Diwali Episode 2: Filtered Out

Cliche : Alone in a Crowd

Culture education continued... people say I'm really not very Indian, and maybe that hurts and maybe it rubs me the wrong way, but maybe its also true.

Maybe I'm not very Indian, because I didn't go home for Diwali like all the other Northerners I know, whose homes were not so far away. I thought I could cover my work backlog (more on that later :P).

I never thought it would get so deserted in hostel. I don't mind eating alone in a crowd of strangers. There's a strange sense of anonymity and insignificance that brings me calm. But in an empty dining hall, with just a group of people huddled on one table, a group of people I happen to know - Southerners who couldn't get home and back and still stay home long enough for it to be worthwhile - it became natural to gravitate toward them with my meal.

And I don't think I've ever eaten a lonelier meal in my life. Alone in a crowd of friends and acquaintances who chatted and laughed and ate and ignored my presence altogether. Not because I was unknown or not liked by them, but because I couldn't understand their language.

Maybe I'm not very Indian; but if these are Indians, then maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Diwali Episode 1: The Spittle Attack

Festivals are the time you really get to see the true culture of a people. Like this Diwali, my first in the city of Delhi. Nothing could have prepared me for the awful experience of being spat at.

Yes people, I was spat at! Out on the road, near the bus stop, buying diyas, life couldn't have been more blissful. And then some guy, old enough to have been my father - but heaven knows all other comparison ends right there! - didn't see me cross the likely trajectory of his salivary waste. ewwwwe.

And it was my first day in my new jeans too.

And it was my first day as a bollywood-style shrew too.

"If you hadn't been old enough to be my father, I would have slapped you!!"

Believe it or not, but that's what I said!

A little darkness to light up a smile

Rumour has it, that its alive - the Big Orb of Light that illuminates the dark winding path between our two girls' hostels. It definitely has a Will of its own.

At the very least, we often speculated that it might have motion sensors attached to it, because it sometimes shocked us by turning on just when we were passing by. Sometimes. And then there were jokes galore about just what types of girls could 'turn it on'.

Usually, it displayed the general characteristics of other living creatures in our campus - note that I'm talking about the ones that have a life! - that is, it never worked if it could help it. And what a cause for scorn and complaint it has been - countless near-accidents and unknown-creature-scares.

Today, as I was walking to the lab after dinner, it was taking a break as usual. And as I closed on the crucial stretch of darkness that is its domain, I heard shrieks and rolls of little tinkling laughter coming from a bush, a speedy mass whizzed past me into another and a highly watchful teenager appeared upon the scene not far behind, peering into dark corners cautiously. And for once, I was smiling as I walked past that stretch of darkness, hoping the light didn't turn on and ruin their game of hide and seek.