We are:

running out of things to do in MICA.

MICA is a campus situated just off Ahmedabad,one hour away from the city where all our familiar creature comforts are.I seriously do not know what to make out of life here.I’ve been trying to make friends,progress has been good,but there is an initial fear of THE JOKE falling flat on the ground,even if you try to make another one to save it.

So far Ive made one good and trustworthy friend: Harshal Owalekar, the tall man “enters the room with respect” as he calls it.He has to bend down to fit into the door frames. And I never knew vegetarians could grow so tall. He told me that his parents were both non-vegetarian, so is his Canadian girlfriend, but he quit eating meat ever since he saw a goat being slaughtered when he was eight.

I,on the other hand, have no compassion whatsoever for animals. There is an injured cat on campus which we meet every night at Chota(the midnight cafe). His back is weirdly curved and it broke one of its legs, resuting in his meagre three-legged limp.As if that’s not enough, he got a fresh wound last night which is now coagulated with puss.

This cat is a slinky!When you try to carry it, it stretches its back to unexpected lengths and slips away,like a fish would slip away from your hand.So I lovingly named it —”the fish cat”. The frenchies and my three travel buddies seem to fancy the fish cat a lot, they are always stroking it,loving it, giving it tea and left-over bits.However,I only start playing with it when conversation stops, to look vaguely occupied.

“Poor cat,” and everytime I hear something being called “poor”, I despise the condescension.(if that word even exists) I would respect myself much more to admit I dont have a compassion for animals,rather than fake my caring for them.Im not the perfect girl in that sense.

So Chota is where the cat comes, and where the cat goes.But Chota is also a place of good fun, hanging out languidly under that shady tree,talking, making things out of nothing. Nuria always hogs the tyre swing there, and complains of motion sickness after that.Romain and I had a pretty good time adding to her agony by kicking her around.Oh and did I mention the swing functions as a double joy-ride?You twist both ropes in one direction, and spin it in the other direction then… LET ER RIP !

it’s amazing how simple things like this can bring such psycheldelic fun.I screamed like crazy when it came to my turn…I havent screamed like that in a long time!* cue song:Tom Petty’s free-fallin* (secretly,I miss screaming a lot)

The Frenchies wanted to learn Chinese today, they wanted to say “I come from France”, even that was difficult. We taught em to say Fa3 guo2 multiple times, but kept pronouncing it as “FUCK”.Ironically!Oh but it was good entertainment for us, so im not complaining.

Must blog about this wonderful place called the Chocolate room in the city.It’s a chocolate cafe like Max Brenners and I had pancakes drowning in chocolate today. The smell of chocolate never made me so happy in my life,deprivation really does wonders. There were chocolate panckaes, chocolate pizzas, chocolate cakes, chocolate with chilli,chocolate waffles. Nuria and I were seriously salivating as we were ordering.She had already began to draw pictures of chocolate when she heard we were going to visit the place.Cant wait for our next trip there!

After chocolate room, we proceeded to Hot and Frozen, next door, for main course. We found pork and fish which is terribly rare here.Romain exclaimed BACON! when he saw the word on the menu,his eyes the size of spoons.He even pinched himself to ensure he wasnt dreaming. The guy’ s fucking funny lah, he went to Reliance Mart and bought a jar,which he called his “travel jar”. For puke and pish, he said,in case he couldnt find a toilet on the train/bus.We told him to use plastic bags and he said he was afraid they would have holes!It’s a valid logic that I cant argue against.

On this trip out,I saw a blind beggar, relatively well-clothed, wandering the streets.Indian traffic is crazy, there are autos, motorbikes, cars , cows and camels on the city streets all at the same time.There was a camel-drawn carriage carrying cabbages on it, our auto was SO close I swear I could reach for a cabbage if I wanted to.Crossing the hectic street is always a cheap thrill in itself,you feel the whoosh of cars, the cacaphony of honking horns,and clouds of billowing dust blurring your vision: they come at you all at once.After crossing Indian streets I realise having close encounters with death becomes an everyday thing not even worth talking about.It is with that awareness, that I become fascinated with this blind Indian man, who courageously takes his walking stick with a bell attached to it, and crosses traffic day to day, yet survives the hell of it all. What’s worse than crossing these streets, is crossing these streets blind.I truly take my hats off to him.

After that bried encounter with the beggar, it was back to the sleepy campus.I Romain and Marine sat in one auto.It was dark inside it felt like another world.The cold city wind brushed past our faces as our auto driver cruised along a straight road, we sat still as the city moved with all its life outside,people buying selling, consuming marketing, walking driving, engaged in the vibe.That moment in the auto I felt, was the perfect moment for a first kiss, a proposal, an arm around a friend’s shoulder, a very intimate movie-maker’s moment.If Venice has Gondolas, France has horse-drawn carriages,then Ahmedabad has autos for meringue couple dreams.

Ps. Nuria and I have just planned out first trip to Medawa and Udaipur…an 8 day trip for break. Looking forward to castles forts and lakes,scenery and good music bars.(The Pink Floyd cafe is highly recommended for good shit like Beatles and Jim Morrison.Have a hostel mate that worships “the doors”, her room is like her personal shrine for Jim Morrison)

Pray that we will be safe travelling as two girls,Nuria and I. (gosh, my mom wld flip if she ever knew i did this.)Pray that we will not get into any conflicts within these 8 days.

Besides that, the world’s looking up…and I am still expecting the unexpected.