Wednesday, November 29 Hindi Final, Paharganj, Packing, Taj Hotel Thalis

I got a haircut and head massage at the little hole-in-the-wall barber shop. For the head massage, they used olive oil in my hair, so I had to take a shower and shampoo my hair twice. I realize I look like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, oh well. The Hindi final was today. Since I’m taking the class ‘Pass/No Pass’, I just need a C in order to pass. According to the unintuitive but awesome grading scale, “80+ is an A, 50-79 is a B, and below 50 is a C”. So, basically, in order to pass, I need a “Below 50”, aka I don’t even need one point on this final. The oral part (one-on-one) with Geeta-Ji was simply pathetic. I couldn’t even answer the question “Will you come back to India?” by a simple “Yes” or “No”. I didn’t know any of the vocab words she tested us on, and I believe I even said the sentence, “Somewhere you go, love I want”. She said, in response, “Tyler, you do better in home assignments”. As for the written portion, all the translations and comprehension answers were a group effort, and exactly the same on all of our tests, since everyone cheated. My composition, talking about my time in India, was pathetic. It was so bad I was too lazy to even write the minimum amount of sentences required. I actually have ceased to care at all. Plus, I don’t even want six more Hindi units, so I don’t really mind if I fail. I said goodbye to Geeta-Ji, who is actually a really good teacher. I can now perfectly imitate her voice, so I can do the whole Dinker/Geeta-Ji family now, it’s great. After Hindi, I went online to print 70 pages worth of papers, and to e-mail Goldman, telling him that Shanta Verma may have some grudge against me that might earn me a bad grade. I went to Paharganj in order to buy luggage. I ended up walking down the hectic crowded small alleys, lined with cheap luggage shops. I bought a carry-on for Rs 250 from a shop with tons of cheap suitcases and mice scurrying across the floor. Paharganj is ghetto, to say the least. It is the center for backpackers in Delhi, rich across from New Delhi Railway Station. Locals have contempt for the area because it’s grimy, dingy, overcrowded, dilapidated, and dirty, and used to be the center for drug-dealers. I wonder why white tourists have set up camp here. Walking back to the Metro Station, you have to walk on an overpass over the tracks. I saw a sad sight; a white ox was pulling a huge cart overloaded with dozens of boxes and people sitting on them. On the upgrade, the ox just couldn’t walk anymore, and was straining to take another step, beginning to shake. I almost expected him to just catapult upwards because the cart was so overloaded. The driver kept whacking him with a bamboo stick and sticking him up the ass. So much for cows being holy. Apparently, though, oxen and buffaloes aren’t cows, and are therefore used for milk production, as work animals, and eaten by non-Hindus. I came back home and packed all my stuff. My souvenirs take up two enormous bags, my carry-on was clothes-only because of the UK’s ridiculously-strict security specifications, and I still had garbage bags full of stuff. I also plan to buy more souvenirs. I moved my mountain of luggage into Ro and Puran’s room, safe from Nikhil’s thievery. This effectively ended my stay in my room, leaving Nikhil with his own empty room. I took a picture of him pathetically sitting alone on his bed, without even my side’s mattress. There has been and hopefully never will be any exchange of words since Monday. He does call the US every day and talks to them for hours, if he’s in fact on the phone at all. He’s absolutely starved for human interaction because now absolutely everyone refuses to speak to him. We’re not going to tell the Jains we’re moving out, because we don’t have time for their house drama anymore, so we’re thinking we’re just going to stealthily all jet out tomorrow. The whole house (that now means, “Everyone excluding Nikhil”) went out to dinner at the Taj Hotel, the nicest hotel in Delhi, and probably in India. It was beautiful, with gold and white marble and really bourgeois people. We went downstairs to the elegant Haveli Restaurant, where we, in our fleece and jeans, were sitting among’s India’s finest. We all ordered thalis, which had beautiful silver platters. It was more a feast for the eyes than a feast for the stomach, thouh. The dining experience was horrible. You are forced to be boring and quiet, the food was bland and cold, I had to get up and ask multiple times for (included) refills on food, they dropped a water glass on Ro, the entertainment was a creepy guy with bugeyes in a loincloth and gold wings dancing to interpretive dance music, and it cost $25 a meal. It sucked; I’d rather have eaten at Fiesta. I have Five-star hotels. The service is awful, and the crowd is hopelessly spoiled, rich, and pathetic. What’s even the point of coming to India if you’re going to completely seal yourself inside a bourgeois bubble? The only way I’d stay in these hotels is if it was free for me, or maybe on my honeymoon or something. I felt sick afterwards, too. Alix left for her flight without saying “Goodbye”. Tonight is the last night in the Jain household. I spent it sleeping on a bare mattress and suitcases in a different room than my own. Ro and Puran worked the entire night on their papers. Ro only had like five pages left, but Puran just finished one paper, and still had 15 pages of the other to write, at the point when I went to bed.