Ferris Wheels

I stopped by Parvati Hill again yesterday afternoon because I was nearby. There was a little ferris wheel set up on the hill above the slum, and the little kids were loving it.


All the ferris wheels I have seen here have no motor and no electricity. Here's how they work:


Those guys in the middle walk from bar to bar, and the weight of their bodies turns the wheel. The kids sit cross legged in little baskets. When the guys want to get off, they drop down onto the outer rim, ride it up to the top, grab the edge of a basket, and casually dangle off it by one arm as the wheel turns and brings them around to the ground. They were wearing flip flops.

If you click on the pictures you can see them enlarged.

Manuscripts

We took a field trip today after class to the very small museum at Tilak Maharashtra College. The museum is "currently" having an exhibit of implements for Vedic sacrificial rites, which looked like it has been up for a long time now. There were lots of big wooden spoons and swords and bowls and diagrams of sacrificial grounds and models of various containers for fire (the "Oblation Eater" in Sanskrit parlance), etc. etc. There were also lots of backlit black-and-white photographs of a Vedic sacrifice being performed by Brahmin priests, which was cool because I've never seen one. (Yes, in case you are wondering, they still go on, not infrequently, although in some parts of India, especially the south, the rituals which call for animal sacrifice are now "vegetarian", meaning the priests slaughter a little goat made of dough and toss its tasty dough entrails into the fire, instead of a using a real goat.)

I was mildly interested in all this, and was lazily wandering around the cases looking at these things, until I noticed one case off to the side that contained a small exhibit of Sanskrit manuscripts. Many of them were illuminated, and some of them had really tiny calligraphy, sometimes in decorative patterns, and they were really well done. They were breathtaking, actually. I really like illuminated manuscripts, and these were gorgeous. Like all great illuminations they managed to be evocative with very little material; if you looked at them closely enough they would transport you into their tiny world. I was told they were "only" a few hundred years old, and that the museum has hundreds of them in the archives, but not on display. The archives, as far as I could tell, were a bunch of green metal lockers that lined the walls and were full of dusty pages of paper tied between pieces of cardboard. The Indian National Mission for Manuscripts estimates that there are about 5 million manuscripts in existence across India, most of them in family collections or in monastery libraries or languishing in collections like this. Some are in Sanskrit and some in vernacular languages, and hundreds of thousands of them are unpublished. It kind of makes me think of the final shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Some pictures are posted here. They don't do them full justice, obviously, but they'll give you an idea. In case any of you are still wondering what to get me for my birthday (coming up soon in February), now you know.

Matheran and Monsoons

Since it's the most fundamentally important part of life in this area of the world, and since it's in the news all the time, and since I live every day with it, it's time for another

MONSOON UPDATE: Maharashtra has now received record rainfall for the first time this season.  Before this morning I literally hadn't seen the sun in twelve days.  It's even been enough rain to compensate for the drought earlier in the summer.  Reservoirs are almost back up to full capacity and should have enough water in them now to last until next monsoon season.  Everyone is very relieved, but water rationing is still in effect in Pune, partly because it's difficult to purify turbid monsoon water (another problem the monsoons bring: dirtier drinking water and more disease) and probably partly because of plain old bureaucratic incompetency.  This is making some people angry.  Yesterday, for example, representatives of Shiv Sena, a well-known Marathi cultural awareness group/charitable organization/Hindu nationalist political party/right-wing paramilitary organization, which is involved in local politics on many levels, walked out of a meeting with people from the Pune municipal water department in protest.  Shiv Sena seems to campaign on these sorts of anti-corruption, social improvement stunts; for example.  But basically the real problems here are over.  Sooner or later things will go back to normal, and Maharashtra will have dodged a bullet for another year.  Other parts of India are not so lucky.  The drought is still particularly bad in western Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, the so-called "bread basket" of India.  Combine this with Hillary Clinton's recent visit, during which climate control initiatives were discussed and negotiated, and you can imagine what's on people's minds here.

One of the smaller consequences of all the rain was that I missed the solar eclipse on Monday morning.  Okay, actually I missed it because I slept through it, but if I HAD been awake I WOULD have missed it because it was raining hard.  Apparently, you could see it very well in Varanasi.  The Times of India reported on the front page: "For three minutes and four seconds on Wednesday morning, an ethereal blue-grey darkness descended on this city of light.  To the east, across the Ganga, it was like God's own eye flashing in the sky . . . A roar went up at the ghats as people gasped and screamed in awe.  Some stared in stunned silence while others shook hands with total strangers in fits of joy."  I wish I had been there.  The story is complete with a picture of wrinkled old sadhus watching the eclipse through futuristic eclipse-glasses.  There was also a stampede at one of the ghats that killed two people.

Another consequence of all the rain is that a lot of roads and railway lines have been washed out, closed, or disrupted.  One of the lines that got disrupted was the line that was supposed to take Sam and me to Matheran for the midterm break.  We found this out two hours or so into the train ride, after the train had been stopped at an anonymous station for 45 minutes and we started wondering what was going on.  A young Indian business manager named Vishnu who had befriended us and was practicing his English finally decided to ditch the train and offered to help us navigate the train system.  Vishnu took us with him to another train, argued with the conductor in Marathi so that we didn't have to pay a fine, and then introduced us to a few of his friends, and we all sat around trading curiosity and good-will for the rest of the ride.  "What's the biggest difference between India and the US?" Vishnu asked me.  The best I could come up with on the spot is language.  In America there is one native language, or probably two if you count Spanish, but in India there are like 50.  "I think it's efficiency," he told me.  "India is rich; full of resources.  But it's poorly managed.  And there's corruption.  That's why it's still like this," and he gestured around him.  It's a common sentiment I've encountered, and it's changing the country little by little.  It's also the sentiment that Shiva Sena tries to capitalize on with the activities described above.

Vishnu finally told us where to get off, bought us some tea, put us on a bus that was still going to Matheran, and eventually we made it there.  (Seriously, he was amazingly kind.  Incidentally, he was slightly confused when we tried to thank him for the tea.  Saying "thank you" here--who would ever have guessed?--is totally different.  I can't figure out exactly how it's used, but it's used rarely and seems to imply a level of formality and grandiosity that is not normal between friends and family members.  My professor, Madhura, said that she thinks if she said "thank you" to her mother for something her mother would actually get upset with her.  Habits, however, run deep, and it just feels too strange not saying anything after even a minor exchange like buying something or getting out of a rickshaw--not to mention the kind of help that Vishnu gave us--so I usually just do it anyway.  Indians sometimes make fun of Americans for saying "thank you thank you" all the time.  I'm told "I love you" works the same way.)

Matheran is beautiful.  It's an old British hill station that is a common vacation spot for Indians, but has very few foreign tourists.  It's way up high in the mountains, like WAY up, and there are no cars allowed in the town, so it's quiet and clean.  The bus dropped us off at a parking lot and we walked about two miles along the tracks of an old small train that used to take people into Matheran but was shut down a few years ago.  The views from the tracks were unbelievable.  We were in the clouds, and all the hills for miles around were covered with waterfalls.  When we crossed a little stream, we could walk to the edge of the cliff and see a giant river miles away flowing down the valley, clearly originating in the stream at our feet.  This is serious jungle up here.  It's also full of monkeys, which I've never seen before, and which did not disappoint.  Monkeys are just awesome.  They're like weird, goofy little wrinkled people who can't stop making fools of themselves.  They were everywhere too, picking at pieces of fruit with their little hands and carrying their wide-eyed babies around on their bellies.  

Matheran, unlike the rest of the country, does not have any lack of rain.  It rained a LOT there; all day long.  I've never seen so much rain in my life.  We knew there was going to be rain, but we didn't quite appreciate just what that meant.  Also, I thought I wouldn't mind spending time reading and relaxing in a nice hotel, but our hotel wasn't really nice enough to enjoy sitting around in.  There were gaps when the rain cleared, and in those gaps we explored the main strip and the surrounding jungle, and found some great views and little temples.  But the town itself was a little boring, and also the food wasn't very good.  (Quick aside on food: although it would seem to go without saying, it is worth mentioning that the food in India really is the best Indian food I've ever had, by far.  Even the food on the plane over was better than a lot of the Indian restaurants in Boston.  That said, after 6 weeks of Indian food, many of us are starting to go a little crazy.  I finally couldn't take it any more and made a trip to a fancy supermarket downtown, where I paid too much money for a jar of Prego tomato sauce and some pasta.  In the States, I consider Prego sauce unworthy of eating.  Here, after 6 weeks away from anything like it, it was so good I almost cried).  So we decided just to spend two days in Matheran and then head back to Pune.  Technically I guess it was a bit of a bust, but everything is so new and we're in the country for such a short time that there aren't any wasted experiences.  Also on the way back we stopped at some ancient Buddhist caves carved into the sides of mountains which were truly amazing.  They are about 2,300 years old.  Pictures are up on picasa.

The other amazing thing I did recently was go to see a Bollywood movie in the theaters.  I don't even know where to start with this one.  My mind was bent in so many different directions I'm really not sure how to explain it.  It started at the very beginning of the movie, when instead of a little jingle about snack food in the lobby, there was a video of handsome young Indian men and women, dressed in pure white cloth, singing the Indian national anthem, and the entire audience--EVERYONE--stood up at attention, fists at their sides.  That's not something you see in the US.  The movie itself was called Kombakht Ishq (Combat Love?  Combat of Love?  Something like that).  It's about a stuntman living in LA who doesn't believe in love but falls in love anyway with a supermodel training to become a doctor who hates him at the beginning of the film, and whom he hates in return.  It has a cameo by Sylvester Stallone complete with rip-off Rocky theme-song music and a small part for Denise Richards, who rehashes her sexy pool exit from Bad Girls.  It was a 2.5 hour movie entirely in Hindi, which I don't speak at all, but the plot developments were so heavily emphasized that I'm pretty sure I understood almost everything that happened in it, and actually it wasn't at all boring.  What else can I say about it?  . . . it was a comedy; a lot of women got slapped in it; the songs were pretty good; it displayed an interesting awareness/anxiety of the fact that Bollywood, despite it's success and size, is nevertheless not as highly regarded or important as Hollywood; there was an intermission (there always is here); it had some fairly distasteful racial bits mocking black Americans (including an Indian guy in blackface(?!)); and it got panned by most of the critics here.  I could go on and on, but really you'll just have to see it yourself.  Preferably in the theater.  Everyone should see a Bollywood movie in the theater once in their life.  (Also, movie theater popcorn tastes surprisingly like home).

Pictures of my mountain trip are here.  And finally, I found out what the spice mixture is that they put in paan.  It's called catechu, and it's a syrup made from the wood of the areca palm.  Catechu is what turns your spit red.  

To Kolhapur

Assuming the sun is masculine, and not feminine, which seems to be how most cultures understand it, there is really only one appropriate way to depict him, when you think about it, and Indians have figured it out.  When they draw the sun they give the him a big, fat mustache.  You may remember that I saw this when I went to Parvati Mandir, but I've now learned that this was not a quirk of that particular temple.  I've seen it many times since then.  It's just the way Indians depict the sun.  As Americans give him a round smiley face, so Indians give him a thick mustache.  The Indian sun looks much more vigorous and more likely to do nasty things like spoil your mayonnaise if you don't respect him.  The American sun just looks kind of putzy in comparison.  To be frank, I think the Indian sun makes our sun look like a puffy eunuch with alopecia, and I consider myself a convert to this method of depicting him.  I don't think anyone would disagree that the sun kicks serious ass and is not to be trifled with.  So why would you personify him as a goofball man-child who looks easy to push around?  It makes no sense.  Indians understand this and have far surpassed us in this respect.  Admit your defeat, America.

               Which one do you feel the need to protect yourself from?

Another area in which Indians have us beat is livestock decoration and adornment.  I discovered this over the weekend on our field trip to Kolhapur.  Kolhapur is a small city about five hours south of Pune.  To get there you have to drive into the mountains and through the Maharashtrian countryside, which is extraordinarily beautiful, especially during the rainy season.  The hills are lush and bright green and look like you could use them as pillows, fog and clouds are blowing in and out of all the passes and hanging over the fields, and the rivers are swollen.  It's all farmland, and there are miles of sugar-cane, corn, banana, vegetables, and even some grapes (India has a small but growing wine industry).  It's much cleaner than the cities, and the air is fresh.  Farmers in this area still use oxen to plough their fields, and so there are oxen everywhere, out in the fields and walking on the sides of the roads.  But the farmers are not nearly uncouth enough to leave their oxen languishing in plain, natural simplicity.  The oxen are painted.  Sometimes they are entirely painted.  In one area we drove through, the oxen were all dyed neon yellow right down to their big ox-toes.  Some had aqua blue horns, some had hot pink or aqua blue stripes or dots on them, and some had flowers or bells on their horns.  Not all of the oxen were painted this elaborately, but I didn't see one working ox the whole weekend that didn't at least have its horns painted.  I'm told that the reason for this is that farmers perform rituals to honor the oxen and thank them for their help in the fields, and I heard from one source that they even give the oxen marriage ceremonies (presumably so that they make more babies), for which the oxen obviously have to get decked out.  Whatever the reason is, I can tell you that I never want to see another ox in its birthday suit again.  It's just uncivilized to leave them in their raw state.  Nor, for that matter, do I ever want to see another plain looking delivery truck, which Indians also decorate and paint elaborately.  Why not hang some bells and CDs on that sucker and paint it with birds like they do here?  I know that Americans probably will never follow India in this respect and I'll just have to get used to it.  But I'm not happy about it.  Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a picture of any of the oxen, which is really too bad.  It was too hard to snap the shot as we drove by in a car.  The only shot I got was of a mopey little donkey who looked like he had gotten a half-assed hot pink spray-paint job and seemed embarrassed about it.

Livestock aside, the trip was fantastic.  First we stopped at a tiny farming village in the middle of nowhere called Khidrapur, which is home to an 1,100 year old Shiva temple that is still in use.  The temple was solid stone, and full of elaborate carvings and decorations, and it was dark and silent inside.  We were the only tourists there, and we got to explore the temple pretty much by ourselves, except for groups of school children who were running around playing, and some curious villagers who stopped by to see what was going on.  There is a stone inscription in Sanskrit on the side of temple from about 1200 AD recording a proclamation of the king of the Yadava dynasty that the revenue from such and such villages is to be donated to the temple for maintenance and expenses.  We spent the previous week translating a transcript of the inscription, so we knew what it said, but it was still hard to read, since it was in an archaic alphabet and was partially worn away.  The proclamation consists of a small portion towards the end that actually gets to the point, prefaced by 26 lines of effusive, hyperbolic epithets for the king: the great king of the earth, the abode of shelter who performs the protection of all beings, the sun for the blossoming of the lotus that is the Yadava clan, whose enemies are bowed down before him simply from the glory of his mighty valor in battle, etc. etc. for 26 lines . . . this king donates abc and for xyz purpose.  There's an interesting question of what the purpose of this inscription actually was, since it spends so much space describing things other than the actual donation, and especially since most of the villagers probably couldn't understand Sanskrit.  But that's a whole different subject and I don't have a good answer for it.

Before we left Khidrapur we saw another temple in the village from a similar time period.  This one was a Jain temple, also still in use, and there was a class going on there when we showed up.  It was all women, I guess because the men were out in the fields.  We squeezed by into the inner sanctum and looked at the statue, and then left.  Then we drove to Kolhapur, checked into the hotel, and early the next morning went to another temple, this one dedicated to the goddess Mahalakshmee.  This temple was also incredibly old, also still in use, and also completely mind blowing.  It was much bigger than the others and much busier.  It was originally a Jain temple, but was dedicated to the worship of Mahalakshmee by a king about a thousand years ago, in a royal order which is also recorded in a stone inscription that is still there, and which you can just run your fingers over if you want to.  None of the devotees were interested in the inscription.  It's all alone in the corner, ignored.  There is a private section of the temple, directly above where the head of the statue of Mahalakshmee is, that houses a small shrine to Shiva.  The priest unlocked a door for us and took us up there and I saw it for myself.  Because of this small, semi-secret shrine, there is a question about whether the temple is Vaishnava, that is, dedicated to the worship of Vishnu, since Mahalakshmee is a Vaishnava goddess, or actually Shaiva, dedicated to the worship of Shiva, who is placed on top of Mahalakshmee's head and thus superior to her.  It might not seem like much of a difference to us, since most Americans think of "Hinduism" as a monolithic religion, but Shaivism and Vaishnavism are traditionally separate religions, and have even gone to war with each other during periods of Indian history, although relations between Shaivites and Vaishnavites have almost always been congenial in this part of the country.  Now, of course, with the development of Indian nationalism in the colonial and post-colonial era, the concomitant rise of Hindu reformist movements and Hindu right-wing movements, and the conflicts with Muslims pre- and post-partition, the issue of the differences among religions that are all nominally "Hindu" is much more complicated and difficult to untangle, sometimes deliberately so.  But again, that's a whole different subject and I don't know very much about it.  I couldn't get any pictures of the statues inside the temple, since photos aren't allowed.  It was very hot inside, which is oddly disturbing when you are surrounded by stone.

After that we came back to the hotel and I got sick.  Really sick.  Like laid out for the entire rest of the day and night sick.  I'm sure the details would entertain some of you and horrify others, but I won't go into them.  I don't know exactly how I got it, but it was some kind of water borne bacteria, and I just took antibiotics and felt better within 24 hours.  It's the second time I've gotten sick here, and it sucked both times, but India is so incredibly cool, and the adventure of being here is so fun, that there's not even a question of whether it's worth it.  I would gladly get sick again if it was necessary to spend more time here.  Anyway the water borne diseases you get here are uncomfortable for a short time but won't do any real damage.  Other than typhoid, which I'm immunized against, and malaria, which I'm immunized against, there's nothing terribly dangerous that you can get here.  If you eat meat, that's another story, but I don't eat meat, and wouldn't eat it here even if I ate it in the States.

I know it sounds like I have been doing nothing but visiting temples.  Partly it's because technically I study religion, and partly it's sort of just a coincidence.  Temples are definitely not the only part of India that is interesting to me, and they're not even the part that is most interesting to me.  They are just easy to find and easy to visit, and always pretty cool.  But on Sunday, on the way home, we stopped at an ancient fort way up on top of a mountain that is associated with King Chatrapati Shivaji and explored it in the rain, and it was great to see something not explicitly religious.  Like the temples, it was completely awesome.  We stumbled upon a group of musicians entertaining a crowd with Marathi folk-songs celebrating Shivaji's exploits.  The fort has been out of use for hundreds of years, it seemed, and was actually just ruins, but it was impressive.  And there were great views, as all good forts require.  Also, since it's India, there were no restrictions on where you could go or what you could touch, which was great in a way, but also made me ambivalent, since it's helping to rub the monument out for future generations.  But what could I do?  Not my chair not my problem, that's what I say.

Now I'm back and I'm leaving again soon for our "midterm" break.  I'll spend 5 days in Matheran, which is a hill station nearby that is supposedly quiet and clean.  Click here for as many pictures as you could ever want of my weekend.  

Also, the food in Kolhapur was not that spicy.  Don't buy the hype.

Paan

The funny thing about places you've never been to is that they are full of details you never imagined. It's been almost a month now, and I still haven't gotten tired of noticing all the differences. When I take a cab ride, it's impossible for me to sit back in my seat. I've tried. I feel an irresistible compulsion every time to lean forward and watch everything go by--sidewalks, houses, colors, cows, laundry, garbage, rivers, street vendors, children, workmen, women nursing their babies on the backs of scooters, bizarre advertisements that make no sense, etc. The whole city is full of little things like this, and they're interesting regardless of their size. Although there are far too many of them to recount, I thought I would use a few of my posts this summer to show you some of the common aspects of life in this city that feel very uncommon to me, and that I didn't know anything about until I got here and had to figure them out. One of these is paan.

In Pune, and all across India, the legal, mild stimulant of choice is a snack called paan (the "aa" is pronounced like the a in "father"). Paan is more popular here than coffee, more popular than alcohol, and even more popular than cigarettes, although it often contains a comparable amount of tobacco. It stops just shy of tea in terms of how ubiquitous it is. Basically, paan is the nut of the areca tree wrapped up in the leaf of the betel tree and chewed, with some lime--the mineral, not the fruit--spread on the leaf to help activate it. In practice, however, it's never that simple. Paan can contain a variety of ingredients and spices--anything from tobacco flakes to cardamom to coconut and maraschino cherries.

To get paan, all you have to do is find a paan wala and tell him what you want. Paan walas are the guys who make and sell paan at little stands or pushcarts on the sidewalk, and they are everywhere. Imagine trying to find a Starbucks in midtown Manhattan--that's about how easy it is to find a paan wala. They are recognizable because they all have a big golden dish on display full of little golden bowls that hold all the ingredients they can put in the paan for you. Usually, there is also a gold statue of Shiva on the table, garlanded with fresh flowers. Shiva seems to be the patron saint of paan walas, and I wish I could tell you why. Once you order, the paan wala will mix up the paan right in front of you and hand you a little green packet that you hold together with your thumb and forefinger. It costs about 10 cents. Generally street food isn't so safe here, but I have friends who chew paan all the time and have never gotten sick. You just want to steer clear of the guys who soak the betel leaves in water to soften them. You never know how clean the water is.

When you get the paan, here's what you do: put the paan in your mouth and gently bite the leaf to break it a little bit. Then, when it's punctured, you tuck it into your cheek, and from here on it's basically like chewing tobacco. You don't swallow any of it, you just suck on the paan and chew it a little, and when enough spit builds up in your mouth you eject it into the street. If you want you can pull pieces of the areca nut out of the leaf and turn them over in your teeth. They are about the size of raisins, but they stay as hard as peach pits. Your spit will turn bright red, and whatever you spit on will get stained. Consequently, most of the sidewalks and public areas here are dotted with red streaks. Kind of like seeing cigarette butts everywhere in the US.

The first time I tried paan, which was my third day here, none of this was explained to me, and I had my first opportunity to make a proper American fool of myself in India. My friend Cary, who loves paan, offered to bring me to his favorite paan wala, and since I had only ever heard the word "paan" and had no idea what it was or how it worked, I was eager to try it. "Do you like tobacco?" he asked me, as he was ordering. "Sure", I said. Why not? What I didn't know is that he meant a LOT of tobacco. The paan he made for me contained lime, areca, cardamom, a spice mixture, tobacco flakes, tobacco powder, and tobacco resin, which came out of a tiny black jar and was spread on with a little metal spoon. Cigarette filters were invented to keep tobacco resin out of your body. When I got the paan, I bit into it too hard and broke the leaf apart completely and tried to chew the ingredients. Then, afraid of swallowing by accident, I started spitting all over the place. But by the time I thought to start spitting--about 10 seconds in--I was hit by the sharpest, strongest nicotine high I have ever experienced. Giddy and confused, and barely able to stand up, I just stood there grinning like an idiot with paan juice dripping down my chin, making attempts to spit now and then that were mostly failures. Sam, who was also there, had tears rolling down his face from laughter, and within a few minutes there was a street full of Indian men waggling their heads at me and laughing. Trying to clean myself up was futile, as I just got paan juice all over my hands and smeared it around my face. So I finally gave up, spit the paan out, and wandered off to buy some water to wash up with. Lesson learned. I've tried paan once or twice since then, and I've gotten better at it, but I still can't say I really like it. It tastes fine, and the areca nut gives a mildly pleasant buzz, something like drinking a cup of coffee, but I just don't like holding lots of spit in my mouth and then spitting it everywhere. To each his own.

Click here for some pics of the paan walas of Pune and their wares.

Clubs

When I posted last week, the monsoon was late and there was a drought.  The monsoon is definitely here now.  It rains a few times a day, and just as I predicted, the mosquitos are thick.  Last night I fell asleep with my knee pushed against part of my mosquito netting and discovered that mosquito netting only works when there is a GAP between the net and your body.  I woke up with 12 - 15 mosquito bites in a small circle on the part of my knee that was touching the netting.  I can't imagine what it would be like sleeping in the open air.

Last Saturday night two friends and I went out looking for a club to go to.  The best club in Pune, supposedly, is a place called Scream: The Club.  But we decided to save Scream: The Club for another night and go to an area called MG Road instead.  MG Road is fun, but you have to find the right places.  The first club we went to wanted a Rs. 600 cover, probably because we were single men.  This is more than I would pay for a bar in New York, so we left.  The second club was an Australian-themed bar called Toons, which was full of drunken Indian men embracing and singing along to Megadeth, Metallica, and Coldplay at the top of their lungs; kind of like karaoke except without taking turns.  Walking into alternate universes can be fun, but you don't always need to stay there for too long.  We left after a beer.  Finally we wandered into the Aqua Bar, on the ground floor of a nice hotel.  The Aqua Bar was small, and like much nightlife in this city, it was mostly men (the few women were there with their boyfriends or sister's boyfriends).  But the men at this place were having a total blast.  There was a DJ playing some great Hindi House and then some reggaeton, and we were welcomed with typical Pune excitement.  "Hey man, where are you from?  What's your good name?  Come dance, you have to learn to dance Indian."  Before we knew it the entire club was on the dance floor going crazy with us, and there was a real party going on.  Whenever we tried to take a break someone would come grab our hands and pull us back over.  One guy had a big pair of cowboy boots on, and he kept running up to us and yelling, "YEEEEEEE HAAAAAA!!!!"  When the music finally stopped and the club was closing down, we sat around chatting with some of the patrons.  Someone tried to tell us some Sanskrit riddles that he learned from a friend, but we couldn't answer them and I think he garbled them anyway.  They were mildly dirty, if I understood correctly; something having to do with boobs.  Another guy came up and spoke to us in good English, and all of a sudden his accent entirely disappeared and he sounded just like an American, and then he switched back to his normal voice and had an Indian accent again.  His friends cracked up and someone explained that he works at a call center.  Finally the bartender kicked us out and we all took rickshaws home and went to bed.

And that was my July 4th.  I felt more American on this July 4th than I ever have on any July 4th ever.  No pictures this week.  But next weekend we take a field trip to a city called Kolhapur to look at some ancient stone inscriptions, and I'll probably have some good pictures when I get back from there.  Some guys at the club assured us that Kolhapur has the spiciest food of any place in India, so I will also report back on that claim.

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