Aftermath

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LibraryGirl wants to know if I really spent my time at Canadian weddings boozing and flirting with boys. I suppose the truth is that I didn't, really. But I've consumed my share of celebratory glasses of champagne and been checked out by my share of inebriated men who are trapped at weddings. This seems to be the time honoured way of passing time at a wedding in Canada; in India, this is not a possibility. At least, not any wedding (or wedding-related function) I've ever attended here. Instead, you go around being introduced to people you've no interest in meeting and who've no interest in you except the purely genealogical: witness this one, where I must have been introduced to at least four dozen relatives with the words "this is my granddaughter, you know, my daughter Paru's child. She's thirty, and not married yet, but she has a PhD." Trust me, that gets old fast. Note that while I might be exaggerating here, it's not by much!

The reception itself was... nice. Everyone was all dressed up and they were fun to deconstruct. I got to play at being a glamourous Indian woman one last time, complete with sari (red and black silk with beads) and jewellery (gold) and heels (wobbly). The food was good, though that's already palled for me. I mean, I've been eating wonderful Indian food for 4-5 months now, so what's another such meal anyway. Aunt and I were to spend the night at a hotel in Bangalore and then spend the next day shopping before returning to Mysore. And so we returned back to the hotel and debriefed. And then, at midnight, we were awakened by the wedding party!: they'd decided to come hang with their out-of-town guests after seeing off the stragglers at the reception. That was the best -- we actually got to talk to the bride a bit though I do think she found the 12 or so of us gathered at the hotel all a bit much.

The next day Aunt and I spent wandering around the used and new bookstores of Bangalore. Oh joy! I'm now stocked with enough books to get me through to the end of my trip here (at least, I think so) and I've confirmed that (new and used) books are probably one of the few things that cost as much in India as they do in Canada. The stuff you can buy here though is crazy: I picked up a 70s edition of Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, for instance, for just over $2! It's the kind of book that no one reads nowadays (with good reason) but since it's one of the earlier fictive attempts to deal with questions of academic freedom and political repression in the university, I've always thought I should read it sometime. Well, sometime was yesterday, when we had no power for 12 hours and I therefore had very little to do. So, the book is dated and depressing but interesting in an odd way. And I can't imagine the circumstances under which I'd have read it in Toronto so this was all to the good!

The lack of power yesterday was the last straw. I've been sick, on and off, for the past 2 weeks -- nothing major but just sick enough that I'm always conscious of it. And if you add traveling and meeting relatives reluctantly to that and then garnish it with the irritation of being ill and not being able to turn on a fan, you'll have an accurate picture of my state of mind (and body). So I've invested in an inverter, or UPS, or whatever it's called. It's a little black box that will apparently store enough power to keep us going with a light and a fan for a few hours when the power fails again (as it surely will). It wasn't cheap by Indian standards (about $400).... and it reminds me that quality of life in India is a matter of wealth in a way that it isn't in the West.