Yesterday started with that one-footed asana practice which was doable but there is this saying here that goes "practice plus one" and just eating would have filled the plus one portion. But it was a holiday - a big one - and India always wins. After practice I came home for a nap so that the whole routine is really to get up in the middle of the night, go to class and then come home and continue sleeping like nothing ever happened. And if your practice time is early like mine then you get home and it is still dark and it was all just a dream.
So after I woke up for real I just wanted my usual which makes everything okay. My usual is a stack of English papers and breakfast to-go from the stand up place. Idli vada or set dosa "parcel-la".
They were closed.
So I went around the corner to the stand up sit down place. Also closed.
I look around and realize that for sure everything will be closed except for the vendors that have popped up suddenly selling banana leaves and other festival items (which are now abandoned everywhere and are causing a major cleanup issue). I resign myself to the fact that I must either make my own breakfast (no) or go to one of the "yogi" cafes run by foreigners. I am not a fan. Expensive, not my taste, and a whole lot of gossip and over and over where are you from? How long will you be here? How many times have you been? Etc. All perfectly acceptable except that I just want my newspapers and idli vada in silence at home.
But fine. I go to this place called Santosha and find a little corner on the floor around a small coffee table and I order food that the owner swears up and down is vegan. It isn't. Not pleased.
We have special tickets to go to the center to see the festival up close and personal. It involves a lot of sitting in plastic chairs. We think at least 5 hours of this. When we arrive it is too late. It was actually supposed to be much longer. Arrive by 10:30 at the latest. At 2:30 things sort of start. In the interim you are just sitting there. From 2:30 to 5:30 or later there are elephants and processions and dancers and a whole lot of splendor but we see none of it. We arrive around 12:45 by rickshaw and it is just madness. People everywhere. Cars, buses, bikes, scooters, carts, vendors, everything everywhere all at once. It is impossible for us to get close enough to present our tickets and get to our assigned seats. We walk around and consider jumping a fence and more and more feel boxed in and drunk Indian men staring at us.
We find ourselves wedged between two buses with some sort of official attempting to negotiate with a police officer to get us to cross the parade itself so we can get to our seats. While this is happening we are smashed between the two buses, single file with more Indians wiggling their way between us. Somehow they made themselves fit. The smell of alcohol was strong and just people staring at us even more than we were staring at them. There were ten of us together and still I somehow managed to be robbed. I suddenly had the sense that I should look down and I see my purse open and I look in and my wallet is gone and I notice the drunk next to me is trying to worm his way out and I start yelling like a maniac and I scare him and I see my wallet drop into a pool of liquid (hopefully water). Everything is still in it and we decide to leave. We go to Pascucci for pizza and pasta and AC and watch the events on a big screen TV.
We get back to our neighborhood (Gokulum) and ride our scooters home. We usually park in front of the house on the little car park but our landlord has parked his car there even though he usually parks in the driveway and he specifically told us that we should park there. By this time I have decided I am just finished and when I go to park in the street I forget to put down the kickstand and I start to lean the scooter to rest on the nonexistent kickstand and when I realize I am leaning too much somewhere inside I surrender to India and say "OK, this is the part where we all lie down." My housemate is laughing and takes a picture and the moment is forever captured on facebook.
We agree to rest up. India will be waiting in the morning. I close my door and get ready for bed and hear "Alice! Alice! Outside my bedroom window. There is no hiding. India is everywhere.
So after I woke up for real I just wanted my usual which makes everything okay. My usual is a stack of English papers and breakfast to-go from the stand up place. Idli vada or set dosa "parcel-la".
They were closed.
So I went around the corner to the stand up sit down place. Also closed.
I look around and realize that for sure everything will be closed except for the vendors that have popped up suddenly selling banana leaves and other festival items (which are now abandoned everywhere and are causing a major cleanup issue). I resign myself to the fact that I must either make my own breakfast (no) or go to one of the "yogi" cafes run by foreigners. I am not a fan. Expensive, not my taste, and a whole lot of gossip and over and over where are you from? How long will you be here? How many times have you been? Etc. All perfectly acceptable except that I just want my newspapers and idli vada in silence at home.
But fine. I go to this place called Santosha and find a little corner on the floor around a small coffee table and I order food that the owner swears up and down is vegan. It isn't. Not pleased.
We have special tickets to go to the center to see the festival up close and personal. It involves a lot of sitting in plastic chairs. We think at least 5 hours of this. When we arrive it is too late. It was actually supposed to be much longer. Arrive by 10:30 at the latest. At 2:30 things sort of start. In the interim you are just sitting there. From 2:30 to 5:30 or later there are elephants and processions and dancers and a whole lot of splendor but we see none of it. We arrive around 12:45 by rickshaw and it is just madness. People everywhere. Cars, buses, bikes, scooters, carts, vendors, everything everywhere all at once. It is impossible for us to get close enough to present our tickets and get to our assigned seats. We walk around and consider jumping a fence and more and more feel boxed in and drunk Indian men staring at us.
We find ourselves wedged between two buses with some sort of official attempting to negotiate with a police officer to get us to cross the parade itself so we can get to our seats. While this is happening we are smashed between the two buses, single file with more Indians wiggling their way between us. Somehow they made themselves fit. The smell of alcohol was strong and just people staring at us even more than we were staring at them. There were ten of us together and still I somehow managed to be robbed. I suddenly had the sense that I should look down and I see my purse open and I look in and my wallet is gone and I notice the drunk next to me is trying to worm his way out and I start yelling like a maniac and I scare him and I see my wallet drop into a pool of liquid (hopefully water). Everything is still in it and we decide to leave. We go to Pascucci for pizza and pasta and AC and watch the events on a big screen TV.
We get back to our neighborhood (Gokulum) and ride our scooters home. We usually park in front of the house on the little car park but our landlord has parked his car there even though he usually parks in the driveway and he specifically told us that we should park there. By this time I have decided I am just finished and when I go to park in the street I forget to put down the kickstand and I start to lean the scooter to rest on the nonexistent kickstand and when I realize I am leaning too much somewhere inside I surrender to India and say "OK, this is the part where we all lie down." My housemate is laughing and takes a picture and the moment is forever captured on facebook.
We agree to rest up. India will be waiting in the morning. I close my door and get ready for bed and hear "Alice! Alice! Outside my bedroom window. There is no hiding. India is everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment