Auditions for Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.”
Bianca, the adorable sister of the shrew, loved and desired by all, will be played by –
the undersigned!
(The guy above is just one at random, but he’s stupendous.)
MomComm: Shakespeare. I was the screaming bitch wife in “A Comedy of Errors”. That was fun.
Home, sweet home – mine, too, for four years. I still have dreams about the first days coming back at the beginning of a new semester, unpacking, finding out who my roommate would be…
Shoes strewn around the floor.
Hygenic conditions decidedly scarce! Between crumbs of greasy food that save you from starving (given the monotony of the school menu), clothes thrown around, books whose only use is to attract dust…
CHAOS: I already feel at home!
Every evening I have my hair dried and combined while I talk about who knows what.
Having finished studying, I go into someone’s room, sure to find at least three others, say: “There you are!” and lie down on a bed not mine. Every morning I wake up, and there’s a person who doesn’t want to wake up in the room with me, or one who tries in vain to wake me.
Every morning I go down to breakfast with some friend or schoolmate.
I’m never alone.
I never have time to get bored.
Wednesday and Friday, we have the last 80 minutes free for study hall.
I spend this time with he of the Iranian mother and Pakistani father, who keeps me company playing the guitar and telling me crazy stories about his wild life in Bangladesh.
Dates during our study halls have evolved into trips to the bazaar together, then the grand proposal to go to the school dance together.
Roli dries her hair holding the towel by its two ends and whirling it until it becomes a thick cord. She makes it spin out so that it hits her hair and it sprays drops everywhere. It’s impossible to understand, I don’t know how to describe it. But I’ve never seen it done before and it’s interesting!
Today I saw two monkeys copulating and the answer is NO, they don’t do it like humans, but like dogs.
At 11 the lights go out and, theoretically, we’re supposed to sleep.
I sleep a lot less, and yet I feel much more rested.
“It’s because you don’t have any more alcohol in your blood,” explains my little Bangladeshi cavalier.
Before I left Italy, the sensation was of a constant surrealism. As long as I had by my side my parents, my friends, my habits, nothing really would change.
The transition was difficult, and by transition I mean the actual voyage. You’re tired and confused, but you can’t afford to be left “behind”. In spite of extreme tiredness, I did my best to ensure I had an important place in the equally confused lives of my companions in adventure.
What saves me now, now that I have a routine, is that same surrealism! When is it that life becomes REAL and no longer seems as if you’re living an absurd dream, almost a joke?
The sky at times suddenly becomes so clear and still that it seems like a gigantic painting hung up behind the trees.
We spend our free three-quarters of an hour with our feet hanging over a cliff in constant “OMG”ing about how damned high we are and how frickin’ SPECTACULAR the view is. It’s so surreal that vertigo forgets to arrive.
Routine:
Wake up every morning at 7 and I’m never tired.
Walk to school or back. See a monkey, grab a rock and throw it at him.
Eat: rice, rice, RICE. Hot, hot, HOT! Curry, curry, curry and so on.
Check your ankles to be sure you don’t have any leeches attached (sooner or later it happens to everyone, it’s an unwritten law).
“You’ll have indigestion at least twice a month, that’s normal.”
Never drink water that doesn’t come from a bizarre little purifying machine and you have to wait a year for it to be, of course, purified, before that joke of a trickle comes out and after an hour fills your glass. (Fortunately, in the dining hall they are incorporated into the taps!)
Get used to every day introducing yourself, explaining where you’re from, why you have an American accent but a decidedly unAmerican name.
Never stop, you don’t have time to rest. You risk falling behind, to shut yourself up in your room because you don’t know who to be with. Talk, talk, TALK! Smile, joke, participate, get noticed, carve yourself a niche within this small but difficult-to-penetrate community.
Do your homework, maybe you’re not absolutely dedicated but you do it, which is already something. Because you live at school, you want to learn. What you read interests you, what you write makes sense because you have thought about it, and nothing is taken for granted or accidental. At the end of the day you don’t remember your own name and you can’t do anything but laugh hysterically with tiredness, but it’s fantastic just like this.
I swear, after this I’ll take a year of vacation!
Yesterday I cried for the first time in my life upon finishing a book.
Today at school:
“Do you know where he is? If you see him, can you tell him I was looking for him?”
Perfect. Now I’m “the girlfriend of” and no longer “the girl who” or “that girl.” As if choosing to live as a couple means becoming a single entity, and losing some of your own uniqueness? On the one hand it’s fantastic, on the other it’s a competition for who is himself and not the partner of the other. But then you take refuge from the rain together and it doesn’t matter any more who says what and what they call you.
I remember home with affection, but I don’t miss it.
I don’t miss anything, which is ironic because, compared with how I lived before, I don’t have anything!
All of a sudden you live on school food, the usual t-shirts that circulate, on 1500 rupees a month: 33.3 dollars, currently less than 33.3 euros I believe!
Every evening we gather on a bed to talk about how long we’d waited to know people like us. We talk about the present and all its absurdities, comparing it with the past, which remains sacred: it’s what we are! And what will we be in a year? Who remembers exactly how long a year lasts? Maybe it’s precisely because “a year” means nothing and I don’t realize that it means “a year” that everything seems so easy to me!
Life is now.
Vodafone says so,
Teo Bulfer [a friend in Lecco] says so!
I say so because it seems to me the most applicable phrase.
Advertising space.
Shopping.
From Monday to Friday I’m not in India.
There are borders and rules which delimit who can enter and exit, what happens, and how one can behave between the “walls” of this school.
Saturday morning arrives, from my windows still lacking curtains filter in the two minutes of sun that are possible during this season.
I see the greenest green there is and a monkey leaping from branch to branch, and hear some bizarre species of bird twittering.
Modest clothing, comfortable shoes, and camera in hand: it’s time to go to the bazaar!
All of a sudden, I remember that I’m in India.
When I see a scooter pass carrying three pepole without helmets; when from the fog a cow appears that wanders tranquilly about the streets; when I smell the scent of spices in the air.
We are free and curious, for a whole day no one knows anything about us, while we try to learn everything about India!
A whole-leg waxing for 150 rupees, a magnificent meal for less than 300, and so on (42 rupees = about 1 American dollar).
“After an experience like this, don’t you think you’ll travel for the rest of your life?”
“We’ll always travel together!” – “You’ll be a journalist and I’ll be a National Geographic photographer.” “Yes, OMG, YES!”
Siii viaggiaaareee… [A song by Lucio Battisti that translates as “Yes, to travel”.]
FOOD wonderful FOOD
Go ask Amanda
Typical Indian student.
