ferozi!

I read recently that Buddhists wear turquoise in rings for safe journeys and in their ears to prevent being reincarnated as donkeys. The gem is also believed to absorb sin. When seen in dreams it's auspicious, and the name, feyruz, means "lucky stone" in Arabic. In Hindi, it's ferozi-- I used to have so much fun saying it as a kid to the shop wallahs when I wanted to buy turquoise (or bright blue) lenghas or bangles.
The colour is everywhere here in India, and it never fails to make me smile.

my new favourite patyala pants : )

straight cheesing

Yesterday, I found this adorable picture of my parents at a wedding they attended 22 years ago (cropped, as I don't want my father to disown me). My mom flew into Delhi from Bombay today, and when I showed her the picture, I asked her what the slang back then was for someone smiling ridiculously. She just looked at me, so I taught her the phrase "straight cheesing." Because really, there's no other way to describe what she's doing in this picture:

ice ice babyyy

We went to an ice lounge in India last night. It was exactly what you would expect-- touristy, the kind of place where you go just to say that you've been. The entire place is -10° C (14° F), so they give you gloves and what I can only describe as an Eskimo poncho. EVERYTHING was made of ice-- the chairs, the statues, the walls, the bar, the cups.

quick BlackBerry photo to show my friends stateside what they were missing

Click below to see more pictures and find out how I (hopefully) managed to charm my way into getting a first class seat on my flight home in two days!

that funky monkey!

Just some monkeys that we saw in Agra! Hopefully they make y'all smile : )

In such a touristy area, though, you can't get to close to them! They've learned to steal food/jewelry/purses from people as they pass by. When I went to Haridwar a few years ago, I saw a monkey grab and take off with a lady's bag.

I love their adorable faces and their huge ears.

: )

*as always, you can click to enlarge these photos!

happy birthday, aaji!

I love you!

(ps you can click the picture to see the whole thing! hope you have a great day with mom--can't wait to see you in a few weeks!)

a scream of pain frozen in marble, a touchstone and symbol of love: a glimpse of Agra's architecture

Here are the detail shots of the sights we saw in Agra. A real post about our trip with actual pictures and the city's (astounding) history is coming soon, but  in the mean time, be sure to click "read more" after the Taj to see how beautiful the architecture is : )

family trees and mild hallucinations

have been the name of the game here in Delhi recently. I've been desperately sick for the last few days, but woke up this morning healthy, albeit to some slight yet amusing insanity. Sidenote: people are crazy. The last 72 hours or so were spent sleeping, eating Maggi noodles, staying away from the amazing Father's Day chocolate truffle cake that my uncle brought over, waking up horrified after terribly dystopian nightmares, and hallucinating about Sporcle. Last spring, when I fell sick in Athens, I kept having lucid dreams about being inside of Mario Party--at least this is a step up from that. I think. Anyway, I'm much better and looking forward to tackling a slice of that cake with my daily chai later today.

Father's Day was yesterday, so we went to brunch at this American-style diner. The food looked mediocre, but the decor was fun and 1950's-esque and they played a lot of ABBA! I'm glad I managed to get out of bed to go. They had waffles! I didn't eat much of anything, but just seeing waffles was fun. Breakfast is by far my favourite meal of the day, and it's unfortunately not really done up in India. I was, however, recently introduced (thanks Bhakti Mami!) to something we call paneer bhurji, which reminds me of Mama's Boy egg scrambles, so I eat that with rotis a lot in the mornings. Here's a picture of a bunch of memorabilia on one of the walls at the restaurant:

A few days ago, we went to see my grandfather's sister's family. She sadly passed away awhile back, but I met her children and their children. I'm so glad I got to see them-- there's so much of my extended family that I don't know well, and it's always a treat to meet them again (or for the first time!).

my aunt, grandmother, grandfather, two more aunts, nephew, cousin, and cousin's wife

My precious nephew. He was adorably shy before I enticed him to hang out with me by introducing him to Brick Breaker on my BlackBerry.

I wasn't entirely sure (read: had no idea) how exactly I'm related to all of the people in the above photos before I left their house. This is a common thing for most American-rasied Indians my age-- Family is family in India as I know it*, so it doesn't really matter how you're related, just that you are. Cousins often refer to each other as brothers or sisters, and everybody is closely-knit. I've officially decided that I'm going to make a complete, sprawling, Chopra family tree before I leave Delhi (in 8 days!) to come home. Wish me luck!
*I say "as I know it" because there are still parts of the country in which second or even first cousins marry fairly often to keep the bloodlines pure or for convenience/money or any other number of reasons. I imagine they didn't grow up calling each other bhaiya and didi...

and to think i'd been stressing about where to get my bangs trimmed...

I've seen three or four of these roadside barbershops in Delhi. I absolutely love them-- there's just something about seeing a man set up shop on the side of a busy street so that people can just mosey on up to his business ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD and get their hair cut. He's not washing cars or selling Girl Scout cookies or advertising a new restaurant while dressed as a piece of pizza-- he's cutting hair! And on a much busier road than any safe Girl Scout would dare sell cookies on. It's just such a typical "this is India" moment. Blood Diamond, anyone? Yeah... I haven't seen it either, but the majority of my friends traveling this summer have started to use the phrase. This is Africa! This is NOLA! This is Morocco! It's easy to use and perceive it as being used in a derogatory manner, but that's not always the case-- sometimes it's really just the best way to sum things up. It just comes naturally-- Elephant on the highway at 11pm at night keeping up with traffic? A man selling the same scarf to an Indian at 100 rupees and an American for 300? Drive-by haircutting? This is India; check, check, and check.

in which I fall in love with a city I've been to a thousand times

clouds right before the first rains of the season

I went to Bombay (I polled quite a few "Mumbaites" while I was there and the general consensus was that the name change was completely unwarranted-- many locals, from those who are third-generation to those who just moved to the city, still call it Bombay) at the beginning of June and had the most amazing time! I've been to the city so many times before, but never really saw it before my trip last week.  I stayed with my aunt and uncle and my adorable baby cousin:

Click through to read more:

clearly I'm posting on IST

 I'll make some excuses for my blog negligence: my Internet crashed on and off (but mostly off) for about two weeks, I've been busy working and traveling and hosting guests, I'm embarrassed by my camera skills, etc. I'm still alive! In the last two weeks, I went to Bombay and Agra, scored an internship, and saw two friends from home since we've last talked. I also have seen approximately 107 cows, although this number does include repeated sightings of the "regulars" who frequent areas around my house in Delhi, about 60 goats, two elephants-- one was moseying down the highway with two people on its back like a taxi with tusks, three camels, a bicycle with a cage on the back full of poor chickens stuffed helter-skelter inside with no room to move and their little feet grappling to catch on the wire mesh of the bottom (would it have been so hard to put a piece of cardboard down first? moorgi-wallah fail), 30 or so monkeys, far too many homeless dogs and cats, parrots, an unsettling amount of pigeons (whom I hate in any country), some really cute chipmunks, and a ladybug! Unfortunately no tigers, although my aunt and uncle's apartment in Bombay did overlook a national forest where they reportedly live-- before the area really took off in terms of real estate, the tigers would prowl around and eat babies and sleep in churches. True story.

view from the balcony of my aunt and uncle's house in Bombay of a national forest

[Sidenote: I know how touristy counting animals seems, but my brother and I used to count cows in Delhi when we were kids and now it's habit! We also used to count Christmas lights in Atlanta every year-- bonus points liberally appointed for beautiful houses or animated decorations.]
I'm having a great time, and even extended my trip by ten days to ensure that I make it to Kurukshetra and to learn as much as I can from the NGOs in which I'm working. The best part of my time in India so far? When I told a little boy selling tourist wares in Agra that I didn't speak Hindi (mujhe hindi nahi aathi), and he replied, "Didi, tode tode aathi!" It's true though-- the Devnagari languages have come back to me full force (Punjabi still and will forever continue to escape me), which is very exciting. I hope everybody is doing well and enjoying their summers! Stop complaining about the heat; when I landed in Delhi in May it was 117 degrees...at midnight. At least y'all have Georgia thunderstorms and ice that you  can enjoy without worrying about catching bacterial dysentery.

I'll leave you with this picture of a lightbulb in its packaging, which has nothing to do with anything, but that I loved:

♥

PS- IST means Indian Standard Time-- it's a bit of a joke amongst Indians in the US and essentially means that you're always running late.