Which one?

Things people shouldn't say out loud.

"But isn't that because all homeless people are mentally ill?" -Moron in my Psychology Lecture

Beautiful person, beautiful things.

Remember

Let Life Rain

Was Machen Sie?
Nichts.
Ich lasse das leben auf mich regnen.
-Rachel Varnhagen

Of Oracles, Sweaters and Curses

In the past 7 hours or so I have come across many “reasons” as to why Germany lost their semi-final against Spain. There is of course the famous Paul. He has become a strange phenomenon in Germany, as well as in other parts of the world. He was able somehow, to predict (correctly) the outcome of all the world cup games Germany participated in. Now that Germany is not participating in the final everyone wants to eat Paul. So did I for a second.

The people who weren’t interested in listening to Paul said that if Joachim Löw wore his blue V-Neck sweater, Germany would win 4-0. Apparently the other two times he wore this particular sweater (Australia and Argentina games) Germany catapulted to a brilliant win. Well, Jogi wore his blue sweater and nothing exciting happened.

I even overheard someone say that because Paul’s prediction was splashed all over the German press, the team lost it’s moral. Seriously? Anyone who watched the game knows the real reason the lost. They just didn’t play well enough.

But the most interesting theory came from a close friend. He says the Netherlands will win the World Cup because they are the only team not “cursed”. How does the curse theory work? All the teams in the semi-final have gotten there unfairly. There was a lot of anger after the Uruguay vs. Ghana game. I too, feel like Ghana should have won. Spain scored an offside goal against Portugal to reach the semis and one of England’s goals weren’t counted in their game against Germany. And what about Netherlands? Nothing. They got there fair and square. Possible? We’ll have to wait and see.

4-0

Jazz and the Ramayan

My grandparents and parents have always been avid readers and have so kindly passed the habit down to my sister and I. As a family, we often joke about how anti-social our Sundays are. After eating a huge “handsome breakfast”, we all saunter to our rooms, choose an appropriate Sunday book and congregate in the living room. We then sit in our usual places and proceed to spend the rest of the afternoon in silence, absorbed by stories of other people’s lives.

One story that has always been on my list of things to read is the Ramayan. Of course I know part of the story, it’s not the worst possible scenario, but definitely close. When KBC (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) used to air in India, I knew almost none of the answers to the questions pertaining to the Indian epics. Fail.

I have often found, in my experience with books, that there is sometimes a specific time that you are meant to read something. There are a number of brilliant books that I am yet to read. It’s not that I’m not interested in reading them, I just happened to have not as yet. The only Salman Rashdie novel I have ever read completely, for example, is Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I’ve never read Moby Dick, though I know the story and I only just recently read The Picture of Dorian Grey.

These “specific times” are sometimes spurred by travelling or a conversation you had, a picture you took or just because you saw it in the bookshelf and finally picked it up. I have been meaning to read the Indian epics for a long time now. I think the time is finally here. Or it will be when I go back home and have access to a copy.

Why the sudden talk about the Ramayan? Well, I recently watched an animated film named Sita Sings the Blues, which is based on the Ramayan, but focussed mainly on, quite obviously, Sita. The creator of this amazing film, Nina Paley, combines the story of Ram and Sita with Annette Hanshaw’s jazz songs. It was surprising how two things so glaringly different fit so well together. Of course it is modern and funny and well, has a jazz score, so it’s definitely different from Valmiki’s original work but it is just as fascinating.

Of course the creator had problems after the films release. There were copyright problems with Annette Hanshaw’s songs and of course right wing Hindus had a problem with the way Sita was portrayed. But in my opinion, that’s a non-topic and not even worth discussing.

Here is the link to the movie- http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html

You aren’t doing anything illegal by watching it here don’t worry.

Sincerity.

Hypotheticals

Half of my class is made up of doctors. For our unit on Medicine we were split up into two groups of doctors and non-doctors. The task was for the doctors to come up with questions that they would most likely ask patients and vice versa.

Ten minutes later each group had a set of questions. Obviously my group of non-doctors had been extremely filmy about the whole task. Our first and obviously most important question was how much longer we had to live. We of course, expected only just a friendly smile from our doctors but got disapproving sighs instead.

“No one can tell you how long you have to live. Even if you have a terrible disease and have a short time to live, a doctor will not be able to tell you exactly how long you have to live. This question just can’t be answered. It’s impossible…” Insert lots of shaking of heads and nods of agreement towards the man who is talking from the others.

Now insert a table made up of students, an engineer, a man doing his PhD in Philosophy, an economist and a Chef all looking at each other in utter confusion and disbelief. We then all started talking at once, trying to explain that we were not actually being serious and that it was just a harmless question.

“Nevertheless, it’s something we can’t answer,” one of the doctors who is always more serious and dull than the others said.

This is one situation I have never fully understood. We had just finished explaining that this was in fact not a serious question and his answer seemed to suggest that we were in some way trying to justify the correctness of the question. I mean, just look in a dictionary and you are sure to find the definition of the word “nevertheless”.

Despite the really gripping conversation that was taking place, my teacher, Anja directed us to the other questions. Low and behold, we soon got to another question that fetched us even more looks of disapproval. The question was whether or not we could drink alcohol.

There were more protests and refusals to answer these fake questions. Before we were able to launch into yet another discussion, Anja intervened.

“You will be faced with many such questions when you begin your work as doctors here in Germany. You need to understand that these questions are considered quite normal here in Germany and irrespective of where you may come from, you must recognize that you are currently not in that place. And please, whatever you do, do not lecture your patients about your culture. They will not be interested.”

BEST.

Stuff I Say

"I don't want to go, running around the country, manically taking pictures of random-ass shit."

Sometimes

I do things in an obsessive compulsive manner.

Kaput.

The street I was walking down had some particularly sweet homes. They all had interesting looking lawns, as though the families who lived in these homes made it a family activity to tend their lawns. Most of the homes had children playing or bicycles and toys strewn across the grass.

I was slightly preoccupied when I noticed the little boy on his green bicycle with a yellow flag stop in front of me. I was listening to music but it was calm music so I could still hear. I smiled at the boy. He was giving me a strange look. He wanted to say something but was either contemplating whether or not to say it, or was trying to multiply large numbers in his head. He looked confused. I had almost walked passed him when he finally opened his mouth.

“Dass macht die Ohren kaput.” This roughly translates to, “That’s bad for your ears.”

I looked at him smiling, a little stunned. It was so sweet and in that moment I almost considered never again listening to music with headphones again. Obviously it was only a brief moment of madness. Before I could say anything in return, the boy’s father and older brother had caught up with him and the three of them left me standing on the pavement, with a stupid smile on my face.

Dear Sky,

please look like this again.

Fail

I fail at writing this blog regularly. I know you all missed my brilliant wit and sarcasm terribly.

I recently went to Madrid. Obviously it was charming and beautiful and all the other things Madrid is famed for. But I also got to see some of my friends from Kodai and that is always special. Running around any city with them is always a riot. I walked and ate way too much, as usual. One of my friends very sweetly introduced me to a Bakery close to our Hostel and for the rest of the trip every single time I past by I bought a Napolitana. Not so good for my stunning figure. :) Hearing Spanish everywhere I went wasn’t so good on the learning German front though.

Once back in Germz it felt like I had forgotten all of the little German I had managed to learn in the first two months. Not the best feeling to have when you are going into a class where everyone has been learning German for at least half a year. Of course it wasn’t quite the disaster I thought it was going to be. Yes, the class is difficult and trying to figure out the 12049838573285 tenses in German is still proving a next to impossible task. Next to impossible. I can’t even count the amount of times I have heard someone say that it is impossible to be fluent in German unless you started learning it as a child. NO. I must disagree. I will prove these fools wrong. (In twenty years.)

Here is something extremely entertaining you can all read. http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

It’s funnier if you are actually learning the language but Mark Twain was spot on and will hopefully make you laugh anyway.

Growing Up

When I grow up I want to be a one-eyed pirate with one of these.

Um.

“So if you marry four women do you have to wear four rings?”

Really? REALLY? That’s the only question you could come up with? Young boys never fail to shock me. As I sat on the tram and listened to this absurd conversation I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or throw myself in front of the next passing tram. The young Libyan man from my German class looked at the young boy comically and tried to explain that if he did decide to marry four women, he would, in fact, need only to wear one ring. SHOCKER.

Getting Here

[Introduce the reader to the loser embassy women… ugly, dowdy and really friggin moody.]

My father has always told me that when dealing with Bureaucrats one should always stay calm, be clear, answer honestly and smile. What he did not prepare me for were frumpy, thirty-something year old Indian women working at the German Embassy.

“…And why do you want to go to Germany,” the woman asked.

“To learn German,” I answered, looking at her, perplexed.

“And why do you want to go to Germany to learn German?” She looked intrigued, almost as if this was a novel idea.

“Because they speak German in Germany.”

She paused to think momentarily.

“But you can learn German in Bombay.”

“Yes, I’m aware. I actually went to the Goethe-Institut in Bombay and they suggested that if it was possible for me to go to Germany and learn the language, that would be the best option.”

“What about Pune?”

“What about Pune?”

“You can learn German in the Goethe-Institut there.”

By this point I was completely lost. I had made it clear that I believed going to Germany to learn German was the most effective way to learn the language and now they were asking me about Pune.

“Yes. I have heard that the program there was great. But unfortunately they had to close the Institut there.”

“That’s strange. We’re still in touch with them.”

Congratulations?

“You do realize that it’s extremely expensive to learn German in Germany right?”

(UH, yeah I do… I saw the bill.)

“Yes I do, but it really is the most effective way to learn the language.” Insert sweet smile.

A month and a half later I was back at the embassy, this time looking at another unpleasant woman angrily and disinterestedly flip through a newspaper. I was there to pick up my passport and I was almost scared she’d bite my head off if I asked for it. She scowled and grabbed the piece of paper from my hand and threw my passport into a little box. Finally.

In other news, I found Orange Juice.

Lecker

A friend of mine told me that Germans love saying “lecker”. It’s translated as “delicious” but actually means yummy and she was absolutely right when she said they say it all the time. Everything is “lecker”. Our teacher gave us hazelnut wafers on Friday and said, “Mmmm lecker!” I couldn’t stop laughing and still find it amusing that people use the word so often. It’s definitely a word I’ll be using often.

It’s been just a week that I’ve been here and have had just five days of class so life outside my classroom is still a little complicated, but absolutely hilarious. I think I’ve been drinking orange sugar water, pretending like it’s juice because the ingredients and name are in German. Everything in German supermarkets are in German and the staff speak mostly German too. I needed what we call “scotch brite” in India and obviously didn’t know the English word for it either so attempted to do some hilarious hand gestures while asking a man who worked there where I could find them.

I was also very kindly warned that carbonated water is a big deal in Germany. IT IS. It was useful to know before hand how to ask for uncarbonated water. When Ketaki was in Budapest her way of trying to communicate that she wanted uncarbonated water was saying “water” louder. Thank god I’m not a silly tourist.

I’m glad to be able to have this crazy adventure. Not only am I able to learn a new language, I’m able to do it while making a complete fool of myself. And I believe that life is more exciting when you’re being a complete nutcase.