Monday, July 24 Shopping, Pirates II

I woke up early and went for a walk while talking to the family on the phone. Then I went shopping in Janpath, and ended up buying a fake Gucci belt for 100R, so now I can tuck in my dress shirt to my tightly-cinched acid-washed jeans with my Indian haircut and look completely Indian. I bought some more jeans, and it was so hot that on impulse I bought a set of handkerchiefs to wipe gallons of sweat off my body. I came back for lunch and there was a protest of thousands of Haryana farmers in kurta pajamas for rights to clean water. There were a bunch of speakers preaching in Hindi, apparently this happens every day in Delhi. I then went out with Mariel, Kim, and Alix to get some stuff. We went to Connaught Place and walked around in the heat. The only people outside in the heat of the day are beggars and tourists. We went to the alcohol store and bought some of Popov’s Indian cousin, Romanov. It was shady and literally a hole in the wall, but they were extremely busy because let's face it, who doesn’t like alcohol. We looked in the bookstore for a while. The books are cheaper than in the US but still pricy by Indian standards. I bought The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, only to realize Kim has it here. We had dinner and then lounged around until 10, when we went by motor rickshaw to the Sabyam movie theatre in South Delhi. It was extremely posh and had colored fluorescent lights and nice new seats. To get in, though, they had security checks, and made sure you didn’t have any cameras (because people would pirate films…it’s obviously pretty effective, considering how many pirated movies there are). We saw (ironically) Pirates of the Caribbean II, which they make weird by all this unnecessary extraterrestrial shit, but it was nice seeing an American movie. We took a rickshaw back, but it got lost so Alix had to give him explicit directions home.