Bats, burqas, Bollywood and cricket

I was lying on the bed last night, reading, when a large blur flew through my peripheral vision. I looked up, praying it was a humongous butterfly, but no, it was a small BAT. A bat came into the house through the open window behind me. Obviously, I screamed like a girl and ran into the other room and shut the door. A braver soul than I went out to investigate and found it had already flown out the opposite open window. Huge crisis averted.

Cricket is huge in India. Last night, India beat their biggest rival, Pakistan, in the finals of the world championships (I think?) and the neighborhood went nuts and horns were honking even more than usual. People set off fireworks (fireworks is Sivakasi's biggest industry so they were close at hand) and I had no idea what was going on because we have no TV.

I've been talking to some of my friends about the plight of Indian women. I think the country is in a strange stage of transition. Bollywood billboards will show women wearing shorts and tank tops but a woman on the street, at least in this area, would NEVER wear that. Maybe in Delhi. But no one seems terribly offended to see it on the advertisements. I think the conservative dress is part tradition and part religion. This area of India is culturally conservative and it is now easy for me to see how an even greater extreme like the burqa could come to be the norm. I don't find the concept of burqas so odd or repressive anymore. I found out from my friend that some women are so staunch about remaining completely covered at all times that some burqas have slits in the front for sex.

Male dress in India is an awesome time warp. Most of the young men dress like they're in 1971 America with bellish bottoms and a short-sleeved, loose but not too loose, patterned button-down shirt. Older men (if they are thin) usually wear a loose shirt with what westerners would qualify as a skirt but is actually a "dhoti." They have slits in the front and are folded halfway up then tied in a loose front knot that they constantly tie, untie and otherwise fiddle with.

Barbershop


Despite dowrys being officially illegal, arranged marriages and dowrys are still commonplace. In the household where I live, the mother and father were married at the respective ages of 19 and 21. The first daughter was born a year later.

Speaking of Bollywood, I saw my first Bollywood movie on the bus over the weekend. It was like the Dukes of Hazzard TV show combined with a bad kung fu flick + a musical + the opening scene of a 1970s porno (the part where they show the "plot").