One of the few feelings worse than unrequited love is homesickness. Luckily, I have no small mass of weapons against this in my arsenal. The Fat Man of these, for all those nights when I don't feel like waiting for the cars to pass before crossing, is Indian film music. Fortunately, Bollywood is the largest movie industry in the world, so, unlike plutonium, I have a supply as inexhaustible as Arjuna' s magic quiver.
Today, for example, I chose to combat a particularly acute bout, brought on by realizing I had missed India's opening (and victorious!) World Cup cricket match, with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdmCAIURweI
or,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c94qGm5W874 http://www.hindilyrics.net/translation-Aloo-Chaat/Dhadke-Jiya.html with visuals and English translation, for the brave
If there exists a culture as foot-tapping as the one of the land of my heart, I have yet to encounter it. Although admittedly I am still expanding my experience of these; this week, for example, I met not only three more Indians, but four lovely ladies from the lands of Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia, on our field trip of international students. I spent the day with the latter three roaming around sites of historical significance, and the trinity were more effective than their nuclear namesake at blasting any blues to kingdom come and back again.
At one castle we had a blast (oops :D) hamming around and profusely photographing each other: climbing into the creature (pariah) cage, trying to pull the sword out of the stone, dubbing each other with the spare sword, palavering with princesses, discoursing with swains, peeking at the portcullis, fiddling with the (stuffed) ferret, making mirror faces at mannequins, primping at milady's dressing table, crouching with the (stuffed) bear, posing with (stuffed) PMs, sitting in the stocks, standing in front of the battle steed, goggling at the peacock, gazing o'er the ramparts, wistfully watching the waterfall, resting on the turrets, gaping at gears, and tramping towards the catapult (which we ran out of time to fire).
We also faced our three fears: tombs (Nigeria), heights (Indonesia), and dungeons (me). Shutterbug Malaysia's only fear was that her camera battery would run out before she was able to get that "one more!" Afterwards we also treated our (literally) shaking knees with a transfusion of strawberry-clotted cream fudge.
Speaking of desserts, for our Valentine's ladies' night in we had a grand array of those depression dispellers. Before I begin the litany I must mention that our day trip, for the first half of which I was a volunteer tour guide, also included as its final stop a visit to the milkshake store (well it's on my national heritage map anyway!), where we partook of a vanilla ice cream base blended with such additions of choice as chocolate Hobnobs, Maltesers, raspberries, malted milk biscuits, bananas, and Ferrero Rocher.
As for our home dessert menu, it consisted of: carrot cake with mock cream cheese-apricot icing; chocolate macaroons; roses and heroes (both by Cadbury); custard banana pudding with plum jam and chocolate biscuits, topped with a marshmallow, a cherry, and dark chocolate shavings; brownies; chocolate cupcakes; chips (crisps) and a layered bean/salsa/sour cream/guacamole/leek (leeks, ugh! haha) dip; and these were complemented by candy, flowers, and, yes, Disney heroine cards. It was awesome. (The 'ambrosia' barely made it since I tried to give half of it away on the way home to our local homeless man, being short any change...it turned out he's diabetic, 'that's ok, princess...you take care of yourself, babe!' I need to, since I'm on student debt...why is it though that homeless people, who I generally hear stereotyped as dangerous drunks and druggies, are among the most polite I've ever met? anyway, back to part 2 of the report on the holiday commercializing, I mean commemorating, love).
We were going to watch a movie too, but we had so much fun sitting around talking, that we ended up not doing that, which turned out fine actually, since I think I would have been outvoted on 'The Princess and the Frog' (which I have yet to see but comes highly recommended) in favor of 'Pretty Woman' (which I don't want to see again cause the theme of exploitation part of it makes me sad). Unfortunately, literally half of our female population, both single and taken, was absent from our gathering, having an essay due the next day (not counting those who brought their studies to stay over with!). It would be remiss if I did not also mention here the efficacy of work as a weapon of mass distraction. I'm thrilled at getting a distinction for my third grade, after self-fulfilling my half-joking prophecy of bombing the second one (my argument was apparently too multipronged...it's still my favorite though so I'm reworking it for my ungraded conference presentation -- take that, academia :D).
Essays were also the topic of the most mass hilarity I've partaken of since I was fourteen (we won't go into the source of that one). We were at the pub post-class (well I'm doing this part online but I still met up with the others) and one of my classmates, a professional actor who just progressed from provisional to permanent student, started recounting his first postgraduate essay experiences. It started out with 'You think you've got it bad -- I hadn't seen the inside of an essay since my O-levels more than 25 years ago' and gradually progressed through re-enactments of such disasters as a little old lady in line ahead of him at the post office being sweetly apologetic while carefully searching for change, and meanwhile causing him to get his backup essay postmarked exactly four minutes late (inside which he had sealed his receipt, and then did not have it as backup proof)...and, as we laughed so hard we lay down on the table breathless, he continued through escapades such as him booking a room at a hotel after the library closed, just to print his essay out, and then not having the cord to connect to his computer...and trying and failing to unplug theirs to fit into his own; then, not being able to format the page numbers properly so having to hand-write them in, after having 45 minutes driven home and back on 30 hours without sleep, to finally be able to print the essay, singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" the entire time to stay awake, and then falling asleep in the car as soon as he got back in after pushing the essay through the letter box early in the morning (being supposed to submit it by midnight), and being nearly caught at the scene of the crime; and finishing with a description of his finally receiving back his marked essay (which he passed), and finding the entire last page mis-formatted with alternate paragraphs aligned back and forth because he had was so sleep deprived he didn't notice it, with the polite comment in the margin: 'interesting structure'. All because he had gotten the best acting offer in five years, and he didn't want to have to turn it down by saying 'sorry but I'm writing an essay.'
Speaking of five, that was the number of finalists in each category at the latest university staff awards, and guess who won one? Our own secretary, my nominee!!!!!!! They had sent an email around with the student newsletter when I first got here, including a paragraph asking us to vote for the most helpful staff, and I nominated the two who had helped me, one with admissions, and the other with everything else and the kitchen sink. I decided they had a pretty good chance, since very few people were going to notice it or put in the time (an hour) to really commend the staff they knew...and I was right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The university put on a black tie entertainment and everything at the awards ceremony, complete with thick crystal trophies. And they even used one of my paragraphs in one of their winners' descriptions!! (anonymously, fortunately :D...see, I don't report just poor customer service :D) Her eyes, shining brighter than the trophy, made my week.
A few more sunbeams torpedoed the most recent dust devils on the horizon of my serenity. The first was a live South Indian dance performance, that turned up right under my nose on campus, when I had just started searching that week for a teacher. (And to which I fortunately arrived both punctually and respectably dressed, after having had to take the less direct train since I was hunting for my wallet -- which turned out to be deep down in my backpack the whole time -- and having serendipitously noticed at the station that, in addition to my coat, I was still wearing a snuggle robe).
The second was our weekly football match, which turned into nets practice since only 5 of us showed up (4 of which were female...our army classmate actually came by, saw us, and said he couldn't make it!! lol). When we weren't tipping the ball over the bar (which I finally achieved with both right and left feet!!!) we were devising ways to challenge our lone male classmate (run across the field and back, while both pairs try, and fail, to score!!), who was rocketing shots past us with a grin as wide as the field.
The last was a free student movie ticket, even though it was to a weepie (Never Let Me Go), it was at midnight, and my classmate and I were the only two people in the entire theater (sniffling and eating smuggled-in snacks). The movie (spoiler alert) is about a trinity of children who grow up together in an orphanage, discover they are clones being raised as donors, and, while trying to prove they too have souls, meanwhile fall in love, very messily. Almost as messily as, and reminiscent of, the three in Cyrano de Bergerac (I share his distinctive physical feature, and would love to share his soulful talent, if it came without his fate...) I almost forgot to mention that one of the stops on our tour was a church, including a bulletin board with the heading "What is Love?" hung all over with paper hearts on which visitors write their ideas, to be eventually made into a poem. The inscriptions included, besides those in other languages, the English messages 'love is giving, love is unselfishness, love is having no conditions, just loving, valuing unconditionally, love is truth, unity, love is my dear xyz, love is being together forever, love holds the world together, love is timeless, love is life, love is God, love is caring no matter what and never stopping, and love is family.' I won't tell you which was mine, because love is love, no matter what you call it.
To make war on woes, this bit I read today by Campbell has the right prescription: "Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain." As the Bollywood song says, yeh hii dua...yu hii sada.. I wish it would be thus, all the time. Even a capella, it's beautiful.
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