Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink

It has been raining nearly continuously for the past few days, and coincidentally our shower has started leaking into the ceiling of the apartment below us.

Last Wednesday I flew to Pune on the new low-cost airline, Spice Jet, which proved to be as efficient and bare-bones as you might expect. None of the delicious food and cloth napkins of Jet Airways, for one thing. I didn't get to try out their baggage-losing capabilities.

Pune was rainy - they didn't receive as much rain as Bombay in this year's monsoon, but they did lose one bridge, apparently. The hotel that I checked into was moldy if not exactly seedy. I was trying to blend in, so I didn't ask too many questions when the nice child laborer offered to fill my thermos of "pani" (water) for me. He brought back the water, I assumed it was from somewhere other than the faucet in the bathroom, and I was thirsty so I drank. I should mention that I have not had food poisoning very often in India - I think that before we went away in April I had been sick twice, once from cooking at home and once from eating at an expensive expat restaurant. Meanwhile, Gilles has been sick from eating at an expensive expat restaurant and an expensive Chinese restaurant. Go figure. Maybe it's the meat and the salad; maybe there just isn't enough chili in Western/Chinese food. Anyway, I have been so healthy in India that I even bragged to my professor at the Film and Television Institute of India that I can handle Indian food and filtered water (which is what they serve in restaurants, and actually what we drink at home). And only four hours later I was sick!

Well, suffice it to say, food poisoning in India is a dramatic but short-lived affair. Both Gilles and I seem to have a fever at the beginning and then feel relatively okay the next day. I regretted having chosen a moldy and seedy hotel, but at least I had cable. I watched "Cast Away," "Love Actually" and several episodes of "Will and Grace." I'm still surprised that they show it here. Of course, in the ads for it they show someone from some other show talking about and saying that Will is cute and "not that gay."

Anyway, I didn't get to visit the Indian UWC on Friday as I had intended, but by Saturday I was well enough to fly back to Bangalore and have a six-course meal with friends at a posh restaurant outside Bangalore. We got soaked on the way and paid far too much for the autorickshaw, which was so open to the elements that we needed an umbrella inside it.

In other news from Pune, I told my advisor, who is very nice but not that familiar with my subject, about the fact that the subject doesn't actually exist. He told me about other "village myths" in India. Apparently there is also a village in South India where everyone speaks Sanskrit, and one where everyone speaks Polish (shipwreck). I am really going to have to write an article about mythical Indian villages.

I toured the Film Institute itself, which has nicer facilities than UCLA, of course. The students look rather familiar, except that there are very few women. Apparently filmmaking not really considered an acceptable career for women. Really, is it an acceptable career for anyone? I asked the FTII professor about "Born Into Brothels" but he didn't see why they would want to ban it. Prostitutes have children, he said, and they have to grow up somewhere.