Meanderings…

Moving to a new city, starting a whole new kind of life, etc., often causes the profoundest, most moving thoughts and experiences. You look back your old life, amazed at the new experiences open to you… you look with wonder at the suddenly wide horizon even as your heart swells with…

Haha, excuse me a minute. I’m laughing too hard to keep that up. Lemme tell you some of the things I’ve learned, said, thought and wondered about since moving into JNU:

–On the first day, after class, I went to the warden’s house where I’d left my luggage, to move into the hostel. Oh, hi doggie. Er… didn’t notice you there… Aw, you’re a cutie pie, aren’t you? Coochie coochie… Hmm your tail isn’t wagging. Oh…kay… I’ll just ring this bell here and wait for the warden to open the doo–oops! Ok, ok, calm down, no need to stand right next to me and bark at me. Er… nice doggie? Ok… not so nice doggie… Ok, STOP! HAAALP!

Ok, I’ll admit I stopped at “Er, no,” but I swear I wanted to say the rest. And he keeps asking the same question every few minutes. And no, in case your interested, he wasn’t cute enough to make such a question more palatable. But he’d just had some kinda minor operation so I couldn’t pound on him either. sigh. Moving on…

–Hmm ok… Can’t I just give in my own, decent looking passport-sized photo for a buss-pass? All right, fine then. I’ll just sit here on this dirty chair and smile at the weird looking web cam… Ah, it’s done… Ok, I can wait, it’s just a buss pass. La la la la… Hmm hmm hmm… Tralala–AAAARGH! No! That monster in the photo can’t be me… Nooooooooooooooooo….

But, as in most of the difficult and life-changing experiences we go through, I had to accept that it was, indeed, me, and now I’m stuck with this wonderful little thing that’s going to take me all over Delhi. And NO, I’M NOT SCANNING IT AND PUTTING IT UP HERE SO YOU CAN POINT AND LAUGH!

–Ah, lunch! I could dig into some roti-and-subzi, some dhaal-and-chaval now! Ah, bring it on… Now, what is that thing? Hmmm… Looks familiar! Why, it looks like a–COCKROACH!!

Suddenly, I wasn’t so hungry any more…

–Ah, after a long and difficult day of walking about, it’s good to kick back and relax alone in my lovely, dark, quiet room. Zzzzz… huh? wha–? Where’s that barking coming from? Ooooh-kaaaay…

Sigh. Yes. I had, indeed, been alotted the room just above the warden’s house and ole fluffy, my fuzzy, furry, furious feline friend was going to be my constant companion if not in full physical form, at least in voice. (Yes, yes, I know dogs are canine, not feline. But I had a nice “f” alliteration going there [You could even say I was "effing" hehe]. Plus, you know dogs hate cats and this was my sneaky, insulting, degrading revenge on ole Fluffy. Yes, I’m really that pathetic.) Perhaps I could hang outside the balcony on moonlit nights and go “Fluffy, fluffy, wherefore art thou so un-Fluffy?” (For the record, his name’s really not Fluffy. That’s just my pet-name for him, after his cheerful disposition [Haha, "pet"name, get it? He's a pet so... Ok, you get it.])

Ah, more adventures later. A whole lot to say about clothes turning moldy while waiting for me to wash them, walking about in a campus bigger than a small British colony and getting utterly lost, etc. What fun.