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If I wrote everything I want to write, I would be here for hours, and I only really have one (hour) with internet access.
Anyway, India. It is not hot. It is like a British summer but less unpredictable, and I said today that there is no weather, there is only climate. Same and same again, day after day. Other than that it's hard to describe what life is like here, excet everything else, ie home, friends, fandom, all seem like a dream and something that happened to someone else. Somewhere far away.
I spent today in Connaught Place - went to the Bookworm, bought far too many books and two Asterix comics - and the Hanuman Mandir. It's Tuesday, naturally, the correct day, and we had to fight our way throug h the crowds of people with their flowers and prasad. I rang the bells and threw handfuls of petals over the murti. Then went outside to find my boots, because some things never change, and when I got to them ther e was a monkey sitting there, watching me attentively. Another fan of the dominatrix boots, clearly.
My parents are at South Ex. The only reason I'm here is to check UCAS, but they're being uncommunicative. The good news is I have an interview at UCL for Medicine. For all I know they interview all candidates, but one can be pleased regardless.
The boys are somewhere. I came home early with Shlok because the poor boy has contracted diarrhoea, and we rode back from CP in an autorickshaw. Delhi roads are suicide. They are. But you get used to the constant near-misses and beeping horns, and after a while I sat peeping out from below the hood and reading the Hindi signs slowly to myself. I'm getting better. We were stuck in gridlock for five minutes below a sign and I read: "New Delhi Railway Station" and was terribly proud of myself for a while after.
Talking of Shlok, we do not drink the water. We fear the water. I even make my coffee out of mineral water, heating it slowly on the gas and watching it bubble bacteria out. I drink the coffee at all hours of the day, playing poker still and cleaning up. I now have two hundred rupees just in winnings.
I can't ever tell you what it's like here. The noise, the smell, the smog, the thick scent of spices and urine and incense and fruit, the happy shouting of the street traders (Sunny said, "I thought they were having a political demonstration, but turns out they're selling shirts."), the fusion of cultures, the exuberance of life and the abject, frightening poverty. The strangeness of who I am - somewhere in between, someone who left and came back (Chicklu said, "Stop talking like such a Britisher!") - and what they want me to be.
I attract so much attention. I could never live here.
The ceremony was a success, by the way. I was wearing a sari, pink and gold with more gold round my neck and wrists, and I wouldn't dance. I didn't like it much. My part in the ceremony was to bless the boys, do aarti with the oil lamps round their heads. They're Brahmin boys, as I am a Brahmin girl, but I don't think that matters in 2004. Or 2005, as the case may be. It's not important but they hold onto old traditions here. The house has a digital camera, a laptop, my mp3 player, about a gigabyte of storage space and no running water. It's all like that. The temple is filthy but drowning in flowers. People beg below gold. Sixty years ago a good girl of this family married at sixteen. Now she applies to the best universities and aims to be a top civil servant like her grandfather was. He never knew me, and I don't ask if he would have approved of me.
Yesterday was another day spent wandering the streets playing cricket and reading comics. The only English word known by the entire population is "Out!" Cricket is religion here. I don't subscribe, but humour the boys. I am the most unconventional and scary bowler you'll ever meet. At least, Chicklu says, and he knows everything about everything. "Chicklu, I need internet access." I need a big brown envelope. I need writing paper. I need my jeans mended. I need paracetamol. I need this, that or the other. It's there and done within five minutes, whatever the question. I'm planning to get him a copy of the Hitch Hiker's Guide and hope he gets the joke.
Tomorrow I ought to do my Christmas shopping. People sell malas, the garlands of sweet-scented flowers, in the street - I have one wrapped round my neck now, entwined with the red and black scarf. We got it at the mandir, after we came out into the sunlight. I wanted mehndi but there wasn't time.
Christmas shopping, yeah. Last night we planned it. It was getting late by then, and I was listening to music while the boys slept, the same song over and over into the dark.
Anyway, India. It is not hot. It is like a British summer but less unpredictable, and I said today that there is no weather, there is only climate. Same and same again, day after day. Other than that it's hard to describe what life is like here, excet everything else, ie home, friends, fandom, all seem like a dream and something that happened to someone else. Somewhere far away.
I spent today in Connaught Place - went to the Bookworm, bought far too many books and two Asterix comics - and the Hanuman Mandir. It's Tuesday, naturally, the correct day, and we had to fight our way throug h the crowds of people with their flowers and prasad. I rang the bells and threw handfuls of petals over the murti. Then went outside to find my boots, because some things never change, and when I got to them ther e was a monkey sitting there, watching me attentively. Another fan of the dominatrix boots, clearly.
My parents are at South Ex. The only reason I'm here is to check UCAS, but they're being uncommunicative. The good news is I have an interview at UCL for Medicine. For all I know they interview all candidates, but one can be pleased regardless.
The boys are somewhere. I came home early with Shlok because the poor boy has contracted diarrhoea, and we rode back from CP in an autorickshaw. Delhi roads are suicide. They are. But you get used to the constant near-misses and beeping horns, and after a while I sat peeping out from below the hood and reading the Hindi signs slowly to myself. I'm getting better. We were stuck in gridlock for five minutes below a sign and I read: "New Delhi Railway Station" and was terribly proud of myself for a while after.
Talking of Shlok, we do not drink the water. We fear the water. I even make my coffee out of mineral water, heating it slowly on the gas and watching it bubble bacteria out. I drink the coffee at all hours of the day, playing poker still and cleaning up. I now have two hundred rupees just in winnings.
I can't ever tell you what it's like here. The noise, the smell, the smog, the thick scent of spices and urine and incense and fruit, the happy shouting of the street traders (Sunny said, "I thought they were having a political demonstration, but turns out they're selling shirts."), the fusion of cultures, the exuberance of life and the abject, frightening poverty. The strangeness of who I am - somewhere in between, someone who left and came back (Chicklu said, "Stop talking like such a Britisher!") - and what they want me to be.
I attract so much attention. I could never live here.
The ceremony was a success, by the way. I was wearing a sari, pink and gold with more gold round my neck and wrists, and I wouldn't dance. I didn't like it much. My part in the ceremony was to bless the boys, do aarti with the oil lamps round their heads. They're Brahmin boys, as I am a Brahmin girl, but I don't think that matters in 2004. Or 2005, as the case may be. It's not important but they hold onto old traditions here. The house has a digital camera, a laptop, my mp3 player, about a gigabyte of storage space and no running water. It's all like that. The temple is filthy but drowning in flowers. People beg below gold. Sixty years ago a good girl of this family married at sixteen. Now she applies to the best universities and aims to be a top civil servant like her grandfather was. He never knew me, and I don't ask if he would have approved of me.
Yesterday was another day spent wandering the streets playing cricket and reading comics. The only English word known by the entire population is "Out!" Cricket is religion here. I don't subscribe, but humour the boys. I am the most unconventional and scary bowler you'll ever meet. At least, Chicklu says, and he knows everything about everything. "Chicklu, I need internet access." I need a big brown envelope. I need writing paper. I need my jeans mended. I need paracetamol. I need this, that or the other. It's there and done within five minutes, whatever the question. I'm planning to get him a copy of the Hitch Hiker's Guide and hope he gets the joke.
Tomorrow I ought to do my Christmas shopping. People sell malas, the garlands of sweet-scented flowers, in the street - I have one wrapped round my neck now, entwined with the red and black scarf. We got it at the mandir, after we came out into the sunlight. I wanted mehndi but there wasn't time.
Christmas shopping, yeah. Last night we planned it. It was getting late by then, and I was listening to music while the boys slept, the same song over and over into the dark.
