Thanraj, our Foundation coordinator, is a hip, young, bell-bottom wearing Indian man of 28 years. We went to the movies on Tuesday night, just before Kogulin and Cody left Unite For Sight, and I wore a blue salwar kameez suit I purchased the day before. It is a long tunic, balloon pants, and a scarf. I purchased some bindis (the forehead dots) for 10 rupees and felt like wearing one for fashion's sake. I now wear my ponytail at the nape of my neck, like other Indian women. I took off my western looking plastic watch and left my expensive looking camera in the hostel room. There. I suddenly became an Indian woman.
We watched The International, an American movie that just debuted here in Asia (Milk also just came out). Though the theater was far away, heavily guarded, and western looking, we decided to pay a higher price for safety and A/C. We had to have connections to get in -- Thanraj is an angel and pulls all sorts of strings for us.
At intermission, Thanraj leaned over and asked me to explain the movie to him. I forgot that he pretty much became fluent in English in the last two years solely from interaction with volunteers. So I tried to explain. Apparently I started speaking like an Indian -- not so much with an accent, but with syntax and word choice.
And then: "You are very much like an Indian. Very fast into our culture." Yay!
We watched The International, an American movie that just debuted here in Asia (Milk also just came out). Though the theater was far away, heavily guarded, and western looking, we decided to pay a higher price for safety and A/C. We had to have connections to get in -- Thanraj is an angel and pulls all sorts of strings for us.
At intermission, Thanraj leaned over and asked me to explain the movie to him. I forgot that he pretty much became fluent in English in the last two years solely from interaction with volunteers. So I tried to explain. Apparently I started speaking like an Indian -- not so much with an accent, but with syntax and word choice.
And then: "You are very much like an Indian. Very fast into our culture." Yay!
