still a sore spot....

As the readers of my blog will know, I got very sick during my semester abroad in India. I took a ton of antibiotics for a ton of illnesses and was even hospitalized for a few days with "a lot of bacteria." After coming back to the States, my primary physician told me that I actually probably contracted typhoid fever. This lead to a bunch of Typhoid Mary jokes. But no joke was funnier than the continuing one about that one time when I got bacterial dysentery. The other students on my program awarded me with, "Least Likely to Survive the Oregon Trail" at the end of the semester.

Imagine my surprise to find this event on the Internet --

That's right. Live-action Oregon Trail. An event that is using dysentery as a marketing tool is no friend of mine, let me tell you.

Don't do it. Dysentery sucks, and I'm speaking from experience.

i've been a bad, bad blogger

Sometime between my last post and now, I came back to America. I also wore a saree, and I looked damn fine. A few days later, I was back in Somerville to see my friends graduate from Tufts University. We all went out to celebrate not long afterwards. Guess which picture was taken in India and which one was taken in Massachusetts.

I've had some time to adjust to being back, and it's been wonderful. I don't care if I sound like a brat. I love having access to hot showers at any moment in the day and being able to drink the tap water whenever I want. I miss some things, but I've been missing the people on my program more than the place itself.

My wandering's not over, though. I'm headed on a road trip through the South this summer. There's few things that are more antithetical to India than the American South, and I'm so excited. Through Virginia and Tennessee to Oklahoma and then back through Arkansas for a music festival all the way up to Ohio to visit the boyfriend's parents and then back to Somerville.

Get ready to read a lot of blog posts about electronic music and pulled pork. You're welcome in advance.

in which i take lots of pictures with food

I blame the lack of blogging on my broken keyboard. The "U" key stopped working, which is problematic because my last name has a "U" in it and I need to type in my last name to log into my laptop. The quick fix to this problem was to go to the Apple store at the mall in Mumbai and get a keyboard. I figured this solution wold be more practical and less expensive than trying to find someone to fix it, especially since I'm leaving in a week. I basically paid $45 for a "U" key. It's like Wheel of Fortune: "Pat, I'd like to buy a vowel."

Despite the minor computer difficulties, I still finished my ISP with flying colors. Forty-seven pages later, and I'm done. It's been delivered to my teachers. I tried e-mailing it to them but the document was too big and the Internet was too slow, so I had to hand-deliver it via flash drive. I'm sitting in the program center in Delhi where we spent so much time over the past three and a half months. It's like coming back to school over the summer. The building's the same, but no one's really there anymore so it feels a little bit weird.

Let's play, "Find the American at the airport in Mumabi."

Coming back to Delhi generally just feels strange. Part of that could do with the sleep deprivation though. Sarah and I left Mumbai on a 6AM flight yesterday, which required us to leave our friend's apartment at 3AM. We also decided that the only way we wouldn't miss our flight is if we pulled an all-nighter. This made for an interesting time at the airport, which included many donuts and lots of naps.

But we still managed to do a lot yesterday. In case you were worried, let me tell you: Delhi's still here, and it's still Delhi. We ran a lot of errands yesterday including three to the same tailor, one to a different tailor and one crucial trip to Dunkin' Donuts. You read that right. Dunkin' Donuts just opened its first store in GK-I, and it's three-stories tall. Without doubt the nicest Dunkin' I've ever been to.

Sitting in Dunkin' yesterday made me miss Boston (because Dunkin' Donuts was founded in Quincy and there are four Dunkin' Donuts within walking distance of my house at Tufts). I'll be home this time next week, and I'm very ready to go back to America. I'm sure there are things that I will miss about being here in India, but it's hard to know what that will be since I'm still very much in the thick of it. We're hopping on a train tonight to go to Mussorie for our final ISP presentations, and I'm looking forward to hearing about how everyone else spent the last month. I think it's also supposed to be some sort of decompression period or reorientation or something, so hopefully we'll also have some downtime to reflect about what these experiences have meant because I definitely need to do some of that self-reflection stuff. If nothing else, I'm excited to wear my newly purchased saree for our banquet on Sunday night.

Happiest of them all.

I know the next six days will fly by and I need to savor them as much as I can rather than try to rush it along to get on that last flight home but that can be hard when the Indian Dunkin' Donuts is teasing you with Dunkin' Cold Coffees that have the consistency of a Slushie but they are so close to the exact flavor of a Dunkin' Iced Regular that if you just close your eyes, you can sort of imagine that it's summertime and you're sipping your morning Dunkin' Iced Regular on the porch of your house to get your day started but then you open your eyes and you're still in India and it's slightly crushing. (Can you tell that I'm homesick?)

in which i muse about mumbai

I'm currently sitting in Leopold's Cafe, a staple of the Mumbai scene, with Sarah. I'm sitting in the air conditioned bar upstairs because we wanted to see the bullet marks left by the terrorist attack on this place in 2008, and we'll be working on our ISPs during lunch and for the next few hours. I'll probably order a draught beer in a little bit, and I might go for the fish and chips.

This is a pretty good indicator of how I've been spending my time these days. It's been full of good food, good people and a new city. Mumbai is wonderful, and it's even more wonderful to be here with friends from the program. It's a nice mix of relaxation, of touring, of schoolwork. A friend from Tufts came from Pune on Tuesday, and we went biking in the national park in the north of the city. Last night was a friend's 21st birthday, so we went to a restaurant that looked like Mars 2112 but classier, like the dinner lounge of the future. Yesterday, we were approached by a Bollywood casting agent who was looking for "European-looking" girls to be extras in a film, and we might go tomorrow.

The British influence here is palpable. It sounds a little naïve, but I occasionally forgot that India was dominated by the British in Delhi. It's hard to tell unless you're in certain parts of the city because the buildings are all very boxy. Here, the architecture is unmistakably European. The train stations look like the ones I've travelled through in France and in England, with broad arches and stone details.

Moral of the story is that I like this city, but I'm still very ready to go home. This time in two weeks, I expect to be nomming on a bagel from the Bagel Emporium while watching the episodes of "30 Rock" that I know have been recorded on our DVR. (Take notes, Mom and Dad. If you meet me at the airport with a plain bagel with chive cream cheese, I might break down and cry with tears of joy.) It's nice to be wrapping up this program on a high note though, and I think it can only get better over the next two weeks. I just need to finish this paper.

bombay dreams

Back in the day, I saw that Broadway musical called "Bombay Dreams." The only song I remember goes along the lines of, "Salaam Bombay! Salaam Bom-bayy!" It was delightfully tacky, and it was about slums but it was on Broadway so it wasn't exactly authentic. That's about the extent to what I know about Mumbai though.

But here I am, in Mumbai. I got here on Saturday after a quick plane ride from Delhi on India's version of JetBlue -- Indigo Airlines. The woman sitting next to me was in full salwar kameez, probably no older than my own mother, but she didn't know how to buckle and unbuckle her seat belt. It was a really foreign thing to her.

The thing that was most foreign to me was loading and unloading the plane. We had to take a bus to the tarmac and then climb the stairs to the plane, which is something that I've done before but still not used to but never fails to make me feel glamorous or the Secretary of State.

I hopped in a cab to go to the YMCA International Center, which is the bomb. The room is clean and there's a hot shower and a big window. Breakfast and dinner are included, and the omelets are to die for. There's also coffee, and the coffee doesn't suck. Mumbai is the best, too. It's beautiful, and there's a lovely coast. I'm so excited to walk around on Marine Drive, along the Arabian Sea.

The best part of being here is reuniting with friends here. I met up with friends from my program on Saturday, and we went to an event at the race track. It was an awards ceremony of some kind for horses, but there was a fashion show involved and some magic tricks. We went to a club afterwards, which was a goofy scene. The next day, I woke up relatively early and went to the Mumbai Gallery of Modern Art, which was having an exhibit about urban planning in Mumbai! It was awesome. Did you know the average New Yorker gets 26 square meters of open space, while a Mumbai resident gets only 1 square meter? That's crazy. I nerded out hard there and then met up with my friend at his country club.

I didn't do much sightseeing yesterday because my friends are coming up from Jamkhed today, and I wanted to wait to do that until they're here. I don't know what I'm going to do today, but it'll probably involve meeting up with people, which is a wonderful thing to say. I'm sorry this is a lot of text and not a lot of photographs, but it's been a few days and I've done a lot of things. It's the beginning of the end -- only fifteen days left before the flight home and I want to make as much of this experience as I can, even if I'm ready to pack up and leave.

last day in delhi

So that's it. I'm sitting in the airport, waiting for a flight to Mumbai. Yesterday was my last full day in Delhi, which is strange to think about. I've got quite a few hours to kill, so I obviously found the Costa Coffee in the terminal and have popped a squat until check-in for my flight opens up.

These past few weeks have been tough. The fieldwork in of itself has been sort of a breeze. What's been hard has been keeping myself busy. There's only so much research you can do in a day before you want to just mindlessly watch some TV. There's only so many meals you can eat by yourself before the waiters at the restaurant start giving you looks. There's only so many times you can go to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Select City Walk Mall before they catch onto the fact that you're only going to order one beverage and then sit there for hours on end.

And that's basically how I spent my last day in Delhi. Woke up early and took an hour-long walk around the garden outside of my house. Went to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and ordered one beverage and then proceeded to sit there and bang out 28 pages of my ISP. Took an autorickshaw to a library for a meeting with a researcher and then sat there for a while. Came home and took another long walk around the garden, this time listening to sex advice from Dan Savage on "Savage Love." Ordered take-out from the restaurant because I couldn't bear the thought of sitting there alone...again. Ate bhindi masala and naan, which was to be washed down with a Limca. Then got a call from a friend about the Dunkin' Donuts that opened up in GK-I and rushed over there to get a drink. (I didn't actually end up getting a Dunkin' Donuts coffee, but that's a thing in India now. Apparently Starbucks is opening up on the subcontinent too but not until I leave.) Went to a bar, grabbed a few beers and then made my way home. (Did you know that they brew Budweisers in Delhi so Budweisers are considered a domestic beer? Fact.)

You know, now that I write it out, it doesn't sound like a bad day at all. Just a little bit ordinary and slightly solitary. All I can say is that I'm just excited to be back with a group of Americans, tacky as that may sound. I'm also excited to explore a new city. Whenever I tell people that I'm headed to Mumbai, they get really excited for me and tell me how wonderful of a place it is. There's also a beach. I'm sick of this landlocked business, and I can't wait to be somewhere new....except I have to. Three more hours until I board that plane.

saturday night struggles

I like electronic music and dubstep and D&B, and I love going to concerts (in case my post about seeing David Guetta couldn't tip you off). I was really excited to be in Delhi by myself so that I could see some shows here, but that hasn't been the case for a bunch of reasons. For example, last weekend was shot because I was in the hospital, but I was hoping that this weekend would be different. This weekend, I thought, I was going to grab the bull by the horns and go out.

To get more "in touch" with the music scene here, I liked a couple of pages on Facebook because that's how it's done these days or something. Most notable is BASSFoundation, which bills itself as, "a collective of DJs, producers and MCs promoting Drum & Bass, Dubstep in Delhi and India." Great. Totally up my alley. And they just posted this status, which I'm posting below.

Now here's the thing. I looked at their website, and Zook is right by my house; it's no more than a fifteen minute ride by auto. It's also would be so much fun to go and see a DJ in Delhi, and I would love to get out of the house and do something a little bit different. The one catch is the 11:30PM start time because I can't be out of the house at 11:30PM by myself. In fact, I'm terrified to be alone in Delhi at a bar at 11:30PM. If I was in Boston or in New York, I would have no issues with hoofing out on my own to see a DJ at 11:30PM on a Saturday night, but it's a totally different story here.

While I've been here, there have been a couple of high-profile rape cases in Gurgaon, a city that's 18 miles south of New Delhi. Basically, a 23-year old woman was by herself at a pub and was gang raped. Although that in of itself is frightening, what's even more frightening to me is the response from police. Essentially, their answer to this problem was to ban women from going out past 8PM. Granted, New Delhi isn't Gurgaon, but the two cities are very close. To create an analogy that my readers would understand, the relationship between New Delhi and Gurgaon is like that between Boston and Cambridge. They're technically different cities, but if you spend the day in Cambridge and say you were visiting Boston, you wouldn't necessarily be wrong.

I'm in a bit of a pickle, because I really want to go to this show. It sounds like a lot of fun and I'd love the opportunity to meet young people in Delhi who are interested the same music that I am. But the 11:30PM start time is a deal breaker, especially considering the fact that I would be going by myself and going anywhere by myself in this city is an invitation to be harassed and catcalled even in broad daylight. The worst part is when I think, "If I was a boy, I could go by myself with no problems." That's just not a productive way to think, and I know that, but I often wish there was a way for me to fly under the radar, to go places without being on the defensive. My two least favorite sounds are when men smack their lips at me like you would when you're calling for your dog and when they say, "Ma'am! Oh, madam!" in a vain attempt to grab my attention for whatever reason.

But back to the main point. It boils down to the fact that I can't take the risk of going out by myself as a foreign woman in New Delhi on a Saturday night, and it's absolutely killing me that I can't do what I want, when I want to do it because there's a safety risk or because it's socially inappropriate, which in turn causes a safety risk. I need to trust my gut on this one though, and my gut is telling me to stay in tonight.

So that's exactly what I'm going to do. I bought "The Dirty Picture" on DVD today, so I'll be watching that and eating Oreos with peanut butter. I wish I could go to that concert, but the benefits aren't worth the costs. I need to grit my teeth and remind myself that there's nothing I can do, that I'm making the responsible decision, but that doesn't make it any easier or any fairer.

home free....sort of

Sorry for the lack of posts. I don't really have an excuse though because ever since I left the hospital on Tuesday afternoon, my life has been relatively average. Here's a quick list of what I've been doing.

• Chilling in mad coffee shops all over this fair city. There was the Café Coffee Day in Connaught Place after I got kicked out of the British Library for having a backpack and refused to pay the Rs.650 membership fee to sit there for longer than 30 minutes. (Americans rebelled from the British once, and I can do it again.) The Costa Coffee by my apartment in Malviya Nagar has been getting a lot of action. I'm currently sitting in The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Select CityWalk, which is pleasantly Americanized and air conditioned.

• Speaking of Select CityWalk, I saw "The Hunger Games" on Thursday evening. Couldn't tell if the movie actually is that choppy or if Indian censors just had their way with the movie. Either way, it was brilliant. No shame in admitting that I cried when Katniss volunteered for her sister and again when Rue was killed and again when they returned home.

• Because I'm in Delhi by myself, I've been a little bit starved for contact with other human beings. This has driven me to listen to podcasts obsessively. Lots of podcasts. I'm literally free basing NPR right now: "This American Life," "Planet Money" episodes from 2010, "Savage Love," "Radio Lab." The first thing I do when I get home is write a big (and I use "big" in the relative term since I am still a student and soon to be unemployed) check to NPR because these podcasts are saving my life right now. You should donate too because your favorite blogger is telling you to. It's the American thing to do.

• I've been eating mad peanut butter and honey sandwiches, since my "fragile American tummy" can't really handle anything else right now. It is what it is.

• But it hasn't all been Americanized. I went to a lecture at the Indian Trust for Art and Culture Heritage on World Heritage Day about "Cities and Political Power." It was incredibly interesting, and the lecturer was this great MIT professor and Indian urban planner Charles Correa. I think that I really do love urban planning. In fact, I think this might be what I want to do with my life (although this is a bold statement to make in a public forum). This is probably a good time to have this realization, considering I only have six months before I graduate from college.

• There's been a lot of sending of e-mails and conducting of interviews and writing of my ISP. I've got 20 pages down and ten left to write. It's really the home stretch, and my goal is to have thirty pages by this weekend because...

• I bought a plane ticket to Mumbai! This time next week, I expect to be sitting on a beach. It's been hard being in Delhi by myself. The city's lost a little bit of its luster since I've been here on my own and haven't been able to go out with friends. I'm excited to meet up with them in Mumbai; it'll be a good time.

That's about it. I'm anxious to get the next phase of this trip going. I feel like I'm furiously spinning my wheels right now, but I'm not going anywhere fast. It's frustrating, and being alone in a big, foreign city doesn't help. But talking with my boyfriend the other day, I realized that I need to give myself some more credit. This isn't an easy experience, especially given the fact that I've been in the hospital for four days. As my dad put it, "You've had enough sick days in the last few months to last a lifetime." I just need to breathe and make it through this next week, and then I'm home free.

it's still a cultural experience

It's official, gang. I've been hospitalized with bacterial dysentery. It really is the ultimate irony, considering the fact that I'm supposed to be spending this month researching access to clean water in Delhi. I've spent three full days in the hospital, and I'm about to curl up into bed for my third night. But being here has been an experience in of itself, even if it's not the one I expected to be having during my month in Delhi.

For example, I am currently watching Dexter on TV right now. Didn't know that would be aired on Indian cable. And last night, Black Swan was on, which was surprising in of itself. Homosexuality isn't really a thing in India, so I was curious to see how the censors would handle the whole Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis sex scene. Instead of showing the two of them getting it on, there was simply a shot of Natalie Portman thrusting a pillow down toward the camera like she was going to smother someone. I couldn't remember if the movie was actually supposed to be that choppy or if it was Indian censorship. Either way, it was an entertaining two hours.

I also got electrocuted yesterday with the buzzer that you use to call the nurse. I dropped the button, which sort of looks like a doorbell that's just not connected to a doorframe. The back of the button came off, and when I went to call the nurse to tell her that my IV fluids had run out, I accidentally pressed the exposed wire at the back of the button and electricity went coursing through my left index finer. This caused me to yell, which caused the nurse to come into the room. I guess the button still did what I wanted it to, if in a much more painful way.

I've also been having a hard time telling when the doctor is giving me a command or when he's giving me a gentle suggestion. Like when he says, "Now, don't eat too quickly." It's hard for me to tell if it's a gentle joke or if it's along the lines of, "No, seriously. Don't eat too fast. You'll throw up if you do." The perfect example of this was this morning, when I asked if I could be released today. The doctor's answer started with a long, "Well..........." He continued, "You can leave whenever you want. No one is stopping you. But you don't want to leave before you're sure you're well because if you do, you'll just be right back here tomorrow." Indians use a much more oblique version of English than what I'm used to, and this is a culture that doesn't like to say, "No." It's much more roundabout, more circuitous.

And that's why I'm still here. Three days in a hospital with bacterial dysentery. Now excuse me while I finish this episode of Dexter, get a new IV drip and the go to sleep. See you kids on the outside.

isn't it all so glamorous?

Remember that time I had dysentery? What about that time when it was actually giardia? Well, I've got a story to top either of those two.

I told you about my new living accommodations in Malviya Nagar. Part of the appeal was the kitchen and the opportunity to cook my own food, which I've been doing. I've also been eating a lot of fruit, which I know is a little bit risky, but I've been doing a good job at washing the fruit with filtered water. That is, there is a water filter above the sink at the PG, and I've only been drinking and cooking and washing utensils with that water.

Well, that water may not have been the cleanest or that filter may not have been entirely working or I may have just picked up a bug from somewhere else. All I can tell you is that I got sick. Really sick. Worse than dysentery. Worse than giardia. Like, I went to see Housefull 2 at the movie theatre on Friday night and I had to leave during intermission because I felt like I was going to pass out. We're talking Delhi belly to the maximum, combined with a high-grade fever of 103.6°F and severe dehydration. I mean, that's what the doctor told me when I went to see him on Saturday morning. It was so severe that they admitted me, and I've been chilling in this hospital bed ever since.

I'm hooked up to an IV, which has been pumping me full of fluids and antibiotics for the past 36 hours. The doctor says that it's definitely a bacterial infection, hence the antibiotics. His exact words were along the lines of, "There is lots of bacteria in your stools. Lots of bacteria."

On the bright side, I'm feeling a lot better now. My fever broke yesterday, after a couple of injections and a sponge bath of cold water. (Didn't know that was a thing you did to treat fevers.) I'm also using the clinic's wireless, which is much faster than the Internet from my Tata Internet stick. I can eat again, per the doctor's orders, and I've gotten a lot of reading done and some ISP writing in. But I still have to go to the bathroom a lot, and I still don't know exactly what kind of bacteria has invaded my stomach and GI tract. I'm bound to make a full recovery, though, and I'll probably be out of here tomorrow.

It's funny that even while I'm in this hospital room, it's hard to forget that I'm in India. Take, for example, the chai that was just delivered to my bed. Even when you're suffering from severe intestinal distress, you still get chai.

Oh, man. Isn't studying abroad super glamorous?

an american in delhi

Not as romantic sounding as "An American in Paris," but it'll do. I'm currently sitting in the American Library, and I'm the only American here. I was not expecting that. I was sort of expecting that I would flash my American passport and my New York driver's license and would just be waved through, but I was at security for a good ten minutes and had to unpack my bag and let the security guard examine all of my belongings. It became quickly frustrating, but I guess that's what I get for assuming security would be lax for an American. I was also just not expecting how crowded this place is. All of the seats at all of the tables are occupied, and if you go through the stacks, you'll find people - mainly students, about my own age - sitting on the floor on any unoccupied floor space.

But it's quiet, despite the dozens and dozens of people. There's CNN playing on a flat-screen TV, and I haven't seen CNN for over two months now. There's a picture of Barack Obama on the wall, holding a book and imploring you to "READ." There's a marble bust of some white man on a nearby bookshelf, and the color scheme is a comforting red, white and blue. I also just discovered the DVD section, stocked with some really classic American titles including "Brigadoon," "Jurassic Park" and "1776." So, like, that could prove to be a dangerous development.

This place simultaneously feels very familiar but entirely strange. I really think that I'm the only American in the American Library in Delhi, India. Globalization, man. That's a thing.

in which i don't die à la "hostel" and acquire two tailored dresses

I moved out of my homestay in Lajpat Nagar on Monday, and I was supposed to live in a hostel in Paharganj. But that didn't work out for a multitude of reasons. First, my hostel was down an alleyway. Second, Sarah got stopped while walking around aforementioned alleyway by a French reporter who wanted to know if she felt safe in Delhi. She said she did, and she asked why he wanted to know. Apparently, a female French tourist was found dead in a hostel or a hotel in the neighborhood only a week before. I didn't want to pull a Natalee Holloway or get trapped in Hostel, so I booked it out of there and scrambled to find a new place to crash.

Thanks to a friend of a friend, I found this great PG in Malviya Nagar. PG stands for "Paying Guest," and it usually works as a room in a family's house. But I've got a good situation here that offers a bit more privacy than my last homestay, lovely though it was. The owners live on the third floor, and I'm on the second floor. There are two bedrooms with three beds in each, a kitchen and two bathrooms. There are only two Indian girls who are alo living here, but they're in the other bedroom. This means I've basically got this big room all to myself, which actually rules. The owners lock the front gate at 9PM, but they gave me a key so I don't have to worry about booking it back by 9PM on the dot. This new living situation - including the fact that I can eat all of the museli and honey and yogurt and pomegranate and chikoo and mango and banana that I want when I want to eat it - is pretty great. Plus, I live around the corner from a bagel shop and a frozen yogurt place.

Having a room to myself also means that I can take embarrassing pictures of myself on my laptop to show you all the dresses that I got tailored! (Remember that post?) Well after weeks of waiting and days of delay,  the dresses are in my possession. They fit me like a glove. Actually, they fit almost too well; getting them on an off is sort of a challenge. My waist is 6-8 inches smaller than my bust and my hips (and I know this now because I've been measured for the tailor so many times), so I have to sort of squeeze either my boobs or my hips into the dress. But once all my lady curves are in, let me tell you: I look good.

This is the fabulous 70's-style embroidered fabric that I bought...

...and this is the dress that I had made from it!

This dress makes me feel like Joan from Mad Men.

I never want to take these dresses off ever, but I have to because I can't walk around with bare legs here and because I don't really have anywhere to wear them to. Yet another reason I can't wait to get back to the States. (Fun fact: Leg waxing is incredibly inexpensive here, which is sort of ironic since it's impossible to show my freshly waxed gams off without staying culturally appropriate. But my legs feel great.) One of my flatmates just got home and I showed her my dresses. She thought they were kurtas, but she liked them a lot. Ah, well.

"hey man were rotating whats good with u?"

I bought a guidebook from "Time Out - Delhi" when I first decided that I was coming to the city for study abroad. The book is pocket-size and it's just pages of lists of restaurants and bars and clubs and shops. There's one listing that's stood out among all of the rest since day one, and you only need two words from the description to understand why I was so excited about it: rotating restaurant.

View of Connaught Place from the rotating restaurant.

I've been trying to make moves to this place for months now, and we finally went on Saturday night (after the whole Qutub Minar photograph incident). We were warned that the food wasn't that good, so we just wanted to get drinks and appetizers and rotate for a while before getting dinner at a less expensive, better quality restaurant. But rotating restaurants are awesome. Sarah and I arrived at sunset, and three of our friends met up with us later on. We were overlooking Connaught Place and could see a lot of the city's major sites, save for the dense layer of smog.

There were other uniquely Indian problems with this restaurant, besides the smog. Like when the rotating floor stopped rotating because of a brief power surge. Those are common in Delhi, and realizing that a rotating restaurant can't rotate because of power surges is a curious manifestation of a very serious problem. We also kept on losing cell phone service at strange intervals, and I'm pretty convinced that we were rotating in and out of dead zones.

The food was as mediocre as we had been warned, but the Kingfishers were cold which is really the important thing. It was nice to get together in a small group and just rotate over Delhi. Just a some quiet moments to reflect on the two and a half months we've had in this city.

There was also a silk rose on the table, for that touch of class. Obviously this meant that we needed to take some photographs.

in which i see the qutub minar and yell at an indian man about consent

Our friend Gabe fell out of a tree a few weeks ago and bruised some bone in his ankle and has been on crutches ever since. He's getting the cast off on Monday, and he should be totally fine. It's just sort of a hassle to crutch around New Delhi, especially since sidewalks aren't really a thing here. He and Sarah called me around 1PM and asked if I wanted to join them at the Qutub Minar, which I did. I arrive there an hour later, and I see Gabe standing there on one leg with Sarah. He looks at me and simply says, "I left my crutches in the auto." This is problematic because Gabe cannot walk without crutches right now. He can hobble and he can hop, but walking? Not so much.

Sarah and I went to the ticket counter, leaving the immobile Gabe under a shady tree, and we asked if they had a wheelchair. If you are traveling with a handicapped individual, you will be glad to know that you can get a wheelchair at the Qutub Minar if you need one. In fact, there are many ramps to facilitate the movement of said wheelchair. But cobblestones complicate the whole matter.

We were a sight to behold. One gringo in a wheelchair being wheeled around by two gringas in floral print dresses. There were definitely some curious stares, but there were also some photographs. The three of us were looking at someone's tomb, and a man comes up to Sarah and me and asks, "to take a picture." We both assumed he meant to take a picture of him and his family so Sarah said, "Sure!" And then he tried to shuttle us into the photograph so that we could be in a picture with him. We shook our heads and said no as soon as we realized the misunderstanding.

Another man came up and asked to take a picture, to which I firmly responded, "Nahi!" There were some surreptitious picture takers and some who weren't so sneaky. Gabe, Sarah and I were standing by an iron pole, which does have a deeper significance that I read about on a sign but can't exactly remember right now, and this man, who is standing no more than four feet away, just snaps a picture on his phone. I sort of lost it at this point and just walked up to the man. Sarah told me after the fact that she and Gabe sort of turned away in embarrassment.

"Show me your camera. You just took a photo of us. Show me your camera. Show me the photo. Show me the photo. You took a picture! I saw you just take a photograph of us."

He was pretty sheepish, and at first pretended that his phone didn't have a camera. I kept on insisting though. And when I finally got him to show me the pictures, he said something along the lines of, "No pictures of you. Here. Look." At which point I grabbed his phone and started scrolling through his pictures. Lo and behold, there was a photo of me and Gabe and Sarah. It wasn't a picture that we happened to be in. We were clearly the subjects, with me in the middle, flanked by Gabe and Sarah.

"Delete it. I'm not moving until you delete that photo. Delete it!" He deleted it, and I know he deleted it because I watched him delete it. Then I walked away, wheeling Gabe with me. Gabe's response to my outburst was along the lines of, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

In retrospect, this was maybe not the smartest move on my part. I just want to know what these guys get out of taking photographs of us. Are they going to take them and show them to their friends? Tell them stories about how they totally hooked up with us or something equally absurd? Or are we really that much of a novelty? In any of these cases, it makes me entirely uncomfortable to think that someone is taking my picture without my consent. It makes me feel like an object, like I'm as much of an attraction as the Qutub Minar itself.

But the Qutub Minar was still really cool. I took a lot of pictures of crumbling ruins and intricately carved stone. I did not, however, take photographs of people without their consent because, as we've learned, that's inappropriate and makes people uncomfortable.

in which we "do" passover

Our seder "plate."

I'm not Jewish, but I'm prone to make broad, sweeping statements along the lines of, "Ugh. Why aren't I Jewish? I wish I was Jewish." Something about this probably has to do with the fact that I'm dating a Jewish boy, and I grew up in a very Jewish community. My high school was across the street from the town's synagogue, and I went to a bat or bar mitzvah pretty much every weekend in seventh grade. (Sometimes I was even double-booked and had to pick between parties. That was a stressful time in my young life.)

Despite my penchant for all things Judaic, my understanding of Passover has always been a little bit...off. When I was younger, I just remember feeling bad for all of my Jewish friends couldn't have regular peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a week in April. For a while I really thought that Passover had something to do with Kofi Annan - the then Secretary General of the UN - until I was corrected and told that you hid an afikomen, not a Ghanian diplomat.

The lamb bone from a clearly freshly slaughtered lamb.

This brings me to today, my first ever Passover seder. Like most of my experimentation with the Jewish faith, it wasn't entirely accurate. Granted, I don't really know what an accurate Passover seder should look like, but something tells me that what I experienced this evening wasn't exactly normal. My Jewish friends led the proceedings in Lodhi Gardens at sunset, which was absolutely beautiful, but there were also a lot of gnats and mosquitoes. We didn't have wine because all of the liquor stores were closed today for Good Friday, so we had Tropicana grape juice. Our plate was actually a paper bag, and the seder candles were birthday candles from a corner store. No matzoh? Let's use saltines instead! My favorite touch was the comic book that Sarah found at the supermarket near our house that illustrated the story of Moses.

But we did have lamb bones, fresh from the butcher in Gabe's Muslim neighborhood. We had a boiled egg from the kitchen at the program center. Most importantly, we had wonderful hosts. Gabe, Sarah, Ari and Lexi explained what all of the food on the paper bag meant, why it was important and went through the motions with particular fervor. They retold the story of Moses, going into extensive background and referencing that animated movie "Prince of Egypt" regularly. It was also a reason for us to get together as a group and to enjoy each others' company, which is never a bad thing.

So that was my first Passover seder. There were clearly some adjustments made due to the whole "being in India" thing, but it was a wonderful experience. Someone really needs to invite me to a seder at a real dinner table in the States next year because the whole thing seems like a lot of fun. I will also say that I wonder what the other people in the park thought of us: a group of crazy Angreez, singing songs and playing with lamb bones and running around trying to find some crackers hidden in a tree...

the final countdown

You know that feeling you get during the last week of school? You've got final projects and final papers and final exams, so you really have to be studying. But concentration is all but impossible because it feels like your face and your brain are melting from the heat. You also want to spend as much time with friends as possible because you'll all be scattered for months during summer vacation. Besides, how can you concentrate when a long break with minimal responsibilities and all of the fun is fast-approaching?

That's where I'm at right now. It's the last week of classes, and it's brutal. We had an eight-page paper due yesterday, and we've got a revision of another paper due on Thursday. There's a Hindi written exam on Wednesday, coupled with an oral exam. I have to book train tickets to Varanasi and find somewhere to stay. There's e-mails to write and Skype interviews to be conducted. It's already hot and humid outside, even though it's barely April.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel though, and that light is the independent study project. The ISP is the capstone of the SIT study abroad experience, in which each sets out on her own to conduct fieldwork on the topic of hey choice in the location of her choice. I'm staying in Delhi, and I'm researching barriers to accessing water in urban slums. (This interest in water infrastructure explains why I spent a good forty minutes on Sunday climbing on my host family's roof like a madwoman, taking dozens pictures of their rooftop water storage system that's hooked up to the municipal water system.)

Starting next Monday, I'll be staying in a hostel in Parharganj, a neighborhood in Delhi that's known as a hub for travelers and backpackers. It'll be a much different experience than the one I've been having with my host family and although my host family is lovely and hospitable and warm and caring and wonderful, I'm ready to be on my own again. I think it's just the control freak in me that's been panicking with this loss of autonomy that's part and parcel with moving into a homestay after living on my own for the last three years and enrolling in this program.

But all of that independence is coming back to me, and it's coming back so soon! I just have to make it through this week, then I'll be free. I should add here that "free" is a relative term. I still have to check in with the program, and I still have responsibilities to uphold. What's refreshing is the opportunity to be on my own schedule once again, to have the opportunity to study what I want in the way that I want. I'm even getting excited about the simple thought of being able to eat the food that I want to eat, when I want to eat it.

I've had my ups and downs with this program, but my love for Delhi has remained constant. I'm excited to explore more of the city and to do it on my own time. First I need to pass my Hindi final, though.

Just one more week.

in which we celebrate an unbridled success

We hopped on a train from Delhi to Agra on Friday night, got to our hotel, ate a delicious dinner of chilli paneer and naan and vegetable fried rice and snuggled up into a queen-size bed by 11:30PM. Woke up at the crack of dawn, made the simple five-minute walk from the hotel to the West Gate of the Taj Mahal. By 6:15AM  we were inside the grounds of the monument, just in time to see the sun rise over the mausoleum. It was fantastic. It wasn't too hot. There weren't too many people there. By 9:00AM, we had finished our sightseeing. We grabbed breakfast at a rooftop restaurant then hopped on a bus back to Delhi by 11:00AM. There were some aggressive men around the Taj trying to sell us things or scam us or get us to eat at their restaurant, but we were there early enough that no one really bothered us. Bonus: By choosing a hotel within walking distance of the Taj Mahal, we didn't have to take a rickshaw and get scammed into going to the Taj Mall. It was all of the wins.

Here's a quick haiku to sum up our weekend:

To Agra, we went

The Taj Mahal, we did see

After, we just left.

Now if you excuse me, I have to bang out an eight-page paper and start studying for a Hindi final. I have a feeling I'm going to be camped out in Costa Coffee all day long. 

haute couture, indian style

I'm secretly not-so-secretly obsessed with high fashion. I purchase American Vogue every month and spend an hour or so flipping through the pages longingly, wishing I had legs like Karlie Kloss or an artistic vision like Grace Coddington.

I was inspired by my friend Kelsey to take this burning desire to be a part of the high fashion world and make it reality, Desi style. Labor is cheap in India, and tailors are on every corner. Fabric is also inexpensive, and this includes beautiful silk with intricate patterns embroidered in dazzling colors. Kelsey has grabbed this opportunity by the horns and run with it, to mix my metaphors. She had purchased fabric to make curtains, a duvet cover, a couple of silk ties for her boyfriend and her father, and a blazer.

Ever since this seed has been implanted in my mind, I've been dreaming of a beautiful camel-colored suit. I've always pined for an Yves Saint Laurent suit, but that's entirely unreasonable since they cost literally thousands of dollars. But imagine this design in camel; I dare you not to swoon --

You swooned, didn't you. I was stoked for Saturday, we all went to the Lajpat Nagar Central Market in search for fabric for blazers and suits. I was determined to find the fabric of my dreams on this shopping excursion, and I was not going to leave disappointed. We went to a small stall that had some fabric, and I picked up a light dove grey material for a looser blazer. I found the style that I want on the Topshop website, and you can see the vision below --

Unfortunately, that stall did not carry the beautiful caramel color that I could so clearly envision. But then I went next door, and among all of the dozens of bolts of fabric, I spotted it on the bottom shelp. A beautiful creamy color that wasn't too dark or too brown. It was a magical moment, and I exclaimed - with tears in my eyes and a grin on my face - "I think this is what it'll feel like when I find my wedding dress." What can I say? I was excited. Both bolts of fabric cost me a little less than 2000INR, or $40. Totally reasonable price for a full suit and a blazer.

But the problem is that I'm sort of obsessed with this now. I went to a silk store that Kelsey recommended and adeptly wrote about on her own blog, and I bought some more fabric. One is what the salesman called an "ethnic" print. It's brown with orange paisley embroidery; it looks sort of 1970's, but it's totally unique and was only 600INR for three yards. I also bought a simple navy cotton fabric.

After scouring the Barney's CO-OP website and Shopbop.com and J.Crew and Anthropologie, I decided what I wanted to do with the fabric. I found a tailor, showed him the designs of what I wanted, and he took my measurements and sent me on my way. He also had me e-mail him the pictures of the dresses so that he could reference them. Here's what I'm going to have tailored for a total of 2350INR --

For the 1970's print material, using a design from Barney's CO-OP.

For the navy cotton fabric, style courtesy of J.Crew.

Basically what I'm getting at here is that I'm going to have five beautiful custom-designed pieces created in the near future for not that much money, considering the quality of the material and the fact that they're tailored to fit my exact body size. These pieces would cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in the States. I'm going to be so fly in my custom-made pieces. I just want it to be April 4 so that I can pick up my dresses from Klassic Designs. (I picked the tailor based on the name, actually. There's this brand called Kwality and they sell ice cream, and it's actually delicious even though you think that a brand that misspells "quality" so atrociously would be totally janky. It was the same sort of thought process with this. "They spell 'classic' with a 'K?' Yeah, that's got to be really legitimate." No jokes.) The fashionista within me is swooning and wants to be wearing these beautiful garments! I just want to go back to America so that I can show off my legs again.

certified

I guess I'm officially certified in basic yoga and ayurveda after spending a week here? If you need some yoga lessons or want an ayurvedic massage or some oil dripped onto your forehead, just give me a call. Apparently I know something about these practices now, but maybe not enough to actually do treatments. We can always find out how much I remember or how good my notes are, though.

Headed back to Delhi in a couple of hours and I'm vaguely devastated to have to go back to the program center and the daily grind. I think I'm going to do some yoga and chant some "ohms" in the morning before I leave for class on Monday morning. Good thing I have the weekend to readjust.

in which my chakras (and spine) get totally realigned

When I left for India in January, my father was in the midst of reading Steve Jobs's biography. Jobs spent a period of time in India, apparently at an ashram or something, and he came back with all of these ideas about Eastern spirituality and yoga and vegetarianism and whatnot. And my father was terrified that I would come back with these same hokey ideas. Unfortunately for him, I might actually come back totally into yoga and a more intense vegetarian than when I left. (Sorry, Dad, but I'm not going to eat the deer that you shoot.)

It's all because of this week in Rishikesh. I'm totally digging this scene. I'm not really digging the whole "White man finding himself" type that exists in full force in this town, generally replete with dreadlocks and bad tribal tattoos on biceps and forearms. However, yoga is doing good things for me. Like really good things. I've done more physical activity in the past few days than I have in a while, and I feel pretty fit.

Part of this physical activity was a 10-km hike from our guest house to a waterfall. That's right. A waterfall. We didn't swim in the waterfall or jump off the waterfall. It was more of a low-risk wading situation, but it was still incredibly pleasant. After sitting in the water for a while, I lay on a huge boulder for even longer. It was simply wonderful.

We did yoga twice today. Once in the morning and again after the hike. My sun salutations are totally popping now, let me tell you. Our yoga teacher also cracked all of our backs, which was phenomenal because I've felt like there's been a metal rod in my back since I got here.

Oh, did I mention that we also learned how to give ayurvedic massages today? I'm awful, and I think I may have hurt our friend who willingly volunteered to be the massage "victim," but I sort of know what to do with the massage oils now.

What this week has been good for, if nothing else, has been the opportunity to take a break and relax. For the first time in months, I've had free time. Time to myself in which I can do what I want. I've been eating what I want to eat, not just what my host mother or the program center feeds me. Choices are great!

I'm also realizing more and more what I need to be happy, the things that I need to build into my schedule in order to be functional. I need to eat vegetables and fruits in abundance. I like yogurt with museli and honey for breakfast. I need to drink coffee in the morning. I need alone time so that I can decompress, without thinking about other people. I need to exercise regularly.

What's been hard about this program is that I've been on their schedule, and I've spent so much time trying to adapt that I've been ignoring my own basic needs. In our yoga lecture, we were talking about why yoga is so important. It seems to be really contradictory to focus on yourself so much in order to love the rest of the world. It ultimately comes off as really selfish, and it sort of is. But unless you are performing at your best, it'll be impossible to do anything else.

I'll leave you with a car metaphor, because who doesn't love a good car metaphor?

Your body is a car, and life is a highway. If you try to drive down that highway at a reasonable speed in a janky car that's rusting out at the bottom and that hasn't had an oil change in years and that doesn't shift gears properly, you're bound for disaster. You need a car that's well-maintained and cared for, that gets regular tune-ups, and that's when you can safely cruse on the Autobahn at full speed and then some. Yoga is those regular tune-ups.

At least, that's what the guy teaching me yoga in India says.

back to rishikesh

Guess I couldn't stay away from Ganga-ji, huh. Only a few short weeks after my first visit to this city, I came back to Rishikesh. This time with seven girls from my program and one of our teachers as part of our workshop.

We're doing a week-long yoga retreat on the banks of the Ganges River. We have an hour-long yoga class at 8AM, followed by a delicious Ayurvedic breakfast of fruit and lots of toast. At 11AM, we have  a lecture about yoga and philosophy with a guy with an iPhone, so he's really big on making ancient yoga theory accessible for the modern world. Then we've got a long break to explore and to do our own thing. For me, this involved a full-body Ayurvedic massage yesterday afternoon. Another lecture at 4PM followed by a delicious dinner and then it's bedtime by 9PM.

Our first day here, we saw a ceremony at sunset on the banks of the Ganges. It was absolutely beautiful. I took some pictures, but it was nice to just be there as this yogi sang and one of his students played a hand organ and other people sat around a fire. (Did I happen to mention that all of this was happening on the banks of the most sacred river in India? And we had a front row seat, and I totally dipped my feet in the river, hygiene be damned?) I'm so fortunate to be here and to be able to enjoy this time. It feels like a vacation, not an academic exercise, and that is exactly what I needed.

Sorry I can't write more, but I've got to learn about the theory of yoga in a bit. It's like our teacher said on our first day here: "What we're doing now is making our future."

MEASURING FEASIBILITY OF COMMUNITY-DRIVEN ROOFTOP RAINWATER HARVEST SCHEMES TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO POTABLE WATER WITHIN LEGALLY RECOGNIZED SLUMS IN NEW DELHI

This is what I think I'll be focusing my ISP (or Independent Study Project, for those of you who aren't in the know) on. And the title must be in all-caps or it doesn't count. I wish I was an engineer so that I had a better understanding of how things work. But looking at pictures about rainwater harvesting has been pretty helpful so far --

in which all of my culinary dreams come true

It doesn't matter that I went to the National Museum today and saw corporeal remains of Buddha. It doesn't matter that we saw a Buddhist monk take pictures of aforementioned corporeal remains of Buddha with an iPad. It doesn't matter that I sat and watched cricket with my host mom for a bit. It doesn't even matter that my roommate is getting her nose pierced this evening. You know why none of that matters? 

Because I had a salad today. A delicious, simple green salad with cheese and olives and a vinaigrette dressing. No extra spices. No frills. Just a salad. (And I'm on these antibiotics or whatever sort of medication it is for a few more days, so any bacteria that I may or may not have ingested by eating this salad will be wiped out of my system momentarily. I really threw caution to the wind on this one, but it was at a restaurant in Khan Market, which is known for it's primarily Western clientele so I'm hoping I'm in the clear.)

Just let me bask in the glory of lettuce, complete with coconut water as a refreshment.

guetta on my level

A few weeks ago, my roommate and I were strolling around Khan Market when we spotted a sign that said, "David Guetta. HUDA Grounds. March 8. Buy your tickets at Turtle Café in Khan Market." We ran to the café and -- after doing our due diligence by asking about the price of the tickets and checking our syllabi to make sure that we were going to be in town on that day -- purchased two tickets. Unfortunately, none of our classmates wanted to Guetta on our level, so it was just the two of us.


Today was the day we were scheduled to Guetta it on, and we were pumped but also a little frightened. We had heard stories of a fateful Metallica concert on the same grounds, but it got cancelled because the crowd was too rowdy and aggressive. We had been getting e-mails about what not to bring. One of my favorite e-mails said, "Well-practiced dance moves and well-rehearsed lyrics will also contribute greatly to a better festival experience, for all." The "festival" started at 5PM and went on until 10PM, but there was no easily available information about who was performing between 5PM and 8PM, when Guetta went on. So really, I didn't know what to expect.


Let me tell you, folks. It was awesome.

Picture by the ever lovely Sarah Rose.

First of all, there were two DJs on before Guetta. One was an Indian guy with an electric guitar who did this cover of Skrillex's "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites" that included some interesting beats behind it. That was sort of weird, but I also hate Skrillex after a traumatic experience at a music festival that included losing my car keys in the mud and many, many false drops of "Cinema." He also played that Etta James sample that's everywhere now but was featured prominently in Pretty Lights's "Finally Moving." All the Indians in the audience could totally sing along to that riff, though. Overall, this guy's set was less than notable.

Grainy, over-saturated and small photo of Guetta. Do you Guetta it?!

Next was a DJ named Nucleya. Never heard of him before, but he's apparently based in New Delhi. He ruled. Like really played some danceable beats and dropped a new song that was simultaneously dubby (as in dub, not dubstep) and chill and dirty. But he also dropped "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites." Twice. Nucleya made up for it by playing "No Beef" by Steve Aoki and Afrojack, which is one of my all-time favorite songs. However, I was apparently the only on in the audience who knew that song -- which is a real shame because it's a banger -- and was the only one singing or dancing. This is probably part of the reason that he started getting booed off stage and chants of "Guetta! Guetta!" started.

David Guetta made his triumphant entrance onstage and started his set. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say here that the only David Guetta song I know is, "Sexy B*tch." Embarrassing, I know, but it brings back such fond memories of freshman year nights out in fraternity houses. The main reason that I really wanted to go to this concert was to see what a concert was like in New Delhi and because it was David Guetta's first time (ever) performing in India. Basically a music milestone, akin to the Band's Last Waltz or that time the Beatles played Shea Stadium.

Everyone else in the crowd loved David Guetta. They knew all the words to every song and all of the names of all the songs. Even Guetta was surprised saying, "I didn't think people in India liked my music." But everyone was grooving, hard and fast, for the hour and a half that we stayed of the two hour long set. He played "Sexy B*tch," and we bounced.

Here's how the concert-going experience differed from what I'm used to in the States. The guy to girl ratio was way skewed. It was probably twenty men for each girl in the crowd, which was a little nerve-racking for Sarah and me. But there's also something deliciously ironic about being surrounded by dozens of sweaty Indian college boys who are all singing, at the top of their lungs, "Where dem girls at?!" when you know the answer is, "There really aren't that many here." Also, the festival was sponsored by a liquor company but they didn't serve any alcohol at the venue.

Overall the crowd, despite the weird ratios, was surprisingly tame. We definitely didn't have to deal with Metallica 2.0. We left a little early to be on the safe side and made it home at a reasonable hour. We're now studying for our Hindi oral midterm tomorrow, and I drank two Red Bulls before the concert so I'm probably not going to bed anytime soon. Hopefully I have enough of a voice to say anything tomorrow, least of all in a foreign language.

Even if I don't have a voice, I can say that my chakras feel realigned after this concert. My giardia is pretty taken care of at this point, which is great and I have more energy than I've had in weeks. Going to concerts also always helps me re-orient myself, cheesy as that sounds. It's always fun and cathartic about live music, and I've really missed just going to shows with friends.

P.S. In the interest of shameless self-promotion, I'm going to hype my articles and concert reviews on the WMFO Blog. My primary hobby is going to concerts, and I write about them often. If you liked this post, you'll probably enjoy what I have to say over there, too.