Dear lands of sunscreen that does not give me panic attacks,
I should be sleeping right now, but instead I am listening to the feral dogs which bark outside my window every night at this hour, so instead of sleeping, I am going to write about this weekend, was slightly more ridiculous than my normal India adventures. It started on Friday morning when one of my professors finally showed up for the class he was teaching (I can't remember how much I've written about the course selection process in India, but basically, I'm batting about 2 for 8 in classes I've attempted to attend that have actually been held.) Anyway, class only started 20 minutes late (pretty good for Indian time), and there was this really interesting guest lecturer talking about the Gulen movement when all the sudden there was very loud yelling and chanting and drumbeating outside. This continues for several minutes until finally the lecturer, who is American, stops and asks "Should I keep lecturing? Is there any immediate danger?" And the Indian professor responds with the classic noncommital Indian headbob (it's like a combination nod/shake head that Indians use to respond to literally every question. And from what I gather it means something to the effect of "I acknowledge that you are speaking to me, and I am providing you with a stock response that means absolutely nothing because my culture refuses to provide definitive answers for anything at all ever.") The protests were not dangerous, but this was still pretty exciting for me because Dickinson is not a particularly politically active campus. I didn't mention this in earlier posts, but since we've gotten here the Telengana separatist movement has been a really big issue in Hyderabad. A contingent of people want Telengana to become a separate state from Andhra Pradesh because they feel underrepresented in government, but Telengana would get Hyderabad as the capital. There's a lot of other complicated stuff going on that I don't really feel qualified to elaborate, but bascially, it's an extremely emotional issue for a lot of people. Anyway, the Srikrishna panel released a decision about Telengana statehood (not a definitive decision, of course, more of a proverbial head bob) on Friday, so the city was sort of in an uproar and there were protests. (Relatives, just in case you are freaking out right now, I am perfectly safe. The university on the other side of town is really politically active becase it has more local students who are invested in the movement, but my university has only a few very tame protests. I'm hyperaware of the places that are even remotely a bad idea to go to right now, and Americans are completely uninvovled and neutral on this issue.) So, class got interupted by protests.
Then, that evening, a few friends and I made plans to get a cab to go to a small low key place 10 minutes away from the home stay to get some daal and a drink... so I thought. The group grew slightly and our already over stuffed taxi could fit no more so two other girls and me hopped out and hailed a rickshaw (Remember -- the pretty yellow golfcart-tricycle-death-machines?). After 15 minutes I discovered that the place we were going was not in fact 10 minutes but all the way across town (still a safe part of town, family who I know is still worrying about me and has not replaced me with the cat as I suspect). Nonetheless, I was a little irritated because its dangerous to take transportation home alone at night especially for women, so I didn't really have an option to turn around. So onward we pressed toward what would become yet another quest. The driver of the rickshaw had answered with the usual head bob when we told him where we were going, the head bob in this case meaning, "I have no idea where that is, but I will pretend to because I would like your stupid American money" rather than "certainly I know where that is, stupid Americans who I am ripping off because you don't know how to haggle" as we originally thought. Luckily, rickshaw driver had a superhero sidekick sharing the seat in front with him so that when we got lost in the city, he could stop every 30 seconds hop out and ask a different person for directions, all of which were incorrect because India does not have maps (only more head bobs). Anyway, we finally reached the name of the place -- the little place 10 minutes away from the hostel where we could hang out and get daal and a drink -- and it was a huge 5 star hotel on the top of a creepy giant hill overlooking a lake with a gate with several security/bouncer checks, a fountain in the front, classical music playing in the chandeliered lobby, a doorman in a tuxedo/turban/crazy twirly mustaches, another tuxedo man every five feet saying "good evening, madam" (when did I become madam? Am I a middle aged mystic woman reading a crystal ball now?), etc. I was bascially on the Titanic (if it was a Gothic horror movie). So I was now woefully underdressed, but ready to use my talent for never being embarrassed by my inappropriate behavior to get through it. Anyway we go in and ask one of the many tuxedoed gentlemen where the Underdeck (the little place 10 minutes away from our hostel...?) is, and he leads us back outside and down a set of stairs lighted by candles (I am convinced at this point that I am going to be killed in a cult ritual), past these beautiful hanging vines and equally beautiful lake (which unfortunately surpasses Edinburgh's lake of poo because bodies of water here are often so full of garbage that we have to wear scarves around our faces to handle the smell), and into this room... and it is a nightclub with laser and strobe lights, a DJ playing American dance music, and a free bar (also it is boat themed so my Titanic metaphor still works except underneath the bourgeouis finery, instead of the working class cargo hold Irish step dance party, there is a ridiculously posh night club). Make up your mind, India. What are you? (Response: probably a head bob).
Moving right along, the following morning my program scheduled something called a mock drill, which I again wrongly assumed would be a lecture about safety. It was actually an unbelievably convoluted race/quest (I know. It's like they know me.) We were given a destination in a secret envelope and we had to reach a secret destination and contact a secret person without using our cell phones (which meant we got to harrass random strangers, yay!) as fast as humanly possible to win a secret prize. Our destination was all the way across giant campus, and we had only 3 bikes for 4 people. Luckily, I have been practicing riding my bicycle with someone on the back because everyone in India does it, and I'm trying to assimilate (and also because I like to practice stupid things in my spare time. Did I mention that I learned to French braid via youtube after finals week?) This means I got to speed down the left side of the road on my awesome hot pink bicycle shouting "Look at me! I'm assimilated!" and obnoxiously ringing the bell with someone else sitting on the back also shouting and it was still totally normal (sort of... surprisingly more so than you would think). Yes, India. Sadly, we did not win the secret prize. More sadly, my awesome bike chain popped off making my bike significantly less awesome and functional on the way back (don't worry I fixed it). But let's focus on the positives. I got to have another quest, I got a mango juice box out of it, and I have developed another obscure skill.
I have another story about this really great NGO we visited, plus the questiest quest that CIEE has planned yet (it involves matching Tshirts that smell like car fumes, rickshaw races, and a Buddha statue, get excited), but it's getting pretty late and the feral dog pack outside my window has finally quieted (uncharacteristically. They're probably quietly planning the best way to give rabies right now), so I'm saving them for when I have the energy to do them justice.
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