Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Happy Diwali!!
oh my god. just spent 2hours writing this and the fing computer crashed. aaargh! here's what i saved. nuff of that - afraid all my witty descriptions of the office, my flat, my impressions of india and indians, and the tales of the mosquitos and the plumbing are lost forever.
lots of love, vijay xxx
this is what's there:
Happy Diwali!! just recovering from some brilliant festivities here, the whole city was lit up last night and shuddering with fireworks, and though it's 11pm as i'm writing i can still hear blasts and see flashes out the window - very cool.
Sorry for being poor at this whole keeping in touch thing - i've been meaning to write something for the past week but either haven't got around to it or been prevented by mass power cuts / tending people with malaria / hoards of children / pre-diwali madness. Hope you're all well anyhoo and it's getting lovely and wintery in inglaterra (and gorgeous in colombia. and morocco. or wherever you all are). I still don't have any sense of how long i've been here, some days have seemed to stretch on for months but the last week has just disappeared...
Diwali has been brilliant though - it's hard not to be cheerful when every house is gleaming with lights (i even caved and bought some when i noticed I was the only house in the whole street, possibly whole pocket without any) and small children are throwing fire crackers at you. Plus Usha (my boss-come-sometime-mum) came to drag me out of my christmas-on-my-own situation yesterday so I got to spend actual Diwali with her family. I love that somethings never change country to country - diwali/christmas day you trail around visiting strange aunts and listening to small cousins sing before eating far far too much and falling asleep. And you get up early to go to temple/church but the best bit is eating whatever they give you there. good times. But all the fireworks are awesome, and we even got to play with some.
Extra fun too because of Usha's daughters, who I've just met and who have just come back for Diwali. I've just come in from the balcony after chatting to the elder daughter, Vini - have just remembered how nice it is to talk to someone my own age, and someone who shares both some of the outsideryness and a bit of a critical attitude towards India. She's 24 and just returned home for the first time in 7 years (except for a brief visit two years ago)... think it's pretty intense for her, but she doesn't seem to mind a stranger wandering about her house and wearing her handmedowns so we're getting on well! she's currently working in New Zealand, but used to go to Berkeley in the US, had some really nice chats - she's thinking of going to Cambridge to do a PhD in Nanobiology too. I'm not sure how she's going to react to her mother having planned an arranged marriage for her. As far as I can tell her parents' plan is for her not to return to New Zealand beforehand.
And if it seems strange that I'm writing about a person who must seem very familiar (well-travelled, well-educated, young) rather than the more colourful characters I've been working with, it's because it seems such a novelty. My office/flat is always filled with people like Mr Rai (the head of the Media group-come-squatters who were meant to move out on Oct 31st by absolute latest but in what seems stereotypically indian stylee show no signs of moving anywhere) - he shakes his head sadly everytime I walk past in pity at the poor wicked western girl whose people are show such moral laxity that they even allow love marriages, perish the thought. 'Yes, Indian culture is much better, isn't it'. Another apparently Indian habit (or possibly it's just the opinionated people I hang out with) is to end a conversation with a statement (usually one i vehemently disagree with, such as how all muslims are evil or all lower castes are thieves) whilst nodding and claiming it's so great that you agree with them. After two weeks of this I finally launched into a tirade at one poor man that did it (admittedly his case wasn't helped by the fact he mentioned he'd seen my face in his meditation and was absolutely convinced that we were destined to travel the world together as rogue development consultants and i'd cook nice food for him and his wife could go hang. and there was no reason to even wait til the end of the year, we could go in January because he had seen it so it must be true) - and after ranting for a while about how no-one, no-one had any clue about dialogue despite being supposed communication experts he promptly collapsed with malaria. Maybe I won't try that one again....
- comments