Week Won

I walked back home today from the ACM building alone and it felt good because I prefer smelling at my own pace. I almost blended in.

Things are getting more comfortable, especially since learning some very important phrases in Marathi. For example: How much do I owe? (Kiti paise zhale?), I don't know (Mela nahit nai), and perhaps most important, I do not want (abijat nako).
Marathi is actually pretty easy. There are so many cognates to Spanish, which is nothing short of crazy. For example, to give in Spanish is Dar, while to give in Marathi is pronounced De (con acento) yet given the script is totally different.
Cars, trucks, rickshaws, motorcycles, and bikes communicate with horns. Few have mirrors and fewer use them. Smells vary from dhosa (fried bread deliciousness) to garbage and dog to gulabjam (dessert sweet fried breaded) to pollution to burning leaves, to fresh fruit.

We are still in the hotel, and tomorrow we learn about our host family--Saturday we move in.
Holy Guacafreakingmole I'm nervous.

Life in the hotel is pretty fun, much like the first week of college. Hanging out in the room, traveling in packs, eating meals with everybody, and most important, retaining a collective consciousness based in part confusion, part excitement, and part dread.

But whatever we do, there is no way but forward.

We went to an open air market two days ago to shop and look around. I applied the phrase abijat nako frequently. A friend from America named Sam made the mistake of asking a vendor selling drums how much they cost when we did not want to buy them. When we walked away, he took that as us playing hard-to-get in preparation for negotiating a price. That, however, was not the case. Sam was pestered by this man for a while, and once he realized we were not interested, we had to avoid his corner for the rest of the excursion.
There were many people and many stores, almost all of them selling saris and jewelry. We found the one place selling men's clothes. We bought two shirts each. One of mine has English gibberish on it, and I love it. It reads in vertical English script radiating from the collar: H f d y t g.

Brilliant.

We went to a gazeebo type place that had several food and clothing vendors inside it. Several men accosted us upon entering.
"Hello! Where you from?"
"America"
"Oh America!!! Welcome Welcome. What is your name?"
"I am Sam. This is David. Tumhe? (and you?)"
"I am Shon. How old are you?"
"I am twenty-two."
"Twenty-two! This is my friend. He is also twenty-two! He is a boxer."
"Wow."
"Are you married?"
"No, are you?"
"No"
"What about your friend the boxer?"
"No, he is not. He is a boxer. Come. Sit."
Shon breaks up the pack of four or five quizzical men and guides us to his corner. He asks us to sit on a big wooden box. He shows us a white and red jersey as an item for sale. We decline and say that we are not interested in buying anything, but thank him for the offer. We say our goodbyes to Shon and the rest of the group, and continue venturing in the gazeebo. I see piles and piles of fresh food. Garlic and peas, peeled cucumbers and green peppers, bananas and pomegranates. And all so cheap. I got two pomegranates for ten rupees (about twenty five cents). I know I'll miss these prices.

That night we went to a bar. It was called the Apache, which made me feel like Christopher Columbus who discovered Native America in search of India. The Apache bar had the flavor of the Kansas City Jazz Museum, for those that have been (interior design of the mid-nineties). The layered, curved ceiling pieces like plywood neon-colored fish scales cover the ceiling while a sculpture/painting of distinctly African-American jazz musicians display their talents on the wall. Death metal and Lincoln Park blast through the speakers at a non-conversational level. Masks and hands and various ambiguous objects emerge from the ceilings like chicken from soup. Or green beans. Mirrors make the room seem bigger. Small groups of Indian college students sit and conversate over the loud music while seven Americans sit at a table near them and split two pitchers of Kingfisher, the local beer. I felt abnormally comfortable, not because this bar was familiar, but because this bar seemed as dumb and out of place as I felt.

Right now, I am scared of meeting my host family, of them not liking me or me acting out some faux pas that makes them think I am insensitive and fulfilling of all their negative stereotypes of Americans. But hopefully, that won't happen, and all I can do for now is keep moving onward and do my best.

Now I am ready to be finished for today, no more anecdotes for now.

David