"Absurd" Is Not A Word

Seeing as how tomorrow is my two month-aversary in India (We're hosting a wedding celebration tomorrow. Coincidence? I think not. Fate is most certainly throwing me a party.) I thought it would be fitting to recall some of the most absurd (or rather, "normal") moments:

We hit up a wedding celebration yesterday (the big one, because obviously you need multiple celebrations to mark a new life together) dressed in Punjab suits and overwhelmed by the food selection. Eventually, after a large amount of coaxing from various Punjabi men, we get up and dance (only after noticing that some women were finally participating). I turn at one point, just in the middle of the grove, and see that the man next to me is rocking out. With a rifle in hand. Just straight getting down. With a rifle in his hand. No one seems to be the least bit phased by this. Except, of course, ME.

I'm on the bus home from D. along with my friend and another intern, and there is a young woman with a beautiful baby sitting behind me. She decides she wants a photo on her cellphone with the foreigners and the baby, so she simply hands her infant son to M. The baby proceeds to scream (you would too if your mother handed you to some pale looking creature) and the mother, not skipping a beat, tries to get her cell phone to take the photo. M then hands the baby to me (because two photos are necessary) and by some strange fortune I am able to calm him down. The mom takes a photo. And then she turns away from me and her child and goes on to talk to her sister. I am left playing with this baby on my lap until we reach their stop. The mom takes him back, smiles, and leaves, like what has just transpired is anything in the realm of normal.

My roommate is British. Because of our vocabulary gaps she thinks I am constantly going without panties and that constantly I want to wear sexy lingerie around the house. This laughable confusion spreads to the rest of the intern house, so now I have officially reinforced everyone's idea of an "LA Girl."

I meet two adolescent girls at the wedding party. We proceed to bond over Taylor Swift and Hannah Montana. I win them over when I tell them that Michael Jackson died at the hospital at my university. It is at that moment that I realize I have more in common with these two teen-bopping 12 year olds than with the rest of the Punjabi population. But I'm just so juiced to be bonding I don't have time to be ashamed.

Two friends and I are headed back from Mcleod Ganj after a wonderful weekend of food and mountain weather. We're boarding the bus from Kangra back to H., and there are 3 heavily armed policemen that rush at the door and get on (unusual that there are policeman, not unusual that they are pushing to the door and not politely letting us on) followed by another man with a baseball cap. Western notions of etiquette and gentlemanly quality I mind, I think to myself "how rude" and miss the whole "you first, let me open the door for you instead of squashing you with my sweaty body" thing that some American men have mastered. Then I see that this man with the cap has a handcuff around one wrist, which is attached to a metal leash, which the final fourth policeman is holding onto. I decide that big guns trump my desires for Western politeness and quickly move out of the way. We board immediately after them and spend a minute plotting out the best place to sit (if he somehow escapes, which direction will they shoot?). We plant ourselves 2 rows behind the prisoner (who has a policeman on either side) and one row behind the 2 police behind them. And we rode the next four hours on the bus down the mountain, just like that, accidentally part of the whole public transportation prisoner parade.