A quiet couple of days in Delhi (if that's possible, given the eternal beeping & men bicycling down the road shouting "pani! pani!" & dog fights & everything else)...

We're all alternately feeling on the cusp of getting sick, so lots of sleeping & hanging out & having chai with hot brownies at Turtle Cafe as of late. Errands too. Picked up MN's petticoats for her various saris. Bought a few gifts. JW is over browsing at my love/nemesis, the clothing store FabIndia, & AJ went back to return a bag at home. MN & fiance are exhausted, & the wedding festivities haven't even started! They're currently picking up wedding bands in another part of town. Oh, & the marriage ceremony in court is now re-scheduled for Monday instead of Tuesday. Long story.

We're staying with friends of MN, a family of 8 siblings from the northeast part of India. The big city there is called Manipur (sp?), for those of you geography buffs. Burma/Myanmar is on the other side of the border. The family is from the Naga tribe. So they're Indian in terms of nationality, but they look more Asian than Indian. Apparently, after Independence, the people in the region were told they'd become independent themselves, but that's never happened. And I'm told there's a separatist movement there that's alive & well. One of MN's friends had a story about getting kidnapped for a few hours on a windy road. Her father & brother are involved in politics & apparently this has happened to a number of their family members! I'd like to learn more about this area. (I'm cooking up ideas for fellowship projects -- anything that could get me back to India on a "full ride.")

I'm hoping to meet up with a journalist friend in the next few days. It's harder than it sounds, given that Delhi's so big & because there are a few of us we occasionally have to negotiate who's doing what & going where. Take today. We went to a mall in South Delhi to get a gift, then tried to take an auto-rickshaw to Connaught Place (central Delhi) to meet my friend. But the auto-rickshaws wouldn't take us the 18 km because it was too far. So we went back to our neighborhood, GK -- also in South Delhi -- & made plans to meet up later.

I still have no idea of the geography of Delhi. I know AJ's family is in the northern part of the city. We stayed first in central Delhi, near Khan Market, & now are in South Delhi, maybe 10-15 km away from that neighborhood. There are so many roundabouts & two Beltway-like roads encircling the city. Shouldn't it be easy, given those landmarks? But it's not. And it's bizarre to have no internal map when I'm so used to figuring out cities pretty easily. Needless to say, nobody's asking me for directions here.

Not much else exciting to tell you, so I'll sign off for the night.

S.