Yesterday, Mark was not feeling well, which was confusing since we ate identical dinners the night before. We did manage to get out and shop around our neighborhood in the morning and early afternoon, picking up some souvenirs before it's time to return to Chicago. There were a lot of beautiful textiles and artwork to choose from, so it was difficult to make up our minds at times. I think that each shop must have double the concentration of salespeople as we do in typical stores in the US. There is always someone following you, watching you, standing between you and what you are trying to look at. To Americans, this can be trying, since I think we have a much stronger sense of personal space than anyone here seems to. With so many people competing for a limited amount of space, though, it makes sense that people are more generally assertive and less territorial. I've been pretty surprised at times by the way people do what I consider "cutting" in line (one of the first social faux pas we learn to avoid as children in the US), but to them the logic seems to be, "I want to be at the front of the line, you're between me and the front of the line, so I'll go around you if it gets me there faster." It's an everyone-for-themselves sort of place, so you can't be too shy. At times, the introvert in me longs for the relative privacy and indifference of the people of Chicago. It will be nice to walk down the street without constantly dodging people and vehicles of various types that are competing for the road!
Along the lines of coming home, this week is going to be pretty bittersweet for me. I feel like there's so much more to see of India, so it's a shame once we've come so far not to see the northern part of the country with the Taj Mahal, the Ganges, Delhi, the Himalayas, tea growing areas like Darjeeling and Assam, and other things I'd love to check out. But we'd need months to cover it all...I hope that we get to come back someday. I actually had a pretty emotionally disturbing dream on Friday wherein I had to tell everyone at work goodbye, not knowing if or when I'll ever see them again. In the dream, I think I even told someone, "Just tell everyone that I love them," which is pretty melodramatic and overstated (as my dreams tend to be at times, perhaps making up for my lack of overt emotional reactivity in most of life.) But when I woke up and realized that I really might not see any of my coworkers again or at least for a very long time, and that moreover we will also have few common waking hours in which to correspond via instant messenger, I was pretty bummed. It's going to be hard to say goodbye, but we still have a few days to enjoy first.
On a happier note, I had McDonald's for lunch on Friday (my coworkers' choice, not mine). I got a McVeggie Burger with cheese and some fries, which were all pretty tasty. The yellow cheese and the fries were exactly as in the US, so there was some element of comfort food even though I haven't eaten at McDonald's in the US in probably a couple of years now and consider it basically repulsive. My favorite localized item on the menu was the "Paneer Salsa Wrap," which I didn't get a chance to try, not that I'm terribly disappointed. The fact that I had McDonald's for lunch makes me even more surprised that Mark was sick and I wasn't yesterday -- I kind of felt like I was the one inviting it, eating a veggie burger with mayo and lettuce.
Also Friday at work, someone decided that we should all wear green (this was provoked by 3 of the women accidentally coordinating orange outfits on Thursday), so most of us did. I have something close to a group picture on our "Green Day", but we all thought we were waiting for some stragglers, so the snap didn't capture everyone, and those in it are mostly not paying attention (I am personally picking my fingernail, not my typical photo pose). On the front left is Hari, behind him is Pallavi, and then working to the right we have the top half of Pranita's head, Mayuri, Ashwini, Harshada, Nitesh, Uma, Brijesh, and Indranil -- and then again in the front on the right is me. The ones who are missing are Abu (who set the timer for this photo but didn't get in the picture -- he's basically the group photographer), Sujoy, Biswaroop (he was out of the office), and Purnima (who was busy).
I'm hoping to get a more complete and formal group pic this week...Switching topics entirely, some evenings here, Mark and I have flipped on our Indian cable TV in search of something that is in English and that will hold our interest. A few nights ago, we opted for an early 90's version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" starring Michael Caine. This was a mistake, of course, because it was a terrible movie. But I feel like it provides a fairly apt contrast between Whitney when in air conditioning (Jekyll) and Whitney outside (Hyde). It takes about 5 minutes for me to go from congenial and adventurous to angry and aggressive. Unlike in the movie, though, this is a basically involuntary process for me, unprovoked by the consumption of strange chemicals.
To end, I'll share a video that I took just a little while ago by our apartment as we were returning from brunch (we found a place that serves french toast and waffles, which were glorious.) A group of boys in the neighborhood were playing a game of cricket in the street, and each bowl had to wait for several autos, cars, etc. to pass through. The video shows the intermission between bowls and a quick play before another auto buzzed through.
