Stress, Spice, Sarees, and Sightseeing

In the past week, I have completed (in order):

* one 12-page microeconomics paper

* one 20-minute Cities of Delhi presentation on my final project (transporation in Delhi)

* one 1-hour presentation on the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) in India (microeconomics class)

* one 12-page Cities of Delhi paper

It's been a long week. I've been a little stressed. And a little sleep-deprived.

BUT to balance it out, I've had more mini-adventures.

Wednesday's adventure was just lunch at the Market Cafe in Khan Market with my roommate Rachel and another friend Sara. The reason it was an adventure was because I had whole wheat fettucine with spinach pesto and pearl-cut vegetables. It was delicious.

Thursday was definitely the big adventure of the week. We had our student-planned farewell party themed "Film Farewell," and we pretended we were Bollywood stars. I apparently was again compared to Katrina Kaif (I'll have to buy a poster to put in my room or something) when I was walking down the hall with Cate, but I didn't hear that. All the girls wore sarees, the boys wore Indian clothes (except Jon), and we had fancy, delicious Indian food at one of the function halls at the India Habitat Centre. Sydney didn't sleep at all the previous night because she was working on a slideshow of pictures from the past four months, which turned out to be amazing. I gave her about a hundred of my photos, most of which other people hadn't seen before, so it was fun watching everyone's reactions. We also had thali awards, where every student and staff member was given a superlative or nickname or something similar. The awards were printed on little aluminum-type plates to remind us of all the delicious thalis we've eaten. I turned one corner of the room and made everyone come over for individual portraits, since we had spent so damn long getting ready. (Sarees are complicated.) Since I'm not going to upload them twice, and I already put them on Facebook so that all the other students could see them, you see how pretty we all looked here.

My other Delhi excursion took place today. I was itching to get out of the house since I've spent so much time in my room working, so I finally made it over to the Purana Qila (Old Fort), which I've been meaning to visit all semester.

It was hot, but it was only in the upper 90s today instead of hovering near 110º as the weather has been wont to do of late. The Purana Qila is very pretty, with an interesting mix of landscaped lawns and flower beds mixed with crumbling stone walls and buildings, like in the picture above. The reason why it was so interesting to me before I visited it is that this is the place historians believe Indraprastha was - a city where parts of the Mahabharata takes place. These structures are from around the mid-1500s. The only two buildings that look like they've held up well against time are the Sher Mandal (don't know what it originally was, but it was later used as a library by the Mughal emperor Humayun) and the Qila-A-Khuna Masjid (mosque).

As I was walking along the top of one of the outside walls, I discovered an interesting tree.

After doing some highly scientific research (googling), I discovered that this is the same tree that those funny flowers are from that I blogged about earlier (the ones that fall to the ground in full bloom)! The Sanskrit name is Salmali; it's called Semal or Semul in most of India. It's a cotton tree! I've seen fluffly little balls of cotton floating around Neeti Bagh in the last couple of weeks, but I couldn't figure out where they were coming from. Now I know.

But I digress. As I was wandering around the Purana Qila, I made some friends. I resisted the urge to push a boy about my age off the top of that outside wall because I figured getting arrested for murder in India was probably not the best idea. He was with a few friends that I had crossed paths with on the opposite side of the complex, and one of his friends had asked if he could take a picture with me. I said, "No, sorry" and kept walking. This guy, however, decided to skip the asking and just take pictures of me on his cell phone as I was walking by. Which bothers me more than almost anything else in India. I hate it. I always struggle to not rip the phone out of the perpetrator's hand and smash it on the ground.

After that obnoxious incident, though, I made some friends. For a pleasant reversal of situation, I had a cute Indian couple ask me very timidly if I could take a picture of them, rather than them wanting a picture of me!

They were really cute. They were very pleased with the way the photo turned out, and then we parted ways. I'm taking that reaction to mean that I have permission to share this with all of you.

Later, I was walking through the garden outside the fort walls, and a few boys were walking in the opposite direction. They shouted "Hi!" as they got near me, but they didn't try to talk more than that or do anything annoying. About thirty seconds after they passed me, however, I hear running footsteps behind me, and I hear, "Excuse me! Ma'am!" so I turned around. They were all standing in front of me and asked me in Hindi to take their picture. I guess for a few seconds they had been debating whether it was okay to ask me, and then they decided my camera was too awesome for them to pass up the opportunity to be models.

Once again, they just wanted to see the picture, then they ran away looking quite pleased with themselves.

I love when I have willing subjects and don't have to feel like a creep taking photos of people who don't know that I'm doing so. :)

When I had seen all there was to see at the Purana Qila, I walked over to the Crafts Museum. On the way there, I had to go through an underpass because there was a metal fence on the median in the middle of the road. There was nifty art, so I took a picture:

I didn't actually make it to the museum part of the Crafts Museum; there's a village complex that has full-sized models of various types of village houses from all over India, along with other structures (temple, theater, storage shed), so I meandered through there a bit. The next part of the Crafts Museum area was a craft demonstration area, where they had people from all over India selling things. Because it was hot and the middle of the day and there was no one there, I didn't actually get to see any demonstrations, but I got a lot of explanations about lacquer, metalworking, embroidery, leather puppets, vegetable- and stone-based paint colors, and all kinds of fun things. It's very similar to Dilli Haat, which I enjoy. I love being able to talk to the people who actually make the stuff they're selling.

When I ran out of water and energy, I made my way back to Neeti Bagh, where I did some homework and did my laundry in a bucket for the last time! I have enough clean clothes to get me through the next nine days, so I'm not hand-washing clothes again for a very long time.

I wanted to go out and do something fun tonight since I finally have no more papers to write, but everyone else in the house has papers to write for classes I'm not in. So I'm sitting here blogging and going through pictures, and when I'm done with that, I will finally finish reading City of Djinns, which I started forever ago. I haven't had time to read for pleasure in weeks. It's book and early bedtime for this tired larki.

Namaste.