Peppers, Bollywood, and Monsoons

Yesterday was the birthday of the niece of my host family. We went downstairs for dinner to celebrate her birthday. In the building where we live, there is a brother and his family living on each of the 3 floors with us on the top floor. Dinner consisted of dal, chapati, onions, water, and gelebi (a sweet somewhat like funnel cake). I took a piece of chapati in my right hand and scooped up some dal. Midway through my first bite, I realized that the vegetable which I had mistook for a green bean was in fact a pepper. These peppers, I found out, are meant to be eaten a tiny bite at a time. Not all in one go, as I unfortunately had done. My eyes widened and started watering and my face flushed. At the end of that first bite, the family started catching on that I was in a state of panic. "Pani! Pani!" Water, Water! I shoved chapati into my mouth in between whole glasses of water in one gulp. I eventually recovered, physically. The family enjoyed this show to no end. Hahaha. We had dal today for lunch and I jumped when I thought I found a pepper on my plate.

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Bollywood is fabulous. I am completely enamored. Silly and irreverent and joyful and vibrating with excitement. What could be better?

I, like many other western travelers, have found the Indian etiquette for interaction between men and women to be alarming and quite severe. Don't make eye contact unnecessarily, don't sit down next to a man on the bus, don't respond if a man talks to you on the street, don't dress provocatively... My understanding of what constitutes as "provocative" has changed considerably. I've found, however, that this formality of interaction between men and women is not reflected in movies and television.

During the party last night, we watched a channel airing one Bollywood music video after another. These videos depicted men and women in intimate situations and making provocative gestures. Not surprising in itself, but given the flirting-ban that seems to be in place, it makes me think. It was hard enough growing up in the States, watching movies and TV shows where the characters' love lives were infinitely more active and eventful than mine. I felt like I should have been doing something that I wasn't, like I wasn't up to speed with the cool and edgy crowd.

This, however, was in America, where dating, kissing, holding hands, are accepted between men and women, even same sex couples (shocker! I know...), for both younger people and unmarried adults. This, as far as I can tell, is not the case in India. What must it be like for them, these teenagers, seeing everything but you-know-what on TV and being disallowed from even talking with strangers of the opposite sex? I know that the rules are not so strict for everybody here in this country-that-is-everything. Still though, I wonder...

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Today it rained. A lot. I don't think it ever rains just a little here in Delhi. It was dumping buckets when we were getting ready to leave, so we decided to take a taxi rather than the usual open-air rickshaw. Everybody else in Delhi decided this too, which meant two things: One, we had to wait quite a while before the cab got to our house. Two, the roads were packed. A better word might be flooded, as it would apply in two senses- in terms of cars, and water. The streets were flooded. Did I say that already? Waves upon waves. The rain kept pouring, and the streets looked like huge, muddy rivers. Our car stalled. Several times. I was all for walking to the school early on in the ride, wanting to get out of the car, move my legs, get wet, have an adventure. Maybe even miss a bit more of Hindi class. As it turns out, I didn't need to get out very early for that.

At some points, the water was so high that it seeped in through the bottoms of the doors (yes, I did just say that) and when a car drove by us on either side, water splashed in through the windows opened just a crack so the windows wouldn't fog. Did I mention that it is hot here? It's hotter when it's not raining, but the effect of rain in September in New Delhi is something like being in a sauna in your clothes...with your teacher asking you the different forms of the adjective "dry". HA!

A couple times when we were stalled, waiting for the driver to work his magic (which he did, every time), a car would drive by us in the flooded street. We would feelhear rublingcracklinggrumbling and feel a shaking, up as the car came up to us and back down again as it passed. We would watch the car in front of us bob in the water as the car passed it. The first few times this happened, we grabbed each other's arms in panic. We saw the driver laughing at the cars in front bobbing up and down, and decided not to worry. If he wasn't worried, then we shouldn't be. Hmmm.

We finally got to the turnoff from which point we could walk. We convinced the taxi driver to let us get out and walk the rest of the way (on the other side of the flirting-embargo, everybody is very protective of young women, very concerned with our safety and happiness). We were going to get soaked anyway, and we feared that his Ambassador taxi would not make it through the flooded street between us and school. So, we rolled up our pants, girded our loins, got our ducks in a row, and cautiously stepped out of the car. We then repeated the aforementioned steps as the water was much higher than our hopeful imaginations had led us to believe.

We braved the high waters (up to our knees at some points), warning each other of coming waves and potential rip currents, trying to imagine that the brown color of the water was only due to the copious amounts of chai which seem to line the shelves of this country, pretending to ignore the bits and pieces getting stuck in our sandals deep down in the murky depths.

We did eventually get to class though. We were only an hour late.