Today is the Hindu holiday Rakhshabandan, because it’s the full moon. The girls tie bands around their brothers’ wrists, and the brothers reciprocate by giving gifts to them. On the Metro I saw lots of men with red bindi on their foreheads and with colorful flower and string wristbands. I give up, and now I open my bag so the armed uniformed Punjabi security guards can look in it, and then I put my arms up as if to say “Please frisk me”. Not like it does anything but deters people. If you wanted to smuggle a bomb, all you’d have to do is put it in your laptop case and say it is a computer, like Ro did (except his actually was a computer, not a bomb). After all, the reader board also says: “Report all suspicious object or bag. It could be bomb”. I love the language barrier. Speaking of the language barrier, I am slowly but surely becoming Indian. Whenever I talk to Indians, I do the side-to-side head nod and change my speech patterns. For example, I say things like “Is okay put here?, Please you tell, what does it mean ‘panni’, Your grade in this paper [meaning ‘class’] is worth 100 marks, I am having 200 Rupees”. I am incorporating a lot of British vocabulary used by Indians like ‘conductor, platform, mind the gap, mineral water, kindly’. Whenever I talk to Indians in English, I use an Indian accent. I’ll probably be really good by December. You just put your tongue more on roof of your mouth, and sound more British. Surprisingly, it’s a lot easier for them to understand, as condescending as you feel actually doing it. Sarah York called me, which was nice. She apparently only has one picture on her otherwise bare wall; of me in acid-wash jeans. Great. I went to Connaught Place and there I saw the travel agent. They charge 150 Rs for commission charge, which is worth it to avoid the hassle of waiting in endless lines at the train station. However, they initially tried to charge me an extra $20 on the train ride from Varanasi to Delhi. I looked it up and they had conveniently put the train number (2301) down as the price (actually 1150). I thought he was trying to cheat me, but it turns out it would have printed that price on the ticket anyways. So I have finally found a reputable travel agent! I came back and unfortunately ate Fiesta again. They love teasing us. On their menus they have pictures of a mouthwatering steak (for some reason with a Mexican flag toothpick in it), juicy hamburger, banana split, piñata, and fries with grilled cheese sandwich. None of these foods are served at Fiesta. I was looking at college bookstores in Kamla Nagar for the required texts for class. None of them had any one of the books we need. Guess what that means? Tyler is not going to read all semester. Oops. Hindi was unbearable again. Hindi is different in that there is no word for “thank you”, “sorry”, “excuse me”, or “have”, and there are over a hundred words for “love”. I don’t learn anything in Hindi class. Rahul came in and got mad when he saw the tickets on my desk and realized I hadn’t invited him with me on my trip. Then he proceeded to call me low-class because I was wearing acid-wash jeans. Yes, because I wear acid-wash jeans ALL THE TIME at home. I think Westernized Indians are very flashy and materialistic, no more than Americans, but there is no stigma with flaunting wealth here, and it is socially acceptable. It would be like me saying “Hi, I’m extremely wealthy [which I’m not by the way] and I hope you all know it”. But in India that is how one asserts social status and prestige. We had a tiffin service come and cater for dinner; puri, rice, tikka masala, and aloo. We’re going to do this instead of getting a cook, which seems like a good alternative because we'll be out a lot. We watched Rush Hour and I went to bed. I couldn’t fall asleep because I was being eaten alive by a horde of malarial mosquitoes.
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