gave me these forms now instead of half an hour ago when I was sitting doing nothing on that couch. It is so much more enjoyable to fill them out while you and everyone else stand around and watch me. This, in fact, is the high point of my day!” Pradipbhai and the post-master merely looked on as if I’d said nothing.

By the time I left, over an hour had passed in which time no other customers had come into the post-office and I was still carrying two of the four packages back to the house in defeat with the assurance that, perhaps, if I was lucky, the postage to send the remaining ones would arrive on Saturday.

I looked forward to my return visit with all the joy that I usually reserve for visits to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Best,
Cat