Horns, Sweets, and Technology

This officially bites. I don't know what exactly makes anything "official" but that's besides the point. My flash drive/a computer I was using went totally bonkers and started indiscriminately deleting a whole lot of files, probably the ones I was using most recently on that computer, i.e. the most important ones. Lots of recollections of interviews that didn't get recorded down the drain. A whole hour-long interview transcript gone, which I can redo but is just plain annoying. Plus paranoia about the unsure security of future work. Two weeks til paper due... Slowly deteriorating am I.

In other news, I've decided that something must be written about two things in particular: horns and sweets. Both have VERY different meanings here than they do at home.

First, horns. I mean car horns, not animal horns, although the ones on auto-rickshaws are sometimes shaped like rams' horns with a turkey-baster-type rubber ball at the end to release the noise. Since the basic traffic rules are "stick to your left" and "if it's bigger than you, let it go first," it leaves a lot of grey area for what and what is not permissible. Well actually it's more or less a free-for-all on the road, but honking your horn can be useful for more minor details. You can pass the vehicle in front of you by going to the right of it and simply honk to let the other guy know you're coming. Usually, people move slightly to the left to make room. My thing with horns is that 1) some horns are much louder than they should be; 2) some are much quieter than they should be; and 3) some people are way too honk-happy. There are all sorts of horns out there: car beeps of all pitches and colors and rhythms--some normal sounding, some that make you want to scratch your ears off, some that . When reversing, trucks (lorries) and other vehicles, if the owner so chooses, instead of beeping like a lot of trucks do in the States, play a song-like diddy with cymbal sounds and some kind of auto-tune. Some two-wheelers (motorized bike varieties like motorcycles and the "Scooty") have SUV horns that are much too loud and piercing, especially for their relatively small size and ability to decelerate faster than an automobile can. Some sound like baby rattle toys or a bingo machine. The auto-rickshaw (also known as "auto" or "tuktuk" for its farty-engine sound) has the type of horn mentioned above that does not go off by the press of a button (although newer ones do and are very annoying) but when the driver reaches outside of the auto where the device is located and manually honks.

Sweets. Diwali came and went, and myyyy did the sweets stay. Sweets are no joke here, taken to a whole 'nother level. I feel like they'd be banned in some states. But then again, there is also a very different sense of what is safe and what is not. (i.e., babies on motorcycles, along with parents and multiple other siblings, fireworks and crackers from individual households, very loud, very explosive.) Anyways sweets have lots and lots of sugar and lots and lots of ghee (clarified butter). It's like they were meant to be "sweet concentrate" or something, to be bought and then diluted somehow with other substance. Nnnope. But there are some that are very mild in actual sugar content, like cashew (kaju) barfi and milk sweet (most of the time). Yeap, I don't know if I'll ever acquire or even understand the Tamil sweet tooth.

In other news, the stuff I've written till now was about three weeks ago, so all that about the technology failure and lost (precious) information was really okay in the end. After a week(end) of slaving away on Independent Study projects, it's all done and over with. I can only hope that what I've written makes sense to the general public or whoever reads it (i.e. Trudy and possibly but probably not other future SITA students. So now it's the day before we leave Madurai. Crazy how time flies. I have no idea where it went or who's been keeping track of these things. But as my host sister said this evening, it's like a dream. Arrive one day, next thing you know it's time to go. What have I to show for my time here? Well I'm not too sure. I can hold a somewhat coherent conversation in Tamil, as decent as I could hope for in three months. I've acquired enough clothing to fill up an entire wardrobe and then some. I've gone from being a poor eater to being a decent eater (paraphrased). And I think I'm becoming immune to mosquito bites. Maybe I'm not such a novelty to the little buggers anymore. (I was talking about the mosquitoes, not people. But I guess it makes sense in that context, too.)

Well I'll try to hold back the tears and snot on the train platform tomorrow, but no guarantees.