Wed. Aug. 10, 2011

I did not sleep at all last night...instead Vaibhav and I stayed up to talk about what was on our minds. I think ever since I have lived in the flat, I have had some really good talk with Vai, as I liked to call him. So last night we were just talking about what I’ve learned from my trip. While I tried to forget Avanti since it didn’t work out between us, Vaibhav brought up the subject again...with a different twist. I told Vaibhav that I got an email from Avanti after I sent her an email expressing my interest for her, and that she emailed me back within a couple of days saying that she did not share the same feeling that I had for her b/c she’s currently in a relationship of five years and that things seem to be going pretty well.

Vai didn’t buy that, and believed that she probably made that up because she might have thought that things were going a little too fast. Vai reassured me that it could have been a flirting game too that Avanti was probably playing with me. He suggested that instead of saying that I was really into her, I should have said that we should keep in touch and be friends...given that Avanti already has some feelings for me. Vai, however, admitted that that would have taken about a year. But Vai also said that my approach wasn’t wrong given how she offered me to stay with her and her parents when I was coming to Chennai...but only to make up some kind of strange excuse that her parents can’t accommodate me because they have guests at the house. I gave Vaibhav my rationale for taking it pretty straightforward because I felt like we got off to a pretty good start and since I was about to leave India, I just needed to know if she was interested...

My flight to Varanasi from Mumbai was a total disaster. First, I hardly slept at all at night. The cab came to pick me up at 5 in the morning and we should have reached the airport at about 8:30 but instead we got there at about 10. I shouldn’t blame the guy though...thank god we got there before 11:20 for my flight...the driver had to deal with a puncture in the tire. When we were heading to Mumbai, I got a call from Spice Jet that the flight that I was on was cancelled. I was pretty stressed out by now. I thought about staying in Mumbai for the night and book it tomorrow. But fortunately, when I reached the airport, the attendants told me that while the flight was cancelled, they were gonna get another plane in Pune and it has been rebooked for two hours. I think I’ve waited for 3 hours at the airport and we didn’t fly until 1 pm. I didn’t get to Varanasi until 6 pm when I should have gotten there at 3:30.

Tired and exhausted, the cab to Varanasi proper took about 40 minutes, but I was delayed because Aradhana’s sister-in-law wanted to find me a hotel near where she lived. Her sister-in-law is also a Sanskrit professor at the Gandhi College. There are about three universities that have Sanskrit in Varanasi. First, the BHU (Benaras Hindu University) which is a very nice campus, second is the Sampurna Sanskrit University, and the other one is the Gandhi University which also offers courses in Sanskrit.

the famous Sanskrit University.

BHU

 Aradhana’s sister-in-law wanted me to stay close to her but I decided against that since I wanted to be near the Ganges river and the ghats where all the tourists were. It took us another hour or so to find me a place. I ended up staying pretty close to the Ghat.

view of the Ganges from my hotel.