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...