international night in Delhi

Last night (which is probably still happening for some of you as I return from Sunday brunch), Sarah and I were going to the Italian embassy culture center for the film/restaurant night that they have Wednesdays and Saturdays. We walked about a mile in the 100-degree (F) heat, trying not to sweat, but when we got to the gate we discovered that the event had been at 2:30 and was over, despite the time stated in their announcement. Flexibility is key here. So then we decided to go with choice 2, which was the Mexican film festival at the India Habitat Center. I'm not quite sure what the "habitat" part means; I keep envisioning baby falcons nesting high on the IDS building in Minneapolis. But there is a lot of international artistic and diplomatic "stuff" happening there nightly.

We took a "tuk-tuk" there - kind of like a bumper car on real roads - discovered yesterday that they are about half the price of taxis, and you get a lot more "fresh" air enroute, although your chances of being killed in traffic go up about 1000%. We came into the room late, after crashing several other events accidentally. The lights were off and every seat was filled. Someone motioned impatiently for us to close the door, so we stumbled our way to an empty area on the floor where we sat down. We had arrived in the middle of a Kafka-esque short film about a teenaged boy whose friend gives him a jammed pistol (we never found out why) and who gets into more and more trouble by accident until he is burned to death by a crowd at the end. Sigh.

Then there was a 5-minute short film with ONE LINE in Spanish - no subtitles - Sarah told me that the line was "Here is a souvenir." Nonetheless the guy in charge stopped the film, and said that due to the problem with the subtitles, we would move on to the next film. I had been kind of enjoying this one, because it appeared to offer more hope than the previous one, but oh well. The final and longest (by several measures) film was entitled "Tropic of Cancer." It reminded me of a film made by a teenager who has just discovered that life isn't always fair and that melodrama and symbolism is the way to demonstrate that through the arts. Like really bad poetry on film. Sarah is a vegetarian and therefore did not watch most of this film, which involved the trapping and killing of small animals, interspersed with closeups of peoples' eyes and sequences of either trucks along a highway or a foot-level view of bicycling or motorbiking. I kept looking at my watch. Sarah, on the other hand, had become involved in a subplot. An Indian man of about 70 had come and sat about two inches from her. I immediately suspected subterfuge, of course. Then, in an otherwise silent auditorium, he started making comments about the film to her and asking her what she was doing in India, etc. I whispered to her, "Sarah, watch out. He's hitting on you." But she didn't believe me until we got up to leave and he followed us and asked if we wanted to go out for a drink and whether we were coming back for the next film in two nights and if we hadn't gone into the Ladies' room he would probably still be following us.

Speaking of getting hit on, I learned yesterday, while at a market asking directions, not to just smile and nod when you don't understand someone, because Sarah pointed out that the man had been saying, "Are you two nice girls?" "Are you unmarried?" while I smiled and nodded and then said "thank you. "

Back to Mexican film festival. There was no discussion after the films, which was disappointing, as I was hoping that someone would explain why - why someone thought that this last film was any good, for example. And I'm pretty tolerant of weird films; ask my daughters. Plus it wasn't a very fun event just watching people and animals being killed and then getting up and leaving.

But we still hadn't had dinner. I asked at the main desk and they said all restaurants there were open only to "members" except for, unfortunately, the "all-American diner." I asked how one became a member and they thought that was really funny, except that I meant it. When I repeated the question they managed to act like my 6th-hour World History class from last year - "is she talking to someone?" No answer. Apparently membership is not for the masses. I immediately told Sarah that there was no way I was going to any all-American diner, darn it. Five minutes later we were seated by the very un-dinerish maitre d' who was dressed in a black suit. Virtually everyone else there was Indian. My favorite item on the menu was the blueberry pancake "dessert" - blueberry pancakes with ice cream and blueberry syrup and whipped cream. Otherwise, it was mostly a breakfast menu. So you could have a waffle for your meal and then pancakes for dessert. I wanted Sarah to take a picture of me with the tables of Indians in the all-American diner but she refused to be part of my "art and irony" project.

But we did walk through a silver-anniversary dinner celebration and discovered a setup where fans were attached to water tanks and sprayed water on you as you walked through them - isn't there something about the combination of electricity and water that's not good?
This is me pretending to be at the silver anniversary event. You can see why I decided not to go into acting.






Then Sarah took my picture next to the sign advertising the gathering of "genitourinary surgical associates" (?) or something similarly awkward. What was funny was that a group of people gathered watching as they waited for Sarah to take the picture before they walked past. I wondered what they were thinking. I also have decided to take off my purse in pictures so my descendants or aliens of the future (could be the same?) don't think that I was an adult girl scout.








Just because you have read this far, I will illustrate my point by adding a photo of myself taken earlier the same day at a fabric/clothing market we discovered called "Sarojini market."
Yes, the purse doth appear again.