Hork Ok Please

There is a type of delivery truck here that's referred to as a "goods carrier" (with the English phrase used in Hindi as well). They tend to have brightly colored murals painted on them. Frequently, these murals are religious in nature. The picture above, for instance, has the famous guru and yoga practitioner Sai Baba of Shirdi painted on it. Some of the goods carriers are a lot more decked out with murals and various kitschy knick-knacks, but this happened to be the one that I had a picture of, so it's the one that you get to look at for now.



It is an unstated obligation for a goods carrier to have (in English) "Horn Ok Please" written on the back. On the first day of the trip, someone asked Arnab, who is Indian-born, why all the trucks said this, and he said that he had honestly never thought about it. I looked it up online later, and it turns out that this was to warn drivers against accidents around the time of World War II. Back then, trucks were run with kerosene engines due to gasoline shortages. These engines could explode and prove deadly at even the slightest accident, so it was encouraged that cars in the trucks' blind spots honk. Thus, the original warning was "Horn Please, On Kerosene," then shortened to "Horn Please, OK." Even though trucks arent allowed to have kerosene engines anymore, it's become part of the accepted style, and they still bear this sign.

The general anachronism of honking on the road to let other vehicles know where you are is very popular here. There are different patterns of honking that I've noticed which can variably warn someone you're coming, tell someone you're passing them, or warn someone that they are doing something wrong. As you can imagine, this means that essentially a driver is honking the horn almost the entire time he goes somewhere. Two or three times, I've hired a rickshaw where the driver periodically honked the horn while going down a straight, empty road. I'm not sure whether he thought that another car was going to materialize in front of him, or couldn't drive without the usual noise, or what. As a result of this, the sound of the traffic here is comparable to the sound of traffic in New York City, even though there are significantly fewer vehicles.

Diwali with the Family

Last Friday and Saturday were finally Diwali! Our hotel, like most of the other buildings in the area, was decked out for the occasion. There were garlands around the door and little lamps hung various places. Dattaji, one of the hotel-workers, also made a lovely sand picture for the lobby, as shown above.

On a typical day, people here are just as likely to wear jeans and t-shirts as they are to wear the more traditional Indian garb, especially if they're under thirty or so. During Diwali, almost everyone in Pune wore more traditional and formal Indian clothing. This included our professors, shown below.



On Friday, the hotel staff celebrated with us by giving us gifts since, for the last two months, they've been like our family. The girls were each given a sort of large toiletry case/small bag with the hotel logo, and the guys were each given a wallet. In return, we pooled together some money and bought a few lamps and a box of chocolates for the hotel stall. The large red-and-white lamp shown hanging outside the hotel below was one of our gifts.



The hotel also brought us some typical Maharashtrian snacks for the occasion that day. They came as a group to our rooms and wished us a happy Diwali while doing this, which was very cute. The thing that's cut into four flat squares is called chikki, and is similar to peanut brittle, but larger, thicker, and made with different varieties of nuts. I'm not sure how to name or describe the other thing. I don't actually like either of these, but I was charmed that they were given to us.



The hotel staff also lit sparklers and firecrackers with us, as in this particularly safe-looking moment below.



It seems worth mentioning here that the guys who work in the hotel are very kindly attentive to all of us in the study abroad group. For instance, I noticed that, after the first week, they had picked up on what everyone likes to eat for breakfast, what room everyone is in, who is roommates with whom, etc. When someone gets sick, the hotel staff seems to discover it. Then, the person who is sick will have each of the people who works in the hotel stopping in the hall to express their well-wishes.

I made a joke about how much the people who work in the hotel must be annoyed by us at one point and Arnab, the program coordinator, said quite seriously, "Oh no, they love you guys. They tell me that all the time." Truly, I cannot figure out the reason for this. It seems to me that the study abroad group would be pretty poor hotel guests. Many of the people in the group are pretty tame, but many of them are also noticably louder and messier than the usual hotel guests. It's probably inevitable that if you put a bunch of college students in a country with cheap cigarettes and no drinking age, give them someone to clean their room, and give them more free time than usual so that they can see the area, some people are not going to be very responsible. I would have imagined that sort of poor behavior from a few people reflects badly upon us all, but I guess not. I really don't know what the hotel staff likes about us. Maybe it's the way that you inevitably start to like people who you get to know from being in frequent contact with, or possibly it's some form of Stockholm syndrome.

Preparing for Diwali

Last weekend was Diwali, popularly known as the "Festival of Lights" in America. The word "Diwali" literally means "a row of lanterns." Everyone buys at least a few lanterns to hang outside, along with garlands, festoons and, typically, Christmas lights. The Christmas lights do make sense in terms of the general concept of creating a row of lights for Diwali. As a foreigner from the northern United States, though, I can't help but find it a bit funny to see Christmas lights hanging on Indian buildings in eighty-degree weather. Their removal from the usual context makes the effect a bit surreal.

For about two weeks before the holiday, the street was lined with the booths shown above. These booths sell puja goods (such as incense, flowers, and colored powders), a variety of fireworks, decorations, clay votive-candle holders, and intricate paper lanterns. These lanterns are often being made constructed before your eyes by the people who sit outside and tend the booths. They also sell a variety of colored sands and seives that are used to make intricate sand drawings on the ground as Diwali draws closer. It was very neat to see all of this, but you can't hang around gawking for too long, because it gets very crowded, and people here aren't shy about pushing each other a little.

Like Christmas, Diwali is the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year. It is the time at which women traditionally order a new wardrobe for the upcoming year. Traditionally, the holiday celebrates the return of Ram, the hero of the epic the Ramayana, to his kingdom, Ayodhya, after rescuing his abducted wife. (Like most epics, this isn't a story that lends itself well to summary, so I won't attempt that here.) Diwali also is the New Year, according to the traditional Indian fiscal calender.

Like Christmas, this is also the holiday for which people who are living away from their parents or immediate families will most likely come home. Something I found funny was how similar the Coca-Cola Diwali ads resemble the Coca-Cola Christmas ads. Here is a link to one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecGXsn3ejR8

Also, in terms of how people deck out their delivery trucks in India, the truck in this commercial is perhaps not the most improbable thing I have seen.

Halloween

Last Sunday night was Halloween. We were all travelling back from Mumbai that night, we had a test the next day, and almost noone else in this country was celebrating Halloween, so it looked likely that the holiday would pass without celebration. I was a little disappointed about this. Although I was indifferent to Halloween for several years, I've found that I like the Halloween celebrations I've attended at college. I was slightly sad that, for my last year, there wouldn't be one. After I had accepted this slight disappointment, however, two of the girls decided that they wanted to host a day-late halloween party the next night.

Due to a lack of formal costumes, everyone had to create their own. Many of them were references to TV series that I didn't get, but that seemed to be quite creative. There was also a hillbilly, Cheap Asian Labor, and a sad Obama supporter at midterm elections. The majority of the costumes, due to the resources available, were Indian-themed. Some of us wore the Indian clothing that they had acquired, including me, as you can see above. The two girls on the far sides of the picture came as the spirit of the Diwali holiday, wearing Diwali decorations.



The best costume, in my opinion, was Arturo, who came to the party late dressed as Arnab, who is our program coordinator (which essentially means that he is our babysitter, payed friend, and class TA rolled into one). Arturo did a great imitation of Arnab's mannerisms, as well as his dress, and began to tell us how disappointed he was in our behavior and to clean up the mess we were all making right away. For a second most of us were convinced he was the real Arnab, and we were all very amused. The Arnab impersonation also made his dancing later in the night especially humorous.

At one point in the party, one of the hotel workers, Santosh, walked by and looked in at the roomful of people dancing and laughing in strange outfits with some interest. Santosh is probably about the same age as us. Since he cleans our rooms, and thus sees us frequently, is on pretty friendly terms with everyone. We asked him to come in and join the party, but he looked very embarrased, and left quickly. Usually he is pretty unsurprised by us, but in that case, I don't think he knew what to make of the situation.

Overall, it was a very good time, and I'm glad that I got to have one last, unorthodox college Halloween.

Horniman Circle Park

This park was awesome.

Although I'm not sure why someone thought that metal alligators were the appropriate addition to the central fountain.

Catch of the Day

Since Mumbai is along the coast, I also got a chance to order fish! It was the second piece of fish I've ordered since being here, and was something I had really been craving. I asked for the catch of the day. It turned out to be the ridiculous-looking thing above. As you can see, it was complete with bones, fins, and head, and it was larger than my face.

Also, I am wearing a bindi here because I had been "blessed" that morning for Diwali.

Mumbai Trip

Last weekend, we went to Mumbai for a field trip. The planned activity was an architectural tour. Mumbai is unusual among Indian cities for having assorting contiguous styles of architecture, rather than fairly uniform neighborhoods. One of the historians that we read recently, Thomas Metcalf, wrote about how the various architectural decisions reflected different British administrative policies in that city. After doing this reading, I was excited for the tour. In actuality, however, it was highly disappointing. Our guide spoke in such a low voice that it was difficult to hear even when standing directly beside her, gave us little information, and rushed us past the majority of the buildings before we had gotten more than a glimpse of them. Still, the trip allowed us enough free time that I got to do some wandering and explore more public parks. The pictures above were from a public park that was two blocks from the hotel. The statue is Rajiv Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and seventh Prime Minister of India.