Friends and Smells

My Internet was down for a few weeks, however the main reason I never post here is because I'm lazy.

I've been joined in Lucknow by two other Canadian girls, Natasha and Melody. Melody is an eighteen year old from London, Ontario. She's interesting in writing, jaz and environmental science. The two of us are now living together and we're having a lot of fun. We're not working on the same project, but it's nice to have more people in the office. Natasha is a twenty year old from Thunder Bay, Ontario. She's working on the animation for the kids' cartoon they're doing in the other FAS office and wants to go into art restoration. And she wants to go to the theatres with me! When we enter one of the malls, the smell of buttered popcorn presses down on me, and my mind reels with vision of movie theatres - the plush red seats, a Pepsi in my hand, the great silver screen and that wonderful feeling when the light dims. Needless to say I have been missing movie theatres.

India is not seen, heard or tasted. It is a smelled. On the way to the Bahai Center there is a street which I call Meat Street. Succintly it is a street lined with restaurants and booths that smell of meat. When ever we drive past I roll the window down and inhale the thick heady scent. It's not that I haven't gotten meat here. Although my host family is primarily vegetarian we have chicken now and then. But nothing thick and heavy, like garlic honey chicken, or bacon and ham. Nothing that smells like meat.

Other scents are less pleasant. Garbadge, feces, and one's own sweat. Sometimes inscence waft from stores. When you return from the countryside to the city you realize the whole city stinks compared to the fresh, earthy air of the villages.