This is my life now

When I logged on to my beloved (if under-appreciated) travel blog today I discovered that I had forgotten to publish a blog that I wrote almost three weeks ago. At least from the beginning I was very clear about my technical inabilities and this, therefore, shouldn't come as a major suprirse.

The other good news is that, despite a small fall that I took sometime between the lost entry and now, nothing has changed enough to make the last one irrelevant or out of place. Work continues to roll along--not exactly brilliantly, but not terribly either. Our Vellore routine is pretty much the same, with the major exception that Rajamma was gone for two weeks and thus there were no home-made idlis in the morning. My friends like to point out to me that Vellore is the hottest place in Tamil Nadu, a fact that I am finding it increasingly difficult to ignore. My favorite part of our 36-hr visits is my six AM shower the day that I wake up in Vellore. The bathroom that I use is on the roof of the house where we stay and at that time of morning Vellore is quiet and grey and cool. I am consistently surprised by how happy I am to be up at an early hour on those days (as waking up early is certainly not something that I am typically either good at or happy about).

Last weekend I went to Pondicherry, an old colonial city by the sea in southern Tamil Nadu and the former capitol of French territories in India. The old quarter of the city is gridded and lined with houses of a very quaint French tropical architecture. I stayed in a guest house that doubles as a museum (with unfortunately very strange art); my view was beautiful and I slept better than I had in months, aided by the sea breeze that blew straight in through my open window. I did not visit the famous Sri Aurobindo Asram and I made only a cursory exploration of Auroville (the international spiritual community that is essentially a long-running experiment in humanity and communal living in the rural areas just north of the city). Instead I spent almost all of my time at the Auroville beach, enjoying the freedom to wear a bathing suit, swim in the salt water, and share a beach with other foreigners and many groups of Indian men in their underwear. To the question of "mountains or beach" I will always be a mountain girl, but for the first time I discovered how wonderful it is to look at an uninterrupted and interminable seascape. It was so peaceful and exactly what I needed that I'm lucky my pale skin was starting to sun-burn, or I would have had a very difficult time ever leaving the beach and getting back on a bus to Chennai.

At the hostel life has, until recently, been largely uneventful. A few weeks ago we had a campus-wide "Hostel Day," which was an evening of wonderful on-stage awkwardness and hilarity (check the video clips below). On a sadder note, the warden of my hostel died of a heart attack last night. I had gone out to a friend's house for dinner and managed--after much pestering of my auto-driver to drive faster--to get home just before my ten o'clock curfew. I had been at a guy friend's house (which had already caused much concern among even my more progressive friends who have boyfriends and wear western clothes), so I had prepared a very elaborate lie about the female friend's house that I had been at and the meal that she had cooked me in order to avoid the scrutiny of my very Christian and very strict warden. Thankfully my alibi was unnecessary and I was happy to slip in before the door had been locked and without a scolding from the night watchman. I was in such a hurry to run off to my room and avoid a thorough investigation of where I had been that I didn't notice the gathering of senior citizens in the front room. It wasn't until this morning that I found out my warden--who I had been so busy fearing--had passed away at seven o'clock that night. The hostel, needless to say, is a very strange and sad place to be today, as many of the senior citizens that I live with have spent every day of the last few years of their lives with Dulsi-madam. Despite my griping about her strictness and the way she had to repeat everything she tole me four times, I will miss the way she called me "darling" and the regularity with which she checked on whether I had had my dinner or not yet.

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Videos from "This is my life now":

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