Classes, Monkeys, Monkeys, and OBAMA!!

नमस्कार हैदराबाद से!
Sorry it's been a long time, things have begun to get stressful here. First of all, I've learned that universities not in the States are not run like, well, universities in the States. Classes "started" on "5 Jan" (as they say...India--NOT NYC--is the land of abbrevs), but I'm still working to figure things out. Right now, it looks like these are my classes (if you want to call them that):

1. Intermediate Hindi: Taught by this lovely lady named Bhavani--Sophie and Jordan: pictures of the baby are coming after we go to her house for lunch next week, she wanted me to let you guys know. I got a 9.25 out of 15 on the first test...and it was one of the higher grades in the class...rock it.
   
2. Guided Readings in Linguistics and Comp Lit: Poststructuralism and Postcolonialism. Say the words "Thesis Research" and you get what you want.
3. Current Issues in Contemporary World Theatre: Hasn't started yet. Don't know why.
   
4. Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Indian Poetry: taught by Hoshang Merchant, the craziest man I've ever met (who self-references with female pronouns in Hindi, is a cool 275lbs with a footlong beard and even longer white ponytail (think Dumbledore meets Nathan Lane), and may or may not have had a career in drag somewhere in California or Ohio during the late '70s). He enjoys the words "c**t," "f**k," "c**k," and "fairy." He held us 20 minutes after class to tell us that his herpes (which he got from wild, nonconsensual sex in Purdue, Indiana) only breaks out under stress or around his sister. He called me a witch. A WITCH! I felt so Abigail Williams, and I didn't even tell him about the yellow bird I saw in the rafters.
   

Speaking of classes, our whole group took a trip to a different kind of school, the M. Venkatarangaiya Foundation in West Marredpally, where their motto is: "Abolish Child Labour: Gurarantee Right to Education." You've probably all seen pictures of me and a bunch of other "honkeys" (yes...a 6 year old orphan called me a honkey) surrounded by throngs of Indian former child laborers and wondered "What the hell is he doing?" Well, this place works to find ill-treated child laborers without the opportunity for education, take them in, and provide them with education up through the equivalent of the end of high school. Many of them, however, are 17 or 18 and still in the 6th or 7th grade, since some ran away from home in their teens to find this place--some kids really chase entrepreneurism with more determination than I've ever felt in my life. So we bring them all sorts of cool stuff, like notebooks, pens and pencils, volleyballs, everything. But what do they want? Cameras. So these kids take all our cameras, run away with them, and return them with memory cards full. The thing is, they were all pictures of us. When we tried to get pictures with them, they would immediately stop smiling and throw some mad shade, making us look like kidnappers or pederasts. How nice. Also, I took a ball to the face. Surprise.

Speaking of monkeys, a monkey fell through the roof at Domino's Pizza. I repeat: a monkey fell through the roof at Domino's Pizza...and everyone acted as if it was normal. There was drywall everywhere.

Anyway...OBAMA!! At Mocha, this hookah bar that we LOVE (they have hookas prepared with milk, ice, champagne, lime juice...it's really just great), some plastered Indian guy comes up to us and says "Sorry about eavesdropping, but are you Americans? Yeah? I could tell from your accents. Anyway, my girlfriend Martha is the chair of the Democrats Abroad Ex-Pat Society, and we're throwing an Inaugural Ball at The Grill Room (a really nice lounge in Banjara Hills a.k.a. the Beverly Hills of Hyderabad). Here she is!" So we all paid our Rs. 800 (about $16) for a "Black-tie" night including a CNN live stream, dinner, open bar and "dancing." So what do we do? Buy "super expensive" (Rs. 3000, or about $60), handmade, incredibly ornate साडियाँ (saris, for the girls) and शेरवाणी (sherwanis, for the boys), so we can party in style. But when we get there, we get the "Oh, the college students are here!" look from about 30 45+ embassy workers/adventurous expat divorcées in jeans, some even rocking the (gasp!) MOM JEANS. I know...everywhere you go, right? So we watch the inauguration (which was great) and then surprised the crowd with an intense dance party when a Techno remix of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" came on. I mean, open bar, Obama-shots, Obama-tinis, Obamagranate Margaritas...they were asking for it. I have no regrets--but I'm sure the bus company that took us there and back does.

On a related note, never try to smoke an Indian cigarette, no matter who tells you to. Just trust me. Not. Fun.

Now, I could go into stories about how my friend Jamie woke up with a rat on his face, how we all receive text-message love notes from our new Indian friends, how our friend Tamar was thought to have been kidnapped by Saudi terrorists and ransomed for $1,000,000, how a rickshaw driver got so mad at me that he may or may not have tried to kill me, how I was almost sold into white slavery, &c. &c., but I like to keep it positive, since, after all, we're all perfectly safe (90% of the time) and it's a total blast here. Plus, in about an hour, I'm leaving for the weekend to go to Hampi, a UNESCO World Heritage site on a cool river with tons and tons (like hundreds) of ancient temples. If I survive the 12 hour non-air-conditioned, overnight coachclass train ride there and the 13 hour (AIR CONDITIONED!) overnight bus home, I'll have more great stories to blog about. "How Darjeeling Limited," you say? I mean, I'd be thrilled to find out my mother got surgery to look like Anjelica Huston, moved to India, became a nun and chopped off all her haid, but that's just not in the cards now, is it?

नमस्ते,
Nick

Hyderabad 1/22