Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go EVERYWHERE.

Another fabulous Indian dude t-shirt, not spotted by me but worth sharing. There's been a lot of talk among my friends recently about dude culture in India, which seems to be not only a series of aesthetic decisions involving "designer jeans" but a state of mind, involving lots of loving public physical contact among members of the group, as only two hetero dudes can in public Indian society. Jared tells us that in Palestine the name for this social group is the "shebab," and Benjamin calls it "dostidosti!", which I think I prefer. It was suggested recently that a new academic discipline be pursued called "cross-cultural douchebag studies," which is not nearly as appealing as "cross-cultural robot studies," suggested in an earlier conversation. Less appealing, but probably more relevant to our daily lives. For now.

I haven't been contributing much recently, and I am sorry. Pujatime is crazytime, and having another person living with you (Lea takes off for Delhi tomorrow) diverts my thoughts from blog to "hey Lea, guess what." This is probably quite healthy. What is not healthy is my brand new sleep schedule, which has led to me being up and typing this at 3 am. After watching Gossip Girl (shut up) on youtube I got up at 2 to go to the bathroom, and after hearing that Lea was also still awake and on the phone decided to stop lying to myself and just eat that candybar in my bag I'd been thinking about for hours. I don't think I can handle vacations.

Puja was a trifle less fun this time around, mostly because I'm not a part of a very active neighborhood pandal, and also because almost everyone I know fell ill to varying degrees over the last week... so the dancing in the streets was only observed this time around. The increase in commercialization of the holiday is striking as compared to 3 years ago, which was to be expected but has really taken a lot of the fun out of everything. A shame. Lea and I did buy "Puja finery," meaning saris, which were worn only for a photoshoot (photoshoot!) at my flat to avoid the inevitable humiliation of being seen in them by actual people. We also visited the South City Mall, where I totally LOVED CAPITALISM but only for like 30 minutes. Lea and I actually bought great western-style clothes that look like the kind of things you could find at urban outfitters and finally felt like we were a part of the bhadralok (bougie India), a circle within which we fit economically but socially uh-uh no way, what with our silly pants. I bought a scandalous top (sleeveless!!!) that will be great for Saturday, when for a friend's birthday we will be going to the closest thing Kolkata has to a "gay club" and will call for me not showing up in my pajamas. I expect this toeing the gender ID-line club will be worlds more pleasant than the last gay bar I went to, which was in Chicago and might best be described as overkill of the German-industrial variety. Other than the music videos, the place was practically empty save one dude sitting on a block, holding his bicycle seat in his lap and staring at the bar. I hear that Baltimore is a pretty easy place to be gay and depressed, Baltimore and that bar. And in many ways Kolkata, I'm sure.

In any case, I expect nothing less than a tight, club-like experience involving Bollywood dance mixes. If I'm lucky, I'll hear the bhangra remix of Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" for the second glorious time in my life. One day I'll write a blog post about the greatest dancing music known to humans, bhangra-reggaeton fusion. The title of the post will be "Bhangraton" and the text of the post will read "Yesssssss."