Did you know almost all of the beef and milk in North India comes from water buffalo and not cows? I learned this tonight at the dinner table. We had this really delicious egg curry (fried hard-boiled eggs in curry "gravy") and sweet roti (flat bread basically) that Rachael and I both really like. I still struggle sometimes with the spices, but everything is more manageable when mixed with yogurt and interspersed with big sips of water. It's embarrassing, though, when I'm visibly sweating and my lips feel like they're on fire.
We went to a documentary screening this evening at the India International Centre, which is a cultural center right near Lodi Gardens. Lodi Gardens are these beautiful, lush gardens with a lot of lovely old monuments. Rachael and I walked around them (and ran into some of our friends!) the other day and it was incredibly pleasant. Anyway, Khadeeja's friend had produced a short documentary about women's madness and spirits in India so we went to that. My favorite part may have been the opening speaker. She was a professor of some kind and she discussed madness in cinema, how its portrayal has changed over time (especially with the addition of psychoanalytical theory into film story lines), and feminism. We watched clips from old movies, including one made by Alfred Hitchcock and another by Roman Polanski. The coolest part of her intro, though, was that she talked about ethnographic filmmakers that I studied extensively in my Ethnographic Film class this summer (Emma, are you reading this? It was crazy)! This summer, I wrote papers about Frederick Wiseman's High School John Marshall's N!ai, and then this woman at a random little film screening at a cultural center in New Delhi started talking about Titticus Follies, which was directed by Wiseman and shot by Marshall! This is probably not nearly as exciting for anyone else as it was for me, but it was one of those I-can't-believe-these-things-are-linked-and-this-is-coming-up-in-the-real-world sort of moments. Rachael thought I was crazy because I was writing on a business card I had so I wouldn't forget (I fully plan to email my film professor and tell him).
Tonight the scariest thing happened to us on the road on our way back from the film screening! It's the most frightened I've been since coming here. Adil was driving, Khadeeja was in the front seat holding little Iman on her lap, and Rachael, Khadeeja's sister and I were in the back seat. Delhi traffic is legitimately terrifying at all times without fail, but it was fairly busy on the road tonight and we were coming back around 9:30 p.m. Adil changed "lanes" (because really lanes don't exist, just general trajectories of cars) to the left, and a car zoomed by him erratically and quickly on the left, squeezing through the narrow space between our car and the curb. It was nothing too out of the ordinary, though perhaps slightly more aggressive than what we normally see, because usually only the motorbikes manage to build up much speed when passing. Then the two cars in front of us stop quickly, so we stop too. I assumed it was just come kind of small traffic jam, but then we saw the driver of the first car, a tall middle-aged man, get out of his car carrying a thick stick about two-feet long. I initially didn't realize what was going on and I thought it was some kind of wooden flute thing, and he was going to start playing it and asking for money. Obviously this doesn't make any sense because he stopped his car in the middle of the road, but really anything goes on Indian roads so it's not that absurd. I realized immediately, though, that he was actually quite angry looking and the wooden thing was a solid rod/club-type thing. He walked back to the car directly in front of ours, whose driver-side window was down, and began yelling at the man and wielding the stick as if he was about to beat the driver and/or his car with it. He wasn't just faking though — every time he swung it, we all thought he was actually about to club the driver. Even Adil and Kadeeja and Kadeeja's sister were somewhat dumbstruck by the scene. Adil tried to yell at the man, at which point I became concerned that he would come for our car. After a few minutes, Adil backed up and drove around the two cars. Khadeeja tried to calm the older man as we drove by, calling him uncle over and over again (what younger people respectfully call older people here a lot). The driver of the second car was out of his vehicle talking on a mobile phone by the time we drove by, and we saw him offer the phone to the scary angry man. I don't know who they were on the phone with, but I was just glad we were removed from the situation. I think perhaps they had gotten into a fender bender because the older man was driving recklessly. As mad as he was, any accident would have been his fault! Adil and Khadeeja said they thought the older man was drunk. Apparently drunk driving is very common here.
Tomorrow we depart for Aligarh, a two-and-a-half hour train ride away. We will be there for four days, visiting a university and several hospitals and health clinics. I may not have internet, but I will definitely have my computer because I need to work on some things unfortunately. It turns out trying to cram a semester program into a quarter is difficult. I would not have wanted to give up this experience just to make the transition a little easier, but boy was it hard to take finals early, and I'm still finishing up a bunch of things now. Someday soon I will be done with all those things though! I really should be in bed by now because we have to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to get to the train station by 5:30 a.m. but when have I ever been in bed this early? Answer: never. Sorry mom! I try to have good sleep habits, I really do.
Ok I'm rambling so I should stop. Good night everyone!
We went to a documentary screening this evening at the India International Centre, which is a cultural center right near Lodi Gardens. Lodi Gardens are these beautiful, lush gardens with a lot of lovely old monuments. Rachael and I walked around them (and ran into some of our friends!) the other day and it was incredibly pleasant. Anyway, Khadeeja's friend had produced a short documentary about women's madness and spirits in India so we went to that. My favorite part may have been the opening speaker. She was a professor of some kind and she discussed madness in cinema, how its portrayal has changed over time (especially with the addition of psychoanalytical theory into film story lines), and feminism. We watched clips from old movies, including one made by Alfred Hitchcock and another by Roman Polanski. The coolest part of her intro, though, was that she talked about ethnographic filmmakers that I studied extensively in my Ethnographic Film class this summer (Emma, are you reading this? It was crazy)! This summer, I wrote papers about Frederick Wiseman's High School John Marshall's N!ai, and then this woman at a random little film screening at a cultural center in New Delhi started talking about Titticus Follies, which was directed by Wiseman and shot by Marshall! This is probably not nearly as exciting for anyone else as it was for me, but it was one of those I-can't-believe-these-things-are-linked-and-this-is-coming-up-in-the-real-world sort of moments. Rachael thought I was crazy because I was writing on a business card I had so I wouldn't forget (I fully plan to email my film professor and tell him).
Tonight the scariest thing happened to us on the road on our way back from the film screening! It's the most frightened I've been since coming here. Adil was driving, Khadeeja was in the front seat holding little Iman on her lap, and Rachael, Khadeeja's sister and I were in the back seat. Delhi traffic is legitimately terrifying at all times without fail, but it was fairly busy on the road tonight and we were coming back around 9:30 p.m. Adil changed "lanes" (because really lanes don't exist, just general trajectories of cars) to the left, and a car zoomed by him erratically and quickly on the left, squeezing through the narrow space between our car and the curb. It was nothing too out of the ordinary, though perhaps slightly more aggressive than what we normally see, because usually only the motorbikes manage to build up much speed when passing. Then the two cars in front of us stop quickly, so we stop too. I assumed it was just come kind of small traffic jam, but then we saw the driver of the first car, a tall middle-aged man, get out of his car carrying a thick stick about two-feet long. I initially didn't realize what was going on and I thought it was some kind of wooden flute thing, and he was going to start playing it and asking for money. Obviously this doesn't make any sense because he stopped his car in the middle of the road, but really anything goes on Indian roads so it's not that absurd. I realized immediately, though, that he was actually quite angry looking and the wooden thing was a solid rod/club-type thing. He walked back to the car directly in front of ours, whose driver-side window was down, and began yelling at the man and wielding the stick as if he was about to beat the driver and/or his car with it. He wasn't just faking though — every time he swung it, we all thought he was actually about to club the driver. Even Adil and Kadeeja and Kadeeja's sister were somewhat dumbstruck by the scene. Adil tried to yell at the man, at which point I became concerned that he would come for our car. After a few minutes, Adil backed up and drove around the two cars. Khadeeja tried to calm the older man as we drove by, calling him uncle over and over again (what younger people respectfully call older people here a lot). The driver of the second car was out of his vehicle talking on a mobile phone by the time we drove by, and we saw him offer the phone to the scary angry man. I don't know who they were on the phone with, but I was just glad we were removed from the situation. I think perhaps they had gotten into a fender bender because the older man was driving recklessly. As mad as he was, any accident would have been his fault! Adil and Khadeeja said they thought the older man was drunk. Apparently drunk driving is very common here.
Tomorrow we depart for Aligarh, a two-and-a-half hour train ride away. We will be there for four days, visiting a university and several hospitals and health clinics. I may not have internet, but I will definitely have my computer because I need to work on some things unfortunately. It turns out trying to cram a semester program into a quarter is difficult. I would not have wanted to give up this experience just to make the transition a little easier, but boy was it hard to take finals early, and I'm still finishing up a bunch of things now. Someday soon I will be done with all those things though! I really should be in bed by now because we have to get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow to get to the train station by 5:30 a.m. but when have I ever been in bed this early? Answer: never. Sorry mom! I try to have good sleep habits, I really do.
Ok I'm rambling so I should stop. Good night everyone!
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