The Hunt for an Anarkali, or Indian Wedding Wear Would Make a Vegas Showgirl Proud

When my parents come to visit in a few weeks we will be going to an Indian wedding of the son some family friends. Naturally, I'm delighted as I've been wanting to go to an Indian wedding for pretty much the entirety of my life and have look upon this as the perfect opportunity to purchase some awesome Indian wedding wear. I already own a sari, but I also wanted to purchase an anarkali, which is basically an long elegant Indian dress worn over leggings. A friend of mine from work was also wedding-wear shopping, so last weekend we embarked on an exciting Hunt for an Anarkali.

Now, it's pretty clear that Indian women's fashion wholeheartedly embraces bling and brightness, but honestly, I was NOT prepared for the cornucopia of sequins and rhinestones that confronted me in EVERY shop on EVERY dress. Seriously, y'all--anarkalis look like what would happen if a Vegas showgirl and Dolly Parten had a lovechild who went on to star in the beauty pageants.  What I'm saying is--India must single handled keep the glitter and glitz industry in business.

In every store that we went into I told the sales girls, "I'm looking for something very simple, no rhinestones or sequins" and every time they would then proceed to pull out dresses covered in rhinestones and sequins for my approval. I was annoyed at first until I realized that, actually, what they were showing me were the simplest anarkalis they had; there were literally no anarkalis not blinged out.

And it's not just the bling, y'all. The colors of these things are blinding--bright oranges and turquoise and neon green and EVERY color of pink (but especially hot pink). Basically, if it looks like a color your 5 year old might want to dress her Malibu Barbie in, you'd find it there.

Now, I bet you're thinking, Wow, so bright and so many rhinestones--I bet these anarkalis are pretty expensive, huh? And you know what? For once, in India, you'd be right. Anarkalis are effing pricey. I guess I was expecting them to be on the cheap side (like everything else in India) but what I learned is that apparently wedding-wear (even for guests) is crazy expensive in India. (Not surprising, I guess--it's not uncommon here for families to go significantly in debt to pay for a daughter's wedding and families save up for years to pay for these three-day-long lavish events.)

Point is, the cheapest decent anarkali I could find cost about USD$200, and the ones I liked were significantly more than that. So, much as I did actually enjoy the shopping and trying on of the anarkalis--I just couldn't bring myself to drop that much dough on an outfit I could only wear to an Indian wedding or when performing at the Ice Capades.

So, instead I'll try to borrow a second sari from a friend. Plus, now that I've finally figured out how to tie a sari on--no mean feat--I need excuses to practice my new-found skill!

Was that a dead body outside my office?

Last Tuesday, there was a man lying on the street (just off the curb) outside of my office. He was fully covered with a mangy-looking blanket, with only his feet sticking out--no shoes. The blanket was covered with flies. He was lying in the sun on a busy street in the middle of the day, with no one paying him any mind.

I said to my co-worker, "I think that's a dead body."
My co-worker responded, "Nah, he's probably just sleeping."

Let's consider:

Dead Body?	Just Sleeping?
Who sleeps on the side of a busy road?	Who leaves a dead body on the side of a busy road?
No, but seriously—isn’t it weird to fall asleep midday in the middle of the street and cover yourself totally with a blanket?	Actually, my colleague, who lives in the neighborhood, says he passes people sleeping like that all the time.
But, isn’t it possible all of the people my colleague sees sleeping are actually dead bodies too?	Unlikely. How many people can be dying and having their friends dump their bodies off the curb? Indian culture is pretty respectful of the dead.
Ok, sure—but the blanket was covered in flies.	EVERYTHING in India is covered in flies. (Just look at your favorite dosa stand.)
Why would he choose to sleep in a busy road, though? Wouldn’t he find a quieter nice side alley?	Maybe the smaller the street the more likely that you’ll get run over? Or, maybe he worked in the shop he was lying in front of/truck he was lying behind and couldn’t really leave the area?
Ok then, let’s go with “Just sleeping”.	Yup, definitely just sleeping.  That really makes it better for everyone concerned.

 
So, "Just Sleeping" it is.

Salon of Terror!

As many of you know, I got my hair cut very, very short before I came to India. I've spent the last 8 months growing out that bad decision, which had resulted in a long and mangy mullet-like situation. Clearly, it was time to visit the hairdresser.

Now, I considered going to my usual place when I was back in NYC 3 weeks ago but ultimately decided against it because (a) they were the ones who gave me the not-so-great haircut to begin with and (b) a cut at my place in NYC is 10 times as expensive as in India. (Nope, that is not an exaggeration. Literally, 10 times as expensive). So, with no small amount of trepidation--India is, after all, a country filled with women with lovely long predominately straight hair--I went last Saturday to the salon.

Now, I don't want you all to think I went in blindly. Quite the contrary, I did my research both in terms of crowd-sourcing friends and internet reviews. Ultimately I decided to go to the Martina Wu Salon on the recommendation of an Iranian friend here with curly hair. "Go see Martina," she told me "My curly hair was very happy."

So, to Martina I went. But, things took an immediate wrong turn when I walked through the door and without any ado they ushered me to the hair washing station. NO, WRONG!!! Curly hair is not meant to be washed wet--any good salon knows that curly hair should be cut dry in order to see how the curls will fall. At the very least the stylist actually cutting your hair should see what you look like with dry hair so she can get a sense of how tight the curls are, etc. This is VERY important because otherwise a stylist might cut wet curly hair thinking it's like straight hair--i.e., what you see is what you get--without realizing that about half of that length is going to be sucked up by the ringlet.

Things were not off to an auspicious start. And, to make matters worse the fellow washing my hair did two further unforgiveable things.  First, he dried my hair by vigorously rubbing it with a towel, NO WRONG AGAIN--HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF UNCONTROLLABLE FRIZZ YOU TOWEL-DRYING MANIAC!!! Then, and I shudder to tell you all this, he took out a comb and combed it. Combing, my beautiful curly hair--which hasn't seen the like of nary a comb or a brush for about 20 years (since I realized the cotton-ball head is not a good look for anyone)--I could have cried!

With the integrity of my curly hair having been violated, I was left, wet and somewhat overheated (because there was no AC on the salon) in the chair of execution, er, the stylist's chair. Adding insult to injury, some fool decided it would be a good idea to keep a Maroon 5 song on repeat.

Then Ms. Martina Wu made her appearance.

She picked up scissors and made a pass at my hair. "NONONONONO!" says I "Let me tell you what I want." And so I explain that my hair is curly, and that I'm not fond of the mullet situation going on, and than I showed her a picture of my with a haircut I liked from about 3 years ago.

Says Martina Wu, "It can't be done."

Now, to be fair, I think Ms. Wu was probably correct--my hair is still too short to obtain the length and fullness of the hair in the picture. But still, I had to believe things weren't quite so dire. So, Martina and I spoke for the next 5 minutes about what could be done, and then she gave me what may have been the fastest haircut of my life. And then she let some of her crazy minions loose on my hair with a blow dryer before sending me out the door.

Ok, now to be fair, I actually think that--disastrous blow drying styling aside (not that that matter much because after the tragic combing event there was little that could be done to preserve the sanctity of the curl) the cut is not that bad. It's even...cute. (Well, you can judge for yourself from the photo above.) But the whole experience was so traumatic, I think it may have turned my hair gray.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my my faithful readers! I sure you're all wondering what I did this Thanksgiving... well, I'll give you four guesses:

a. Worked all day.

b. Took a moment to remember everything in my pretty awesome life that I'm thankful for, including the fact that I didn't get stuck at Penn station waiting on train cancelled due to snow storms.

c. Ate a delicious Ethiopian meal at the Ethiopian Embassy in Delhi (pictured above) with a bunch of French and German friends.

d. All of the above.

Of course, (d). What can I say? Even without turkey or pumpkin pie (mmmm, pie) Thanksgiving can be pretty awesome. I can't wait to see what Christmas in Delhi is like!

Durga Puja

This post is about a month overdue, but I wanted to tell you guys about my Durga Puja experience. October is basically a month filled with Hindi festivals in India (which explains why I got two long weekends off from work in a three week span). I've already described my experience with the Dusshera festival in this blog (see below for tales of outdoor theater, exploding effigies, rampant nationalism, etc) but what I neglected to mention was that falling smack dab in the middle of the Dusshera festival which runs for 10 days is the Durga Puja festival.

I actually still haven't figured out if the Dusshera festival is in some way related to the Durga Puja festival since the two seem to basically celebrate the same thing--the triumph of good over evil--or if these are two totally separate events, each being celebrated by different sects of Hindus. (I've actually asked this question to a number of Hindu friends, but there seems to be no consistent answer.)

Basically, Durga Puja celebrates the victory of the 8-armed goddess Durga over an evil buffalo demon. It's seems to be celebrated by large fairgrounds filled with people eating chanting and dancing around an effigy of the Goddess. Also, from what I saw, there seems to be much ritual blessing going on--though that is pretty common all over India (and not just during a festival).

So, on the date of Durga Puja off I went with a friend to a nearby fairground. Here's the thing, in India, and especially in Delhi, there are just SO MANY PEOPLE everywhere that events get pretty big, pretty quickly. Below, for example, is one view of the fairground we attended (after standing on line for 40 minutes just to get in the front gate); that big structure is housing the effigy of the Goddess Durga.

The inside was packed by of chanting people trying to dance around the effigy and it was hot and sweaty and I couldn't get close enough to even see the effigy and it was not a very pleasant experience. So, my friend and I left the large tent, ate some delicious kulfi (Indian ice cream).

Other than see the effigy and eat there really wasn't much else to do on the fairgrounds, so we decided to leave and wander around the area, which was dotted by smaller celebrations.

And that's when we stumbled upon this:

Off of the main road we came across a small tent filled with people, smoke and incense. In fact, the air was so heavy with smoke that it was difficult for me to stay inside even for a few minutes. But for a few minutes I took shallow breaths and enjoyed the spectacle laid out before me.

An old priest, sitting before a small but richly decorated effigy of the goddess was giving his blessing to all comers. From my vantage point it seemed that the blessing consisted of a few words of prayer, marking the supplicant's forehead with red dye and rice, and eating some for the food offered by the priest. My friend urged me to step forward and be blessed, but I declined since as an agnostic-leaning-towards-atheism it can make me feel a little uncomfortable to play with other people's religious practices. (Which isn't to say I mind being blessed, of course, if someone wants to bless me of his or her own accord I'm all for it. I just think that it's a bit disingenuous for me to put myself forward as a supplicant.) I did however get a magnificent picture of my friend during her moment of blessing.

You could like, feel the spiritualism dripping from the walls of that tent. But after a few minutes I couldn't take the smoke anymore so we left and resumed our wandering, coming across many several other smaller effigies of the goddess and attendant dancing and/or blessing ceremonies. The whole area had a truly celebratory and spiritual vibe about it. Though, when it comes down to it I think I have to say that I preferred the exploding effigy celebrations more.

And you thought the CIA was bad

Last Thursday afternoon I was cranky and beginning to get a bit frantic--my boss had been MIA all day despite the fact that we'd promised to get a time-sensitive affidavit out the door for a South African NGO who was filing a class action suit against a consortium of mining companies. The South African NGO had already chased me twice that day to ask for the missing affidavit, so as you can imagine I was chomping at the bit once my boss entered the office around 5pm.

He was in a good, celebratory mood. "We had a good, big victory in court today," he said. "The judge made an important interim decision in our favor."

I didn't care. I was like, "That's great, Mr. Bossypants, but we need to focus and get this affidavit out the door now." I then grumpily sat in his office for the next hour while he rotated between going through the affidavit with me and accepting phone call congratulations. "Focus, Bossypants! Focus!"

Well, when I opened the paper on Saturday morning, I felt a bit ashamed of myself. My boss's courtroom victory had made front page news. And not just in my morning paper--every paper I've looked at in the past few days has been talking about it. Of course, as I've been reading the story I'm beginning to understand what a HUGE deal this is.

Basically, my boss just took down the head of India's central bureau of intelligence (CBI). (This is like India's FBI.)

It's like this, see. My boss has been appointed the Special Public Prosecutor by the Supreme Court on a nationwide corruption case called the 2G scam case. To make a long story, very very short (though you can read more about the case here if you're interested), companies bidding for the right to internet providers in various states bribed high ranking government officials to ensure their tender won the bidding process. This is a BIG deal; the amounts in question are about USD $490 million and, according to Time magazine, the scam was listed as the second biggest abuse of power, just after the Watergate scandal. 

 Now, as a side story, once the corruption of these officials came to light a number of them went to go see the head of the CBI who was overseeing the investigation against him. When asked if he had met with the allegedly corrupted officials, Mr. Head of the CBI denied it and produced his office's visitor's log to prove none of the officials had come out.

Course, it turns out Mr. Head of CBI kept two visitor's logs--an official one and an unofficial one--and only produced the official one to show that he hadn't been meeting with the allegedly corrupt officials whose improprieties he was investigating. However, the unofficial log, which eventually came to light, shows that the allegedly corrupt officials and Mr. Head of CBI were BFFs.

So, yeah, basically the Mr. Head of CBI is sketchy as hell and almost certainly totally corrupt. (I mean, just look at his picture--doesn't he just look slimy?) The victory in court consisted of my boss accusing him of interfering with the investigation into the corruption, and the Supreme Court agreeing and removing him from the head of the investigation. If you ask me, it sounds like this CBI dude should also be investigated for being corrupt as hell, but since he's led a "storied" career and is set to retire next week, apparently the Supreme Court will let this one slide.

Indian, man. Never a dull moment!