Wednesday, May 30, 2012

I had my first sanskrit class w/ Vinaydev and all I can say is that I am in really good hands with this woman. She has a really lovely personality. She takes care of her mom who is more than 80 years old and their house is a seven minute walk from the university. We went over the first verse yesterday of Meghadootam. She taught me the meter and sung the first ten verse while I recorded it. While her voice sounded weak, it was good enough for me to understand the meter for me to sing it myself when I read the poem.

Hanging out with Neel is really like a test of physical endurance because he does not eat breakfast and he would eat a really late lunch or sometimes he would skip it. And so I have found myself really light-headed especially during the 12 o’clock hour. Even Vinaydev did not approve of Neel’s methods of eating such a late lunch.

Yesterday, Chinmayee and Darshana came to visit Neel. Chinmayee or Nandaji (Neel’s nickname for her) came in the morning to drop a lot of her belongings because Neel will be traveling to her hometown while I am going to Vietnam in a couple of days for two weeks. Chinmayee is studying for her exam and this is her last year of engineering. She also spent the night with us because she complained that her roommates were being too noisy so she slept in the big room that I have while I slept in Neel’s cramped apartment. Darshana also came by--she hasn’t seen Neel for several weeks. Darshana is married and her husband is a lawyer. One thing that I really like about her is that she has a really sweet voice. I don’t think she does any singing though which is too bad.

The lovely Chinmayee--she is by far Neel's favorite student. To pronounce her name it's really like "Chinmai".

 

Darshana has a really sweet voice. The sweetest that I have heard so far.

I also called my relatives and talked to my mom in Vietnam since I will be leaving Pune for Mumbai probably in the afternoon on the 2nd of June for my flight on the 3rd at 7:40 am. Indian airlines are notorious for having tons of delay so god knows when I will be actually flying. I’m gonna hate if my flight is suddenly canceled like it did last year when I flew from Mumbai to Varanasi. Had to wait at the airport for like 3-4 hours before they could schedule another flight. I guess we’ll just have to see.