Sitting in restaurants, thought we were so grown up.

A couple more November Exeat rehashes, as the next Exeat and Travel Week begin to approach.

(mosque in the Muslin area, the ghats - washing area of Bombay where millions of items get washed every day, I think, and Marine Drive at eight in the morning)

After visiting an art gallery, we fished out our guide book and looked at what we could do for the afternoon. The Muslim Area, described as full of junk and flea markets, sounded quite obscure and interesting, so down we headed.

Unfortunately, it was Ede. That in itself wasn't a bad thing, however the fact that dead goats were being dragged out of taxi boots was slightly less pleasant. Also, the markets were non-existant due to this festival, and the streets were bustling with Muslim men.

We left the area and began to explore the streets. Stumbling upon a temple, we chatted with the priest about what the temple for for and so on (it was a Hindu temple) as it was intricately decorated with white carved pillars and ceilings, all of which was apparently more than a hundred years old. From time to time old people would come in and kneel before the statue of the gods, praying, we were told, for strength. He would then give them some sort of sweet paste in a leaf and perform some sort of prayer. Definitely an interesting and unexpected cultural interaction. After hearing our age and purpose in India, he sent us off with bananas and good wishes.

this is small town music, this is big town music.

(chapati making)
(oh the people you meet at train stations)

So here's a dosage of culture for you.
These are all from a Friday in November, when I was on my way to Mumbai/Bombay for Exeat (a long weekend away, we get two a term).

Deciding at the spur of the moment to go to Bombay, we went to the train station. There, we bought our tickets, discovered we had three hours to kill, and wandered around the area trying local food. We walked into a small, one-meal restaurant filled with Indian men eating thalis (not sure how to spell that. It is a round metal tray on which one gets chapati/rice/some sort of starch and several bowls of dip-like things. I suppose it is the Indian version of tapas, and the contents differs per place and region.) and tried that. It was really nice, although us being there may have bowled them over a bit (being 'white'). We also saw men making chapatis around th back of a hotel, which was interesting. Two point five hours and stomachs filled with chai, Indian sweets and thalis, we went back to the station.

The platform was covered in sleeping people, either waiting for trains or simply sleeping there as it was covered. We met a man dressed in white with some sort of massive horn instrument on his back. He looked holy in a way, so we decided to practice our limited Hindi on him. Unfortunately, he spoke almost no Hindi himself, as he spoke Marathi, but we managed to chat to some extent about where he was from, where he was going and got him to play the horn thing for us. This gathered a crowd, and we decided it was about time to move on and find our train.
Once on, we spotted two other religious looking men, dressed all in orange. We tried to take pictures of them discreetly, but I'm not sure how well that worked. After all that, we fell asleep clutching on to our belongings, and woke up in Bombay five hours later.

I see a mansard roof through the trees

(A snowy Holland on my flight out)

3 things I've done since last week:

1. I have been reunited with my luggage. After a week of phoning BA, the Triveni office (Triveni is the umbrella term for CAS and Community Interactions here) sorted out the delivery of it. I was whisked off into a jeep and driven down the hill to the bus station in Paud, where an Indian guy (who was in no apparent way associated with BA) came around the corner lugging my bag wrapped in two layers of plastic. Euphoric about the arrival of my luggage, I set about unpacking immediatly, and it became apparent that my cupboard was too small. A long clean-up and reorganisation on Saturday later, and I had managed to fit everything in. Since then, I have been enjoying using my very own cooking implements (utilised for a girlie dinner that very night) and not having to deal with BA customer services anymore (I lost my luggage twice in a row now).

2. I saw a Kathakali performance on Thursday. This traditional dance involves several Indian men, who make their faces up in incredible colours (all made with natural dyes) to resemble masks. They also pull themselves into massive, brightly-coloured, almost Victorian (but livelier) costumes, and proceed to 'dance' using hand and leg actions (all of which symbolise something).

(a short break and some attempted mosquito murder later)

The performance the group did for us on campus was an altered version of Julius Caesar. Initially it was interesting to watch them communicate/dance in their absurd, expressive costumes (they even dye their eye whites red for performances) and to listen to the odd, tribal-esque music (which was live and had haunting, chanting vocals), but after two hours (it ended up lasting three) I felt I had seen enough. I think if I had understood the symbolisms each movement conveyed, it may have been more fascinating, but a two hour watch just about filled my culture quota for that day.

3. Rosie's Adventurous Life Change: One of my second years (Year 13s) decided to live on the edge/go on adventures more frequently. Having volunteered to participate, a whole bunch of us instigated a bonfire in one of the wadas on Friday night, complete with literal stokbrood (bread dough on a stick that one bakes on the fire) and live guitar music. Our most recent 'adventure' was a picnic on Sunday, which consisted of three of us + a quiche (I finally made one here!) + salad and parathas (Indian savoury pancakes) + grapes + sunshine + ants. Lovely.

ps. Having forgotten to upload a stack of pictures from my camera until now (going as far back as November), I'll be posting them up intermittedly with anecdotes on the context of them. Some of them are pretty cultural, so keep checking :)

with lips and teeth to ask how my day went, boots and fists to pound on the pavement

(bikes, our garden, the first day back)

Having spent a lovely 21 days in the land of bikes, snow and familiar faces (although, strictly speaking, I spent 10 of these 21 days in a country of baguettes, snow and family faces), I am now back and in the process of re-tanning over here in India.

After a disastrous journey due to ‘severe weather conditions’ (according to BA’s phone line, which also told me ‘we are experiencing a large mass of phone calls from angry luggage-less customers much like yourself, therefore we shall keep you on hold for another half an hour’ or something to that effect) Lenn and I arrived at MUWCI a lay-over in London and a day richer. Upon arrival, everyone was throwing themselves at one another, excitedly gabbling on about how much fun they had parting/shopping/eating/travelling/sleeping. It was really nice to see them all again, although admittedly the prospect of the drab rooms (although mine is cheered up with sky blue paint and pretty pictures) and hard beds slightly dampened the spirit.

School started on Monday, and it was business as usual. Sure, people looked refreshed, neater and more awake after their haircuts, shopping sprees and sleep, but by about Wednesday it was all same old, same old. Having spent the last term getting to know everyone and everything, I feel (at least up to now) to be slightly more in control of things (sleep/school/timewise). It is a shame that my luggage (not the metaphorical, but the actual physical sort) had a longer delay in London than I, but rumour has it that it will be arriving today, which would be brilliant.

For the rest, I’m still alive, still enjoying the sun (although I’m worried about the prospects of the temperatures hitting the forties and fifties), marvelling at the monkeys (there was one by the cafeteria today) and attempting to teach children from the neighbouring villages about concave and convex mirrors.

x

Got no reason for coming to me and the rain running down.

(Burning Man community, Nevada, which looks amazing.)

Happy new year.
Only a couple more days before I'm off again back to India now.
I've been back (and notably blog-silent, even for my doings) for around three weeks now, one of which I spent in a little house in the snowy countryside of France.
Everyone at ISH has been back since Tuesday, and it was very (very very very) nice to see them all again (:
For the rest, I've been enjoying the cold, meat (sad but true. Indians don't really do meat), space and familiarity of it all. The trip over was a bit of a culmination of disasters (sickness, missing papers, cancelled flights, lost luggage) for the original Dutch/Norwegian crowd who flew back together, but it was all sorted and hopefully this Friday's flight will be easier.
It is going to be strange returning to the tiny insular community that is MUWCI, and it probably won't be simple. Then again, it will be nice to see everyone over at that end of the world too, and I'll be back by the summer (:

x