The "None Of My Clothes Fit Me Anymore" Post

As you can tell, my favorite subjects seem to be "education" and "my appearance."

I know. Am v. shallow.

At any rate, am astonished at the amount of weight I've lost since arriving in India. Some of it may have to do with the additional miles I walk every day; some of it may have had to do with a bit of gastric distress (it's over now, as far as I can tell), and some of it may have to do with the food.

Or, as one of my students asked this afternoon, "Do Americans really eat potato chips every day?"

(This was after my students were complaining that they wanted chai, and I told them that I wanted a sandwich and a bag of potato chips, but we couldn't always get what we wanted. ^__^)

At any rate. Everything not including a drawstring is now held up with safety pins. I'm tempted to go buy some more clothes, because it's always fun to buy more clothes, but I've got a sneaking suspicion I'll grow back out of them once I return to Potato Chip Land.

Eh... may do it anyway. At least I'll give those churidar another try. ^__^

In Which Blue Starts Dreaming About Food

Two nights ago I dreamed I was making scrambled eggs. I never got to eat them; it was enough work in the dream to find the eggs and find the frying pan and all of that... but then I was cooking them over a nice gas range, with a whole bottle of ketchup sitting nearby... and I woke up.

Last night I dreamed that I had gone out to buy Krispy Kreme donuts for a group of my former roommates (Miss Ginny et al). But, as in the first dream, I couldn't find them right away. Stores were closed. Roads were closed. I went up and down looking for a Krispy Kreme. Through torrential rain, if I remember correctly.

And then I found one. I ordered four donuts with pink frosting and sprinkles (the "Homer donut"), four donuts with chocolate frosting, and four donuts with Creamsicle frosting. I don't believe Krispy Kreme sells donuts with Creamsicle frosting IRL, but in this dream they did. (And should, in my opinion.)

Being no pig, I then had to drive the donuts back to Ginny and the other roommates. They sat there next to me on the front passenger seat, wrapped in their white cardboard and shiny cellophane.

I wanted a pink one and a chocolate one and a Creamsicle one.

Instead, of course, I woke up.

Interestingly, I remembered when I woke up that real Krispy Kremes sell "baker's dozens," which has left me pondering, in a sort of food pr0n way, what the thirteenth donut would have been. I'm guessing it would have been a blueberry cake donut, although then I would have had to order more than one to ensure that everyone who wanted one could eat one, and that would have upset the balance of the pink and chocolate and Creamsicle donuts.

Are there Krispy Kremes in India? If not, perhaps I should open one. How would one say "Hot Donuts Now" in Telugu?

Indian Higher Ed: "Indian Writers In English"

I've started sitting in on another course. This time, I aimed towards the English department, because I figured I had good odds of the course being taught... um... in English. ^__^ (I sat in on a Bharatanatyam course for a few weeks, but the entire instruction was in Telugu and it became difficult to follow.)

I picked "Indian Writers in English" because I thought I might get lucky and find the class discussing a text I had read (or, at least, read about).

I'm going to continue to watch this course for a while. It was very interesting. The discussion, when I sat in, was about whether Indian writers who chose to write in English were being "authentic." Was their choice of English, for example, a strategic move to break into an international market? Or was it a betrayal of their roots and an indication of continued slavishness towards their former colonial masters? Could an Indian writer communicate effectively about the Indian experience in a "non-native" language?

The professor didn't reach a "conclusion" to his line of questioning; instead he left it open-ended for the class to ponder, with the intention of discussing the issue further as the semester progresses.

But he did leave out one argument which puzzled me by its absence.

That is, he left out the fact that for many Indian writers (esp. the "big name" ones), English is in fact their mother tongue; or, perhaps, a shared mother tongue along with Hindi or Bengali or another Indian language. Gurcharan Das and Mahesh Dattani both write about this in the preface to their plays. I can't quote them directly because I don't have the texts with me, but the arguments are thus: "How can we be accused of using a non-native language when we have been speaking English from birth?" Das in particular argues that he writes in both English and Hindi, and that some of his essays and plays can only be written in Hindi, and others only in English.

Anyway. I'll be interested to follow this class.

My Tollywood Experience

Some of my students wanted to take me into Chandra Nagar to watch a Tollywood film. I politely declined, because as of late I've had the prototypical "American living in India" gastric problem and didn't feel up to the 5 km ride on the back of someone's motorbike.

So they offered to show me a film in-house, instead.

We watched... well, I have no idea what it was called, and I've tried to search for it on the internet but typing "Tollywood American husband" and the like only turns up pr0n.

It's about a family who moves from India to Washington, D.C..... though after we get a shot of the White House and the Washington Monument, the rest of the "American" adventures clearly take place in some part of Britain, complete with cars driving on the left-hand side, characters eating bags marked "potato crisps," and lots of British accents.

While there, the young, beautiful daughter falls in love with both a white boy (who wears cowboy hats and unbuttons his shirt down to his navel), and a "black" boy (played by an Indian actor in an Afro wig).

She eventually marries the white boy, but not after the "black" boy gives us a truly inspired English-language "rap" which includes the chorus "Life is shabby/without my baby."

Right. Americans say "shabby" all the time.

Anyway. If someone can i.d. this film, I'll post more information, including photos.

I think I'm going to love Tollywood.

The Boogie Dance

So... um... there are a lot of insects here.

Nothing new, I'm sure. And really, they don't bother me as long as they aren't crawling on me. Which means that going to sleep is sometimes tricky, as I have to shake out my blanket before I crawl into bed.

Once I opened my laptop and started typing and a stream of tiny ants came pouring out.

I have a gecko that lives in my room, and it's such a pleasure to watch him chase and gulp down winged things and squirmy long-legged things, but sometimes he just doesn't try hard enough.

But the worst one came yesterday evening, when I slipped back into my blue jeans after an afternoon nap and ran downstairs to the mess hall only to feel, when I sat down, something crawling on my leg.

Under the pants.

It wasn't, of course, as if I could tear off my pants in a dining room full of people and investigate. And I wasn't about to scream either, though I did want to. It was a very large something, whatever it was.

So I booked it out onto the veranda with the thing still clinging to me, and then reached down and grabbed a handful of denim. It moved. I grabbed another handful. Got it. And then I squeezed and wrung until whatever it was made small crackling noises, breaking into pieces and leaving a stain that soaked completely through the jeans.

And then I ran up to my bedroom and stripped, but I could find neither the insect remains nor the evidence of any kind of insect bite, which is good.

And then I let out a stream of obscenities which I will not reprint.

The end.

Watching English Patient in Hyderabad

I posted, a few months ago, about my experience reading The English Patient and then watching the film.

I've since re-read the novel a few times, and had the opportunity to see the film again, as part of U-Hyd's weekly "cinema club" series.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the movie adaptation, but I wanted to see it again for a few reasons. First because I had invited my acting class to come with me, and I was interested to know what they thought of it. Second because I was curious to know how an Indian audience would react to the movie. And lastly, because again of the book. Because I loved the book, I sat through the film. ^__^

The auditorium was about half-full; this was probably not the most popular of the cinema club's offerings. The movie itself was split onto three DVDs, which were loaded into a laptop and played through a projector; the DVDs seemed to be copies of a copy of a bootleg, and both the picture and the sound were grainy. My poor students, who are still learning English, were lost amidst the fuzzy dialogue, and so I whispered explanations when necessary.

The entire audience laughed and hooted at all the sex. I suppose I had expected that. They also laughed every time Naveen Andrews appeared onscreen. I guess I hadn't expected that. I wondered if they were laughing at Kip's actions within the film, or laughing at Hollywood's reinterpretation of an Indian character.

I think my students were bored by the film, because they kept asking me how much longer it would be. ^__^ I actually found it more interesting the second time, because I was able to spot nuances that I hadn't noticed before. But... for an unfamiliar audience, on a blurry screen, with indiscriminate audio... yeah, maybe not the best.

The next film in the series will be Munich. I wonder if I will be able to convince my class to go. ^__^

More Things You'd Never Think to Bring to India

A pair of warm, snuggly sweatpants. Matching sweatshirt.

Obviously I didn’t bring any because… oh, I don’t know… India’s close relationship with the Equator.

But after getting completely drenched in a monsoon, I found myself longing for something warmer and softer than cotton. And snugglier than blue jeans.

Also they would come in very useful at night. The lone blanket afforded me has a giant hole in it and seems to have been made by Tata’s steel wool division. (And nary a sheet to protect me from it, either.) If I had something soft and warm to sleep in I would bypass the blanket completely.

Yes, I know. Can buy them here. ^__^