Bonding in Gurgaon

Some of my readers may know that I'm just starting out on a new adventure: living and working in India. How did I do that? Well, I guess I just really wanted to. For more details, please re-read Bangalore, part II.

Oh yes and while I am going to write every now and then, I will not commit myself to a post every day or even every week. I'll write when I'll write, when I'll feel like it and have nothing better, sorry, nothing else to do. So check back here from time to time, I might just have spilled out a new post.

Exactly a week ago today, I left home for Delhi, on the one hand because a direct flight was a lot more expensive but mainly because one of my best friends, N., lives here. He was the first person to talk to me on my first Indian chat site and for the past six and a half years, we've been close through thick and thin. Last year, he got married and as I couldn't be there for technical and other reasons, we thought it a brilliant idea if I interrupted my journey there for three days and spend the weekend with him and his wife Su.

He arranged to have me picked up from the airport - with a very personal placard (poor driver had no idea why I was laughing out loud) - and dropped at his office where he received me with open arms, regardless of the pouring rain. Oh yes, the weather in Delhi seemed very unusual to me: It was warm but rained regularly so that the streets were muddy and clothes and linen were always a bit damp. Another surprise: in addition to the ever present biscuit coloured street dogs and the occasional stray cow, there were black pigs running around in their residential area. At night, they had disappeared and nobody cared enough to know where they were going, until I asked Su. who told me that they sleep in the bushes, where else could they hide?!

The first night at their place was spent chatting, bonding, drinking, eating and all this fun stuff. They live in Gurgaon which is quite a bit outside the city of Delhi where we were invited to a party the next night. Covering 75% of the distance took an hour, the remaining 25% about another hour, just to give you an idea of the Saturday evening traffic. R. and V. who held the party had not heard of me until that very day but welcomed me into their home as if I was part of the family. We ate, drank, danced (me too and nobody got hurt!), drove around, singing in the car and eventually spent the night there. 

After a quick tea the next morning, we did what I would call 'sightseeing light': Qutub Minar, the Old Fort, India Gate (towing of the car included, luckily, freeing it was a rather painless and quick affair), Dilli Haat (which is like a smaller Shilparamam with more food) and of course lots and lots of chaats. 

Sunday evening was meant for shopping (Sunday! Evening!), beauty parlour (where my designated guy attempted to wake up every cell in my feet, legs, head, arms and shoulders with repeated tight slaps and a vigorous massage - more details available on demand in a separate post, just let me know), mehendi and eventually a movie. Since Hindi movies don't normally come with subtitles in cinema, N. picked an English one, The Conjuring. A horror movie worthy of the name, not that I have a lot to compare it with. It was scary and during more scenes than one, my hands covered my eyes until I felt it was safe to continue watching. In retrospect, I would have preferred a non-subtitled Hindi movie, heck, a movie without subtitles in any language as long as it isn't horror!

After the movie, we had a quick snack based dinner in a nearby mall (On Sunday night!!) and eventually headed home. It was decided that we would all sleep in the same room as nobody felt up to staying alone in one room ('Look what she made me do!' - those who saw the movie will shiver at the reference.). 

The next morning, I was picked up by the same driver as on Friday ('You have my number?' - 'Yes, yes.' - 'Ok, you call me because - all India permit.') and safely deposited at Delhi's domestic airport, headed for my new home: Bangalore.

Heaven shall burn*

I was going through the Wacken interviews of the last couple months or years and came across one with Maik, the guitarist of Heaven Shall Burn (*yes, that's what the title is all about, don't read anything more into it please). The band has the same origins as me, they hail from a town no more than 50 km from my own hometown in the lovely state of Thuringia. They're metalcore representatives  - to me, metalcore is a genre of metal, think whatever you want about that - and pretty thoughtful guys altogether, a fact that shows in their lyrics as well as their statements. Vegans for the environment without judging anyone who isn't, opposed to hunting as a hobby for the upper class and capable of wording their thoughts very eloquently.

In this interview, Maik was asked about their first song in German that appeared on the new album, how come and why haven't there been German songs before. He gave a very interesting reply, in fact, it is pretty much the reason why I don't blog in German either: 'It is very difficult to write good German lyrics [or texts, in my case] that sound neither embarrassing nor solemn'.

Writing in your native language should be the easiest thing. But if that language is not English, a few factors speak against it. First of all, you can reach a larger (net) audience, using English. Most everybody who regularly roams around the world wide web has at least a basic understanding of it. Then, using your own language, you tend to use clichés, commonplaces and platitudes, the above mentioned 'embarrassing and solemn'. You are tempted to show off your command of the language by using 'big words'. In English, you are - ok, I am - forced to write simpler. If I want to express a thought, I have two, maybe three ways of doing so, not an endless number of options and synonyms. I will usually be short, preferably clear, understandable and not overly (I said usually, ok?!) long-winding.

Makes sense? I thought so.