ten things fifteen
1. Nabokov's Lolita, like india: turnin me every way but loose.
2.
the river that drowned my Lolita then spat her back on the shore two days later, her words bleeding down her soggy pages
3.
4. the tagore/einstein conversations
5. What fresh hell is this?
6.
tibet? ok.
7.
yeah. ok.
8. huckabee? wait. what?
9. "hey, ajoel - put on something nice and meet me at the ham shop on the corner. i hired a driver. we're going to a new year's party at clarke'sexotica."
"ok, great!" internal monologue: is that, um...a porn thing or...something? and, if so, what does 'nice' mean, specifically, in this context?"
turns out, clarke'sexotica isn't porny at all. turns out, it's a plush 'wellness resort' outside of bangalore chockablock with rich old men and their art collecting wives. and paté. coulda fooled me. my new year's resolution? not to wear that studded leather harness to any more formal events.
10. I attended a court-mandated defensive driving course in 2001 which was taught by an elementary school teacher with a penchant for faux-naughty words. I think she was looking for some street cred from the hardened criminals-cum-pupils who populated her course. From this course I can recall a scant two things:
1. if someone demands a smoke break in the middle of Blood on the Asphalt, you should probably just stop the film and give it to them. especially if they have a record of road rage. especially especially if they have the words "thug life" tattooed across their throat.
2. honking one's horn means not "Eff off!" or "Get the eff out of my way", but rather "I am here. I am here."
People use their horns a lot in India, and I think it bothers some people. A fellow foreigner (British) asked me how I was handling "all the bloody blasting" which, I realized after an embarassingly unnecessary account of my recent bout with a stomach bug, is actually a charming way of referring to the incessant honking. I like it. I think this is because I know that it doesn't mean "eff off!" It's an affirmation. I am here. I am here, in India, on this street. I am here. I am really effing here.2. honking one's horn means not "Eff off!" or "Get the eff out of my way", but rather "I am here. I am here."
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