Saturday, July 29 Home and Garden shopping, Creepy landlord

I woke up and spent all day as a mom, buying home furnishings. I took the Metro for the first time. It’s extremely nice. It opened last year, and is not very extensive right now, but at least goes to Connaught Place and to Delhi University. It doesn’t go to the airport, which is not intuitive. But then again, it's India. I got a card that I put 500 Rs on, so that I can just use that whenever I need to take the Metro. In order to get on the platform you have to go through security, and there are Sikh guards with AK's patrolling. Even photography is not allowed in the Metro. They probably fear the terrorism that caused the Mumbai Metro bombings. There are signs saying “Please do not spit or litter inside”. It’s all air conditioned, and there are always workers polishing the marble and glass walls. In the United States, you don’t want to live near the Metro because it attracts the lower class and menaces to society. Here it attracts the upper-class and Westernized businessmen and students. The actual car was an immaculate, brand new, and spacious Mitsubishi. It zipped me over to Chandni Chowk quickly, where I got out and ascended to the street amongst a huge crowd of rich Indians. I had no idea how to get to Chandni Chowk, so I ended up walking past a Vaishnava temple, where Hindus were praying, washing, offering puja, and where lepers and Dalits were begging. I turned right and got lost in a sari bazaar, which was a maze of 4-foot-wide dark alleyways with sari shops selling all types of fabrics for discounted prices. It was black in the alleyways, contrasted against the rays of light from the sky and bright rich colors of the fabrics. There were young dark skinny men carrying boxes and bags on their heads and shoulders, along with men and women shopping. I get the feeling I was the only tourist around there, no one spoke English, plus it was dark with little inlets that only the locals knew. I had a lot of money, too, it was like I had a sign taped on myself saying, “Hi, I’m not from here, feel free to rob me”. I couldn’t find anything else, so I went back to the Metro station and started over. This time I walked straight ahead, and it again was a maze of dark alleyways, but this time it was completely electronics. Everything from batteries to radios to speakers to phones to electrical wiring was here. The dingy dirt streets connected small shops with homemade signs, and a tangle of power lines. Your worst fears would be realized if you were claustrophobic. There were yelling and metal pounding sounds. I knew I was in a non-tourist area because no one paid attention to me (meaning touts hassling me) like they usually do. I finally got to the main street adjacent to Red Fort, which was nice to be in an open space. There was a person selling pirated DVDs and CDs, so I bought 8 DVDs like Indiana Jones, Gladiator, Scary Movie, American Pie, Rush Hour, Krrish, and Lagaan, for 600 Rs. I probably got ripped off, but I don’t care. I walked along the front of Red Fort and then to a series of boutiques selling shoes, shirts, jeans, and fabrics. I looked for sheets, and there were two kinds; cotton and silk. The silk was heavier but really smooth. The cheap cotton ones had heinous pink floral designs on them. The shoes were good, but when I tried them on, they refused to let me without a plastic bag on my foot (a purity thing). Then I walked over to the bazaar by Jami Masjid, which had a lot of blankets and carpets. One such store had shelves upon shelves of bedding, and the guys there were not good salespeople, but I was able to get two matching silk peacock sheets with pillow covers for 500 Rs total. I ran out of money, so I walked back past tons of clothing shops on Chandni Chowk, the street, back to the Metro. I bought a loaf of plain bread, which doubled as my breakfast and lunch. I came back home and then took a short nap before becoming restless. Then I got more money and went out again, this time I took the Metro to Chawri Bazaar. When I got out of the station, there were people everywhere shopping, carrying lots of equipment, and transporting people in bicycle rickshaws. All the shops sold industrial hardware, like lumber, faucets, pipes, steel, and marble. Walking West, I entered the paper district, selling all types of papers from copy reams to textbooks to wedding invitations. Walking towards Jami Masjid, the shops changed to more textiles and then to wood, ivory, and brass carvings. They were really intricate and nice (not to mention illegal and supporting poaching of endangered species). I walked into Chandni Chowk area again. A tout came up to me and normally I would be annoyed, but he showed me exactly where to buy towels, which were ugly and bright orange like shag carpet, but oh well. Then he showed me where to buy a nice foam pillow. I passed a lot of stores selling trendy cotton collared shirts, but I don’t know what looks good, so I’ll have to go shopping with girls so they can tell me what to buy. It took me forever looking for a place to buy clothes hangers, and finally someone told me they had them in Sadar Bazaar, so I got ripped off taking a bicycle rickshaw there. That was nothing like I’ve ever seen. The ride there was awesome. That is what I expected to see in India. Not one inch of space was wasted. The stores were on the bottom floor, filled with salespeople and doubling as their beds. Narrow staircases led up from the street to houses, where people and monkeys live. Porters carried long metal rods on their heads and on one-wheeled carts. Huge white humped cows walked like kings through the crowds. People, mostly small dark men, filled up every vacant space in the dirt, pothole-filled, garbage-laden street and sidewalk. It was extremely congested, and there was hardly space for cars, and potholes abounded. This area was built a long time ago, so everything was tight and compact and brown. Sounds included honking, cars passing by, people yelling at each other, and vendors selling their goods. It smelled like Indian food, incense, dirt, and garbage, all juxtaposed. In the narrow corridors they call streets there were small shops selling all sorts of house wares. I finally found the clothes hanger store. I took a bicycle rickshaw to the nearest Metro station, which was an extremely new facility, built above ground, a huge structure with lots of open space. I rode back, pillow and bags in hand, and got home and slept. Everyone was at dinner, so I ate with Rahul Jain and his sister Palak, downstairs. We had dal, paneer, and mango. He’s really rich, and had the two servants get everything they needed. He’s a Jain and also a Hindu (those two religions are not mutually exclusive), but doesn’t really practice all the crazy stuff they are supposed to do. However, he doesn’t eat any animals (including eggs) because “they didn’t hurt him, so why should he hurt them”. Jains and Sikhs can be Hindus, also, but Muslims cannot be Hindus. Rahul also told me Hindus hate Muslims because they’re dirty and eat meat, they isolate themselves, and because the US identifies them as terrorists, they make it extremely difficult for any Indian to get a US visa. After that we came upstairs and he was up there in the living room for a long time. It got really awkward when he refused to leave. The girls claim he’s being creepy and talks about partying and girls all the time, but I think that’s just him hopelessly trying to act cool and westernized. Plus there is a lot lost in translation, I feel. But I’m also defending him because I’m a guy, so I’m not threatened. And the fact that they want to make the floors co-ed, which I don’t want because my room right now is the best one. We had a little group meeting addressing our creepy landlord. We decided we’d tell Vijay and then not act bad until AFTER he gets us all our amenities he promised. Another thing is, currently, our lease is a verbal contract, which means he could arbitrarily throw us out at any time and we’d be powerless. After that we watched Scary Movie, which was hilarious. I came to the realization that one of the main characters (he plays the over-eager annoying friend in A Night at the Roxbury) is the clone of my future roommate Chris Goodrich. They look exactly the same, talk exactly the same, and act exactly the same. It’s astonishingly creepy, and now I can't see him the same again.