So I don’t need an alarm clock anymore because a lovely bird decided to build a nest in a nook in the wall right next to my window. The birds chirp ALL day and wake me up every morning. I try to pretend that I am sleeping in the wilderness and up close and personal with nature. This tactic works for about 10 minutes before I realize there is a fan spinning above me…back to reality. Anyhow, it’s a nice yaadgar of my DeSoto home because there too do we have birds’ nests that pop up in the least convenient places. For instance a nook in the archway to our house’s entrance….so maybe chirping is not a problem, but perpetual bird droppings covering our front porch and greeting our visitors is. For now, I’ll take birds over the various other lovely urban India animals that could be frequenting close to my room J
So it’s four weeks later and I finally ventured into the Sindhi Colony that I live next to. When I moved into Jaipur and found out where I was living I had all these romantic notions that everyday I would meet with people in Sindhi colony and overtime become this welcomed presence in the area. I thought my summer project would be a piece of cake. But it took me forever and a day to make the 5 minute walk to the Jhulelal Mandir to start meeting people. So today I had a whole free day and went to the mandir/dharamshala where I met a lovely 15 year old girl named Khushi. She spent an hour chatting with me and asking the cutest questions…she was intent on figuring out how to categorize me and my American friends if there really is no “caste” in America. We walked around the dharamshala and the pandit kept catching us eyeing the meal being prepared for a family event so he warmly invited us to lunch. Imagine sitting around a bunch of 10-15 year old kids speaking in Sindhi. Based on my familial experiences, I’ve always associated Sindhi with elderly people…why? All of my cousins in India prefer Hindi as the lingua franca of the home and it’s only the grandparents that speak in Sindhi. And as for family in America, English is the bol chaal and I only very occasionally get to hear Sindhi being spoken when my parents are trying to be confidential or if I am at a Sindhi Association function and I’m standing next to a group of elderly people. I’ve always had this perception that Sindhi is a dying language and my grandparents sure do lament the language as if it is. I’ve also had the feeling that it’s an extremely complicated language and that’s why it’s okay I can’t speak it - so hearing young people speaking Sindhi made it harder for me to distance myself from the language. After lunch, Khushi took me to her home to introduce me to her mother. This girl gave me so much love. Seriously she was pouring so much love into me that I almost felt like I was going to burst. If you’ve read the Celestine Prophecy then you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that I felt like our interaction was one of the rare ones that results in the intensification of the energies between two people.
So while I was on my Sindhi kick and I still had some momentum, I took a rickshaw to the Amrapur Darbar where there was a huge Sindhi mela going on in honor of Sant Tehuram. I didn’t stay long because it was very crowded and people were pre occupied with devotional rituals so I couldn’t really talk to anyone. There wasn’t much written in Sindhi script…mostly everything in Devanagiri. Not surprising. What is surprising is that there’s a shop down the block from my home with the name written in Sindhi lipi! Due to assimilation pressures it’s getting less and less common to a)find written Sindhi and b)find Sindhi written in the persio-arabic script in Sindhi Hindu communities.
After both of these experiences, I needed a change in scene so I went next door to the Café Coffee Day in Ganpati Plaza. This place is a Starbucks type establishment. I love people watching. So I camped out at a comfy couch and checked out the upper class Indian dating scene over a veg sandwich and a coffee. It’s really neat to see how people romantically interact across cultures…and within one culture across classes. As I’ve noticed at CCD and Au Naturale (the AIIS hangout because of the awesome free wi fi!!) dating here seems to entail choosing an agreed upon location at which both parties meet at a fixed time. The rest of the details I’ll just have to leave out of my public blog…okay not really, at the end of the day we are all just people right? And the emotions humans have transcend superficial cultural divides to some extent. So yeah there might be some variance in expressions as per cultural sensitivities and conditioning but as far is love is concerned, it’s universal.
At night Elizabeth and I watched Jab we Met. Chelsea is a bollywood buff and has a nice collection of dvds. Really it’s awesome because it’s like we have a Blockbuster at home!! The movie was typical and if you have seen the songs, then you perhaps can also not believe that the movie actually uses village people as scenery….anyhow, it’s been nice to catch up movies at the Institute as well because I really haven’t seen that many. The way I always justify three hours of my life spent on the crappy ones is by claiming that the movie (and my 3 life hours) was Hindi practice!
