Today India... sleeps. Or, supposedly celebrates its Constitution, but the city seems rather quiet for the moment. I'm seeing preparations and set-up for a celebration or two. There were men in their snazziest suits and women in their most beautiful saris outside the National Mint. Mostly though, I think people are relaxing.
Yesterday, Sunday, was also a rather slow day. Traffic was strangely nonexistent. The taxi drivers were mostly asleep in their cabs - their bare feet dangling out the open side doors. Hundreds and hundreds of young boys played cricket in streets throughout the city. I strolled over to the Churchgate train station, hoping to reserve a ticket to Ahmadabad. I was told, rather brusquely, by an agitated ticket window operator that I should "go zee-sst!" Which I later interpreted to mean "go to CST - Chattrapati Shinvajji Terminus." So, today I'm going to try once again to reserve a ticket out of this city.
Despite my better judgment, I bought another book yesterday. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. It's a very good read, so far, but it means more weight in my pack. I might have to lose something to compensate... maybe my hair product or my aftershave balm? Why did I bring either of those things to India? They seem so totally useless.
Oh, I had a nice chat with an Australian bloke this morning. In typical white-man-in-India fashion he had on a hammer and sickle t-shirt and shorts. Friendly chap, though. We talked about the various types of train tickets to be had. His outfit was less obnoxious than the American I saw yesterday in a Gandhi shirt, shorts, and flip flops. It must be intensely amusing for the locals.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Bahaha- a hammer and sickle T-shirt? With matching shorts, nonetheless? That's classic. See, this is what cameras are MEANT for, Jacob. Yeah, yeah, I know your USB cable difficulties- no excuses necessary. But if you see another communist internationale ensemble, snap away!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of amusing get-ups, I was in Wal-Mart today shopping for new light bulbs (the one upstairs petered out late last night), and I saw this desperately bedraggled blonde woman sporting an airbrushed sweatshirt that read "Amanda 'N Carlos" on the front. The back had an American flag and a Mexican flag conjoined by a giant Pepto Bismol-pink heart. It was atrocious, but accurately crystallized an increasingly prevalent Kentucky phenomenon (corn-fed hillbilly meets comparably more attractive Mexican man, passions somehow ignite).
Salman Rushdie is a groovemeister- actually reading him IN India must be kind of surreal. I (like a lot of kids, I'm sure) thought his name was Salmon. For a long time, I assumed that salmon was a pretty major fish in India, important enough to be a namesake organism- kind of like how Native Americans gave their kids indigent animal names. Hey, it made sense at the time.
Train tickets to Ahmadabad. Alas, my day has been comparably blase. I bought a wrist watch at Target for $12. It's supremely unattractive- dominates my entire arm with uglitude. That's okay, though, because I bought the thing for a purely utilitarian function: the LSAT (analog wristwatches are the only acceptable timekeeping devices during the test). So the watch face is HUGE and the numbers are obnoxiously stout- the whole thing says "I'm really bad at telling time" or "I desperately need lasic." Can't argue with either inference, really.
I canceled Quiz Bowl practice on account of those impending snow threats, but nothing's come down so far. I'm kind of irked. We're predicted to have 3-5 inches by morning, and here I am peering out my windows after midnight, searching in vain for precipitation.
Take care, meet more eclectic travelers, and lose the hair product, Liberace!
-Monica