Daily grind

Yesterday my roommate and I saw this tie-dye creation on the pavement of one of the busiest streets in Pune. "That's so India," he said, and I think he was pretty much right. Only the night before, my other roommate and I had been driving home in the monsoon rain from a (truly bizarre, and a little bit painful) mediation class when we passed not one, but three mobile temples to the goddess Durga, slowly rolling down Karve Road. These were complete with blaring techno music, strobe lights, and young men dancing in the rain in their wakes. Why? This week is Navaratri, the set of nine nights where a WHOLE lot of goddess-worship goes down. Earlier that day, K and I also checked out the shrine of the goddess Yogeshwari: the patron saint, if you will, of Pune. But the place was so crowded (note: with *women*) that it was impossible to even edge in. Men, by the way, had to go in way over on the side.



So instead we went to a humongous men's clothing store on Laxmi Road, one of the brightest shopping streets here, and picked some linens for K to have tailored into shirts. While we were there, we witnessed a small man with an Elvis hair-do and, well, an Elvis-inspired costume loudly spit Hindi jokes into a microphone and embarrass innocent shoppers. Imagine the shelves of linens (pictured below) stretching around the perimeter of a room the size of your average CVS or Duane Reade. Then multiply that by five stories, and you'll have some idea of how much fabric was in the place.



I had almost as much fun shopping at FabIndia (Pune branch! Yes!) yesterday, where I came away with towels, bedspreads, bath mats, and pillowcases enough to make my little room truly feel like home. This is the "after" picture, but you probably don't want to know what the drab "before" looked like. As K noted: "I didn't know it was possible to make this room look good!"




Every morning I wake to the sounds of boisterous traffic flying right outside my window. Because I'm on the first floor (not the ground floor but the one *above* the ground floor), my corner bedroom is basically perched on a highway. Well, no. It's just one of Pune's typically congested, honking, traffic law-shunning, death-defying streets.



Luckily, I can float into the peaceful kitchen, where I might join my beloved (I know, I'll shut up about how amazing they are) roommates at our oversized kitchen table for some ginger tea and last night's leftovers. We've cooked together a few times now, and I think I've really discovered my inner Rachael Ray. Rachael may have E.V.O.O. and lots of surface area, but I make vegetable masala and whole wheat chapatis! For a girl who really can't cook, this comes as an incredible -- and incredibly welcome -- surprise. I am, however, still working on spice ratios for the perfect chai.




Then I might shift back into my room to listen to Bach over the incessant honking, and get to work on the day's Sanskrit. Today's project is to translate a handful of multi-claused sentences from English to Sanskrit; this I must somehow manage to do without an English-Sanskrit dictionary. But first I am off to an English bookstore on the other side of town, followed by hunting for a bathing suit (where, oh where, do you find a bikini in India?) and stopping at the vegetable-wallah to get some greens for tonight's masala.

Yes, I am enjoying this week-long break from classes a great deal. Tomorrow is my last day in Pune before I head down to Goa for some much-needed fresh air and swimming. Then, oh then, it's back to the musty books and this pleasant grind.