Into the mountains

For my next long overdue post, here are some pictures of Kasol, a mountain town in Himachal Pradhesh. In order to get there you have to drive up terrifyingly windy dirt roads that are cut into the mountain. It's hard to figure out whether you want to close your eyes until it's over or have them glued to the driver and the road in case there is anything you can do to prevent disaster. But only 11 hours after leaving Delhi (that qualifies as a short trip here), you arrive in a cool beautiful place. A little town in the mountains, with a ridiculous amount of Falafel and weed, but also with incredible hikes to other beautiful villages, a raging river, and yak gouda!

The view from the hotel in Kasol

A parade of neon goats

Drinking mango lassi by the river

Rasta = dreds 

Getting Shanti and warming up with chai in a cafe on a roof top

The town

Mountain village houses

The first stop on the hike - colorfully clothed girls playing hopscotch 

Lots of things growing here

Beautifully dressed woman hauling tar for road construction

The hike 

the reward

View from the hotel -- really a treehouse

The outhouse that I had to grope around for in the dark in the middle of the night, why yes, that is a massive cliff right beside it.

Love, 

Violet

Jaipur and Udaipur

While I am stuck in the states (woe is me: clean air to breathe and eating steamed vegetables without anyone making fun of me) I have decided to catch up on some posts and upload photos. These pictures were taken last March on my trip to Jaipur and Udaipur with Anika around Holi.

Scaffolding in Jaipur

One of the many floating beauties in Udaipur 

Touring an expensive Haveli - if you can manage to smell good enough to afford it, they let you look around. Not as easy as it sounds.

Spying from the roof

Monkeys hang out - it's crazy how often they seem like humans

Ganesh 

Love,
Violet 

Monday Wins and Losses

Today is monday: loss

win: productive day at work today

win: non-disastrous haircut and the cleanest hair I've had in months

loss: said clean hair made it only 10 paces out of the salon and into the humidity

loss: managed to step in gum in such a way that it was somehow adhered to the inside of my sandal, under my heel, double loss: not even among the top 100 grosses things that have happened to me in Delhi

loss: realized I have forgotten how to spell sandal while texting the news to Anika (chapal zindabad!)

win: bizarrely clean heel when I got home

loss: got splashed with puddle water, read: raw sewage

loss: while lost in thought, planning this blog post, got spooked by teenaged boys

win: spooked same teenage boys by thinking their joke was way funnier than they did and proceeding to hysterically cackle in the street, I mean, they really got me good

win/loss: peanut butter for dinner

I admit it

So here in Delhi, and I'm going to go ahead and unflinchingly extend this generalization to all of India, there are some pretty fabulous sartorial choices, some hilariously heinous ones, and also some that are down right outdated. For example, the metro is usually filled with a rainbow of colors and enough patterns to make your head spin (or induce flashback hallucinations, really it's no wonder so many people vomit in the metro).

There is certainly an art to pairing Indian clothes. Matching is ideal, the idea of things "going" together is not a universally recognized concept, and no black and brown do not go together, yes your bag and shoes do have to match, and yes, three or more people at your office will tell you within 30 minutes of entering if you have done anything wrong. Even if you thought you were pretty stylin, and feeling kind of sassy that day. You will be knocked down some pegs, be warned.

For the most part I stay true to myself. I take considerate advantage of the new incorporation of legging into the "Indian clothes" category (as opposed to "Western clothes", by the way). However, in much the same way that I enjoy certain things that I am not allowed to do at home for example, eat with my hands, be visibly sweaty, take my shoes off in nice places, and push, I do admit to breaking certain rules. I wear pants under dresses: usually my baggy Indian ones. This is something that Anika does and it looks good, this is something I do, and I look like I forgot to shave my legs, which is usually true. Also, my legs rarely see the light of day, so I worry for the safety of people's retinas when I take them out to play.

The next thing I'll admit to is something that I am actually sort of embarrassed about. I have succumbed to one of the larger trends of the late 90s early 00s, a trend that is only eclipsed by the scrunchy in its uncoolness, the claw clip. Everyone wears them here and there's a reason. It's hot! They don't pull all your hair out! (hairfall is an epidemic in Delhi). It doesn't mess up your hair if you just want to put it up for a second, or keep the front from plastering to your face. That's my justification and I'm sticking to it. To be fair, I resisted for the better part of 5 months, and the hottest months as well. That has to count for something.

And the last thing I'll add: you know that feeling when you get up and all you want to do is put on something cosy, or stay in your pj's and the thought of tights or jeans makes you want to just kiel over (Dad, you know what I'm talking about, sometimes tights just don't cut it!). Well I basically just get to feel like I'm wearing PJs to work most days, so that makes most of the other rules worth following.

Love,
Violet

Je m'amuse my muse: The Metro

So what could bring me back from the proverbial dead to blog another day? Of course a highly amusing, uncomfortable metro ride! I mean, the metro really is a capsule of this city, especially the part of the city that I engage with. Here you can test out all your psychological theories about Dilliwalas (or Delhi-ites for my international readers).

Today on my way to work, I was truly punished for being early. You know when you say that you were packed like sardines, into a car, into an elevator. You. have. no. idea. In fact, I want you to think of me every time you use that phrase and laugh to yourself at how you are exaggerating. You know, the way all you people in the states do when someone says it's hot. Somewhere in your mind a cartoon version of me pops up, with a pool of sweat around her, you sigh and think "ok, it could be worse".

That's how bad this was. I honestly don't even think sardines have it this bad. I was wedged in among the women in the ladies car, with my backpack suspended about 10 inches away from me, lovingly cradled between the smalls of two women's backs, one chatting on the phone and the other audibly sighing and visibly sweating. That's the other thing! The body heat! Development is super into innovation these days. I want to propose some device that can generate electricity from the body heat trapped in these cars. I can't even really claim to experience the worst of it, since I have a full foot of head clearance at the top, but I could feel people radiating from the six or so points of contact I had. 

I want to write something romantic about the small of the women's back that I was permanently pressed against, since I could geometrically map it out and even sculpt it based on how intimately I got to know it over the course of our twenty hot, sweaty minutes together. I'm sure the other girl felt the same way about 60% of the surface area of my body. 

Despite the frustrations about everything when you are packed in so tightly, there are two really fun things that can result from this critical density. 1: eventually you can really just relax and let everyone support you, like a jellyfish, ebbing and flowing with the aanewala/jaanewala. 2: you can understand molecules. You know that lesson in chemistry when your teacher tells you everything is made out of particles bouncing against one another, and the difference between air and the chair you are sitting on  is how close together the little blips are packed. My mind was blown, and I just couldn't believe it. Actually and seriously, until today I had no practical understanding of this fact. I get it now. 

And the difference between when the doors are open and when they are closed? Liquid and solid:

Missed me?

Love, 

Violet

A bloglet

So, even though I haven't had time to post in a while, I have been keeping a list with all the little things I want to write about. One of them is a little thing that makes me giggle. In Delhi, there are a lot of Sikh's who keep their hair. As most you probably know, this means that they wear turbans. There is an extra accessory that they have in Delhi though, with I can only think to refer to as a beard cosy. Anyone who has contended with the elements in Delhi with long hair, can understand why it makes sense to cover it in transit. 

There are a multitude of different modes of transit, and each comes with its own very particular  set of dangers in terms of arriving at your destination intact. Motorbikes/scooters can be the bomb, your hair rippling in the wind, feeling the air rush into your face, simulating decent weather. But really, you are just acting as a giant net, with your hair lovingly filtering the air for the lucky person breathing behind you. Not only does this mode of travel result in a hair nest that someone in Delhi could and would make it home in and that is impossible to politely fix, it is also adorned with dust, bugs, all kinds of pollution, and tiny samples of each smell pocket you passed through. Metros are not without woe. I won't go into graphic detail, but yes, I have been puked on, in the morning, on the way to work. Autos have similar issues as motorbikes, with the added bonus of street children's tugging hands, and collateral splatter from auto-drivers spitting paan. And walking? Just add it all together, and splash some mud around your ankles. 

Now that you understand the dangers, you can see why there are many different styles of these cosies. A very common one is a strip of cloth that covers the beard and is tied in a knot on top of their heads. Having my brain, I don't register the many men for what they are, normal guys commuting to work, and trying to look presentable when they get there. I mean, obviously I know that's what's going on. But in my mind, I like to pretend that there are handfuls of guys walking around, scootering to work and riding the metro with comically old fashioned tooth aches. 

Love,

Violet

Mental collections

So one thing I have a habit of doing in India is keep mental collections of certain kinds of things. Sometimes they become a material collection: like my photos of funny sign names, a la Engrish. One collection that's in my head but certainly alive and well is of "american" things that Indians love and I have never heard of. Yesterday I encountered completely foreign beast dressed up in an American outfit: domino's pizza with boiled corn on top. Surprisingly delicious, like really good. Add some cayenne and salt and it would be love, cheesy cheesy love. The whole phenomenon of boiled corn here is something that I love. At movie theaters or malls you can get "American corn", which is corn off the cob, usually in a little cup. My favorite thing about that is the contrast to pop corn, which is clearly not American

Love,
Violet (who's as American as American corn)