day fifteen: driver has a tough day.

thursday, i woke up sick. well, that's not true. i went to bed sick and was sick all through the night. oh that paneer. seriously, dairy, man; kills me. absolutely murders me. so after an entire night dealing with that, i finally fell asleep some and then woke up dehydrated and woozy.

i took a shower and rheea made me eat some toast with honey and drink lots of water. afterwards, we went and ran errands. the driver came because we had loads of places to go in a rather short amount of time. we headed to koramangla to pick up rheea's dress for the second day of the wedding [it needed some alteration] and the readers for bww's [bangalore writers' workshop, if you don't recall] upcoming workshops.

after those errands, we ran off to fabindia which is this superawesome store that has all kinds of ethnic stuff: linens, clothing, beauty stuff, furniture, etc etc etc. i got some more kurtas for myself and picked up a couple of gifts to bring back home. rheea and i also got these really beautiful silk floral printed harem pants.

the driver barely speaks hindi or english and rheea doesn't speak tamil so conversations between the two are rather amusing for me. this day the conversation circled around the driver's "mrs. and mrs." he has two wives and speaks about it all very normally. they all live together and he has kids with both and they all sound to be very content and etc. it's really very interesting and kind of amusing to me. anyways, he was telling us that there's "very problems" and "fighting fighting" with one of the mrs. and then with the other one his mother-in-law is coming so that's a source of tension too. poor driver, dealing with one woman is a feat, being accountable to two is just downright painful sometimes, i'm sure. hahaha.

rheea had a meeting in indira nagar at 6 so we headed there and had a couple beers at jimi's before the meeting. jimi's has this drink they call red bird which pretty much is the most astonishingly amazing drink ever. it is beer with tomato juice. i know this sounds disgusting but i will tell you, it is fantastic. like FANTASTIC. like i don't want to drink my beer any other way now. i mean, i will, but i don't want to. hahaha.

after that, we went to the meeting. i think in some ways going to this business meeting shed some light on how some business mentality works in much of india. there seemed to be such a focus on what other companies had done or were doing and how to replicate that because it was "right". very interesting.

rheea and i grabbed dinner at spaghetti kitchen, this italian place on 100 feet road. it actually was very legitimately italian which was surprising and delicious. our server was the most adorable, sweetest little man named imran. by the end of dinner, rheea and i both developed a bit of a crush on him. really we just wanted to bring him home, put him on the couch, and feed him while listening to him talk and watching him smile. so adorable.

when we left, our driver was a little more agitated than usual when we were driving home. in fact, it seemed like the whole of bangalore was a bit more agitated on the road. i mean, let's be fair, traffic and driving in india is retardedface already but there is a fluidity and flow to the chaos that actually makes perfect sense most times. this night though, something felt off. and this feeling manifested itself fully when our driver ended up tapping a scooter who tapped the scooter in front of it and both of the scooters ended up knocking over. the men on the scooters came over to the car and were gruffly yelling curses in hindi at the driver and the driver [whose name i really must ask rheea because referring to him as the driver is really ridiculous] was spewing curses in tamil at them. anyhow, our driver ended up just speeding away, annoyed, and then driving a bit more precariously than even before all the way home. the man had a rough day.

we brought dinner home for arun and hung around the living room chatting with molly a bit. she is flying home to the states today [friday] for a month.