day nine

To my complete surprise, I woke up feelin' fine and curiously hangoverless. Being 19 is good sometimes I guess. Pipa, Adam, Jimmy, Claire and I all decided to go on a small expedition to cruise the bookshop area of town and see the Botantical Garden, and so we set out. After yet more irritating rickshaw negotations (no, we do not want to see a shop on the way, go die), we made it to the area near the City Market. This was a dusty, crowded, and rather unpleasant street specializing in selling technical manuals and software guides. It was rather like the wastebin of silicon valley, For-Dummies guides to Linux and Auto-Cad meeting their maker after failing to find US owners. The book shops also sold huge quantitis of photo-copied and illicit copies of American best-sellers. Too bad John Grisham makes me catatonic.

The bookstalls soon gave way to fabric stores, and then we found ourselves at a busy and extremely dangerous looking roundabout. It was hot as hell outside, but Claire proposed we walked to the gardens. I was skeptical, remebering my earlier in the week Bataan Death March, so we checked with a cop, who told us that yep, it was 4 km away, and we really really didn't want to walk. The cops here are always impressive - usually tall and brick shit house like, wearing big white hats and sunglasses and sparkling belt buckles, almost always bearing bristling, forceful looking moustaches. He barked down a rickshaw for us and, leaning in and looking mean, sorted the drivers out for us quickly and efficiently. I am now going to ask cops to handle the rickshaw drivers for me whenever possible.

We made it to the garden and had a nice stroll. It's a lovely green place, built in the late 1700's and modeled on an English park - they even imported a glass house and some real live English gardeners. The park is full of strolling families and dogs and gooshy in love couples, walking hand in hand under stinking jackfruit trees and obscene sprays of tropical flowers, down paths filled with palm trees in perfect alignment. There's a very large rock formation in the center of the park, baking gently in the afternoon sun, and we climbed up it to discover a majestic view of a buring trash-pit and some goats. One should not go into life with expectations.

We bought some icy water at a concessions stand nearby. I had to feint for a while at the fridge since it was covered in angry bees, but one of the shop-keepers grabbed a water for me. I listened to a man carry out a protracted investigation over the sugr and fat content of the ice cream. Weight insecurity has come to India. (Lose weight now! Bollywood Body Sculpting! Low fat ghee! Fat-B-Gone sugar free kulfi!)

We desceneded again to the grass, and I decided it was time for a nap, wandering masculine eyes be damned. I flopped down in the luscious green grass and was perfectly content, watching up-side down as packs of teenage girls dressed in technicolor sarees strolled by, giggling underneath their pashminas. A few stray puppies fought in a half-hearted manner nearby a family of picnickers and (like everywhere else) an older sister tortured her younger siblings with a volleyball. The others got up to go and I reluctantly joined them, returning the smiles of a couple of good looking boys who had splayed down on the grass nearby me. (Indian men are cute.)

I found a very nice technicolor butterfly and chased it for a while. I think my fellow tourists were more mortified then the Indians, who probably just found it amusing. Or assumed I was crazy like everyone else.

We found another rickshaw after some fighting. I noticed too late that the meter was suspiciously shiny and new, and my suspicions were confirmed as it began racking up the rupees incredibly quickly. The driver dropped us off on Residency Road near the main shopping area and flatly demanded the incredible price of 170 rupees for what should have been a 60 rupee trip. We all got a bit puffed up and talked him down, and he finally relented when Adam whipped out his camera and began looking for his license so he could photograph it. (More fun and adventure!)

It was almost 4:00 and we were starving, so we went to a nearly deserted Northern Indian restaurant. The waiter initally said the kitchen was closed but relented, and the others ordered tons of food - biryani, chicken do-piaza, roti. I was feeling oddly un hungry and just had some Chinese cauliflower - a bit greasy for me. The place was however air conditioned.

We trekked down to our beloved discount whiskey store,and I found salvation: an ice cream joint. I ordered an excellent Indian treat: fruit salad topped with strawberry ice cream and those little crunchy breath freshener seeds that appear at the end of every Indian meal. This was delicious, and I ate it while sitting at the open air bar, a fat and rather drunk Indian man smiling serenely at me, occasionally hitting the candy seller next to him when he stared at me too long.

We braved the shiny and new mall to check the movie showing times - no dice - although I was impressed by the lavish food court and the various Indian sweets vendors vying for space with Hugo Boss and Staples. I was tired and decided to go back while the others tried another theater.

Thinking I was smart, I got a cop to hail me a rickshaw, but unfortunately, I found out about a mile and a half later the driver actually had no clue where he was taking me. In fact, he was taking me the exact opposite direction from where I wanted to go, highlighted by the fact that he was asking every other rickshaw driver we idled next to where my destination was. I got fed up and got him to stop, and after a brief but satisfying argument, I gave him 10 rupees and told him to fuck off, although he kept on pleading that he totally knew where he was going. Unfortunately, it was getting dark and I had no clue where I was, so in lieu of other options, I walked for a while in search of a decent rickshaw driver. I finally found one (although his rickshaw was slow as molasses and he had to stop for gas), but we finally got home.

I had some chicken and yet more pineapple for dinner, then stayed up to watch the startlingly bad "Small Soldiers" in an exhausted stupor with the others. I live a life of danger and glamour.