My Indian-ization

I started riding the bus home from the school for the deaf, which takes around an hour but feels much safer than riding in the tiny little autorickshaws. The bus is the brontosaurus of the Bangalore roads: slow but huge. The autos have the advantage of being able to weave in and out of traffic, which some drivers do so much that when we get out of their little box on wheels we are not sure whether to tip them for not killing us or not tip them for almost killing us. Today I took an autorickshaw from one side of Bangalore to the other. Soon after leaving I saw a large ambulance trying to make its way through the heavy traffic. Twenty minutes later I saw the ambulance again, still trying to keep up with my auto!

At any rate, riding the bus comes with the comforting thought that in a rickshaw-bus collision the bus would emerge with a few rickshaw pieces on its fender.

Before I go on ranting about buses, I will add that I bought my first Indian outfits last week. They had to be individually tailored, so I just received them two days ago. Yesterday I wore a salwar kameez, which is a sort of long tunic with pants and a scarf, to school. The transformation I felt was incredible. People did not stare at me at all on the streets, some confused bus passengers asked me for directions in Kannada (I think), and the teachers at the school laughed that I looked like a Punjabi girl. The outfit is a little strange at first, especially since the pants of one of them balloon out like the trousers of a 17th century French nobleman (or something like that). I think I'll get used to them though. One of the little girls at the deaf school even told me the proper way to wear the scarf (over both shoulders, she instructed me).

The only real difficulty with bus-riding is that it is nearly impossible to determine where the buses go without help, and help is hard to find among the people rushing to board the buses, which stop for only a few seconds to let passengers on and off. The front of the bus is reserved for ladies, which is nice, but it is still difficult to find a seat. The Indian women have a very efficient method of hovering in order to procure seats as passengers leave, but foreigners have to act out of character to avail themselves of these sought-after seats. Yesterday as I was riding home with two girls from the deaf school I was signing to them and a woman signed to me, "are you deaf?" I explained that I wasn't, but was volunteering at the school, and she told me that she was very surprised to meet a hearing person who took an interest in sign language. People stare at us for using sign language on the bus, so I suppose many people aren't familiar with it.

I am encountering my own language difficulties at the deaf school. One teacher instructed the children that "a star in the sky" is incorrect, and should be "a star on the sky." (Poetic!) Vegetables like eggplants and bell peppers have different names (brinjal and capsicum), an iron is called an "iron box" and sandals are called "slippers." And, of course, the children drink from "vessels."