View allAll Photos Tagged Excited!!
Excited Thoroughbred horse on a foggy morning.
location: Virginia
photographer: Susan M. Carter
IMG_4121
Frank was all kinds of excited when we got back from our walk and ran all over the house, rolling and barking.
Sunday lunch with my sister's lot on the weekend. It's always nice to be greeted in such an excited manner by my niece.
sophie's in da house!! and very excited, having explored ALL night (we only have three rooms, so it doesn't take long) and now eagerly looking out the windows -- i won't let her out for another day or two, until she gets more used to being here, but she's going to LOVE it here.
happy furry friday!
Shannon and I were so excited to get mahindi done the entire time we were in India. We didn't have time to do it in Bangalore so when we made it to Chennai we went to a salon right away and asked for mahindi.
But we had in mind our own idea of what "mahindi" would look like for us. First we asked for asymmetrical designs, then different designs for each appendage (usually your feet or hands match), and then we asked for the mahindi to go up to our shoulders on ONE arm - this was the shocker! No one had ever asked for the henna design to go past the middle of the forearms according to our henna artist! It's actually quite logical since women are practically ostracized for publicly wearing tank tops!
slight digression here - the one thing shannon and I missed - publicly wearing tank tops. Sukimar, our 50+ year old colleague who we traveled with specifically forbade us from wearing spaghetti straps. He was not joking. We were a little annoyed at first but after 3 weeks there I am glad he warned us not to wear any in public.
ok back to mahinid - so After the henna dye is applied, it has to dry for 2 hours. The woman encouraged Shannon and I to walk around the mall and come back after 2 hours.. I didn't want to walk around because that meant we would be walking around publicly in tank tops and I knew we would stop all floors of the mall. Shannon, being optimistic and carefree as she always is, told me that I was being overly cautious (which can be a very accurate description of me sometimes). I had no choice but to begrudingly go with Shannon because otherwise that meant we would sweat ourselves away on the 2nd floor of salon for 2 more hours. We had already been there for 2 hours.
The minute we stepped into the mall area out of the salon, I felt like 1000 males eyes pierced our skin. I swore they were staring at our bare shoulders, thinking what horrible Americans we were for going to their country and defaming their cultural tradition - smearing mahindi up and down our bodies and laying ourselves bare for the all eyes in the mall.
I just kept muttering to Shannon, "everyone is staring, this is really bad, ohmygod." Any you must understand, there is something about the male stare that is very obvious when it crosses the line from bearable curiosity to scary anger I am going to surround you kind of stare. It felt like the latter.
Shannon reassured me that it wouldn't be so bad after a while- I didn't believe her so I said let's go inside a jewelry shop and we can hide there. We walked into a shop and it was run by men. We both knew that we didn't want any of the jewelry but we dragged out our time there. I felt so uncomfortable but when I looked at shannon she was asking about larger pearls for a necklace so I thought maybe it was just in my head that I felt like we were naked if Shannon is actually jewelry shopping.
We walked out of the shop and walked around some more hoping that maybe what we experienced with the staring was just an initial reaction. Well women kept coming up to asking where we got our mahindi done while men just kept staring us down - I felt like they were eating my skin up.
Then we made a bad choice of saying let's go up the escalators to see if the next floor was more empty. NOPE. When we were on the escalators, every floor could see us and surrounding the circular ring on each floor men looked up as we slowly made our way up from the 2nd to the 3rd floor. We were totally bare and naked. Well at least it felt like it. Then we landed on the floor and walked into the food court - what a bad idea - everyone just kept looking while we had a few more women asking us where we got our mahindi done.
By then, we just couldn't handle it anymore and we made our down tje escalators again for the entire mall's eyes and back to the salon to wait out the rest of our drying time.
The whole entire process practically took 1 day. A total of 6 hours. And you can't have any water touch the henna or else it won't stain as long. In the end it was worth it, but I never again will I be stupid enough to even think for a moment that I can get away with wearing a tank top much less with henna dye in a big mall filled with men.
Well I do feel proud that we started a new madhindi trend - to have it twirl up to the shoulders! Innovations can happen when you have two nieve outsiders looking for some pretty body art!
But before I end the story I would like to defend my nieveness. Before I came to India, I thought that this would be a very easy country to experience. What I mean by easy is not the typical Western way of thinking of traveling, like wanting everything to be Western-like from toilets to food. What I had in mind was that India just wouldn't be a shocker. I didn't see it as that different. I thought well, I have a lot of Indian friends, many 1st generation and many 2nd generation who go back all the time to see their families. I had spoken to all of them and they gave me the 411 on what I needed to know. Then I thought English is widely spoken and they are the world's largest democracy, so it can't be that different. Plus what country can be shocker when they produce amazing Bollywood movies?
And I went to India with the intention of coming back with a suitcase of clothing. All pf my clothes are either made in China or India, so I thought how exciting I can go to India and find all these fashionable dresses and designer tops for such a discount!
Now my Indian friends warned me about how it was damgerous for me to walk around alone and that I should travel with a man, but I thought that was just typical advice that people give to any woman who travels alone - so I ignored it because just as many non-Indian people told me that India was dangerous and that I shouldn't be alone. I hate when people tell me that I am going to get mugged in NYC or kidnapped in Mexico by narco- gangs - I have always refused to fall into the stereotypes of any country or region and for that reason I think I am a very exploratorative but smart navigator of this world.
So with those thoughts in mind, I experienced the biggest culture shock ever. First, Indian english comes from British English - it can be quite hard to understand someone! In particular, Shannon and I didn't have a driver, so we were hailing down rickshaws for our transportations - but we (driver and us) could barely understand each other most of the time.
But the most shocking was the gender inequality. just visually you can see that men have the freedom to wear wEstern clothing - t-shirt and jeans. But most women wear traditional wear which means most of thier body is covered. There aren't many Western clothing shops for women and what shops there are - the clothing is so outdated. Most clothing shops in malls are for men. I didn't see any of the clothing that I find in the US that is made in India actually in India!
you can see the full set here: www.flickr.com/photos/triciawang/sets/72157606833461387/1. Mahindi Time!, 2. Mahindi Time!, 3. Mahindi Time!, 4. Mahindi Time!, 5. Mahindi Time!, 6. Mahindi Time!
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.