Happy birthday, Mary Kate.

Yesterday was our sweet Mary Kate’s birthday.

Which meant having butter chicken, kadhai paneer, and garlic butter naan delivered right to our doorstep.

 

And a snack table stocked only with foods that begin with the letter C.

And charades and shenanigans with some quality company.

Here’s to another year to travels, adventures, and plenty of street food.

Happy birthday, dear friend.

And happy Thursday to you.

Vodafone Tuesday.

A couple weeks ago, I started walking home from work. Our weekend travels have kept us away from frisbee practices, and spending eight hours a day sitting at a desk makes my active little heart cringe, so I’ve taken to covering the three miles between the office and my apartment on foot to satisfy my minimum daily exercise quota. Aside from the stray dog that’s recently come to see it as his responsibility to protect the first major intersection on my route from me and being struck by two motorized vehicles*, I consider this a largely successful pursuit.

*By “struck”, I mean a rickshaw driver backed into me while I was negotiating with another driver in an alley, and a car ran into me yesterday while pulling out of a parking spot, apparently with his eyes closed. I have received a grand total of one bruise and two weird stories from these incidents.

I mention this because my walks have provided me with a means of observing and absorbing more of my summer home. One of my more profitable observations has been an advertisement I saw on the side of a bus for “Vodafone Tuesdays”. The ad was appropriately eye-catching and vague, so I looked up the concept when I got home that night. Vodafone, one of the major Indian cell service providers, has apparently teamed up with a number of restaurants and retailers in India to provide buy one get one coupons to be used on Tuesdays. All one has to do is text the appropriate code to the right number and you can enjoy two of any of a myriad of goods for the price of one. We experimented with this for the first time last week. Lisa and I successfully obtained twin iced lattes from Costa Coffee, and we brought home two medium pizzas from a local pizza joint for dinner. Which we enjoyed while taking in a double feature: When Harry Met Sally and About Time. Because it seemed like the day for things to be enjoyed in twos.

Yeah, we went to Pizza Hut. I’ll feel bad about it if you can find me one Pizza Hut in the US capable of making tandoori paneer pizza.

Today we’ve got our sights set on another coffee outing and delicious donuts from Mad Over Donuts, a donut shop originally started in Singapore whose mission is “to serve the best donuts this planet has ever known”. Judgment suspended, M.O.D.

Happy Vodafone Tuesday to you and you and you.

The most meaningful bananas I’ve ever purchased.

There’s a man who sells fruit outside my house.

He stands beside his bountiful cart just twenty feet from our gate. Sometimes he has a smaller annex cart from which he sells lychee. Like a lychee outlet store.

He’s been there every morning, rain or shine. And he’s there every evening when I get home. And I think I’ve seen him after dark with a lamp jerry-rigged to illuminate his fruit.

I’ve visited his stand a few times over the last few weeks. One afternoon, we bought a couple mangoes and a bunch of lychee as an afternoon snack. On the Fourth of July, he provided me with my kilo of lychee. And on a few mornings, I’ve purchased two bananas before hopping in a rickshaw and going to work.

This morning was a banana morning. I walked over to the stand and waited patiently as my produce-purveying friend helped another customer who seemed to be amassing a rather large quantity of fruit. When he noticed me standing there, he held up one finger, asking his current patron to wait, grabbed two bananas, and walked over to hand them to me with a smile. Shocked by the unprecedented display of friendliness, I think I somehow managed to pull the correct change out of my wallet. Then, as if nothing monumental had occurred, he went back to helping his customer select plums while I skipped off to find a rickshaw.

Three cheers for feeling known in a new home.

And now enjoy some street art from the village our office is in.

Happy Tuesday.

The baseball diamond upon which you stand is hallowed ground.

This will go down in the record books as the year it seemed the Fourth of July would never end.

Last night, the evening of July 5th in India, the US Embassy hosted an Independence Day celebration for all the US citizens living in Delhi. This seemed like a cultural experience too unique to pass up, so Mary Kate, Lisa, and I hopped in a rickshaw and rode over to the embassy district.

The party was hosted on a baseball diamond at the American Citizen Services Center. The place was covered in red, white, and blue with an abundance of balloons and a band covering popular “American” songs.

There were real beef hamburgers and free popcorn by the bucket.

In classic “American” style, the evening’s festivities included eating contests.

Seth and Lisa enthusiastically participated in the watermelon-eating competition.

When presented with the option of a pie-eating contest, I recognized it as an opportunity to acquire large quantities of pie at no cost. So I entered, grabbed my quarter of a pie, nibbled at it until someone won the competition, then grabbed what was left of my oversized slice, the barely-touched one next to mine, and four forks.

I’m not usually an apple pie fan, but there’s something special about a slice in the Delhi heat shared with friends.

The evening ended with fireworks and plenty of dancing.

Oh, and a raffle in which Mary Kate won a free trip for two to Jaipur in an air-conditioned car.

Conclusion: the embassy is a magical place.

Happy Sunday.

Nothing says “America” like ice cream and a chocolate chip cookie.

I think these speak for themselves.

Happy Saturday.

A chocolatey celebration of the changing seasons.

Despite the fact that it’s consistently been over 100 degrees since we arrived in India, we decided to celebrate the first day of summer by getting directions to a market in our neighborhood from Sandhya, our housekeeper, to find a chocolate shop that got rave reviews on Zomato, the Indian version of Yelp. We weren’t disappointed. Chocolatiers ended up being a tiny hole-in-the-wall run by a sweet old Indian man who spoke excellent English and was more than happy to explain all the flavors to us. Every chocolate was handmade and wrapped in colored foil then cellophane then tied up with a bow. They came in conventional flavors like chocolate truffle and mint and a few more exotic ones like chocolate-covered tangy mango Turkish delight and “gold” (which is actually code for unappetizing whiskey-flavored chocolate). We were offered one of the chocolates labeled “bloody” which ended up being a dark molten chocolate, and we knew we were in the right place. We each chose about six chocolates which were placed in shiny blue boxes and marked with heart stickers in various colors so we could tell them apart. We enjoyed our purchases while watching Pride & Prejudice after dinner.

It’s likely we’ll be on a first-name basis with the chocolate man before we leave.

Happy summer.

C.R. Park, corn, and an accidental caffeine high.

Since we moved across town on Wednesday, Mary Kate and I both opted to take the day off of work to settle in and enjoy lunch with Sree, our new landlady and sweet friend. After spending a potentially embarrassing amount of time trading off napping and reading in our new air-conditioned room, we went on a walk around our new neighborhood. The area we live in now is called Chittranjan Park (or C.R. Park to those in the know). It’s located in South Delhi and was originally established in the 1950s as a settlement reserved exclusively for Bengali refugees. While Bengali heritage is no longer a requirement for residence, it continues to be a hotspot of Bengali culture. It’s known for its quality fish markets (since fish feature heavily in Bengali cuisine) and availability of delicious Kalcutta-style street food. South Delhi is a relatively wealthy and particularly safe region of the city. We love street food and safety, so clearly we feel right at home.

Since we arrived in India and saw our first grilled corn vendor, Mary Kate’s mouth has been watering as she regaled me with tales of her grilled corn consumption all over the world. On our afternoon walk, she finally enjoyed her first cob.

Served fresh off the grill rubbed in lime and masala spices for 20 rupees? I understand the hype.

On Thursday morning, Mary Kate made the commute to the PHFI office in Gurgaon, but I’ve been moved to an office in Sharpur Jaat. It’s significantly closer to our new home and also where the organization I’m working with is housed. I’m grateful for the switch. It’s a 15-minute commute as opposed to a 60-minute one, and working near people on the same project means more progress. I love progress almost as much as I love mango shakes.

Since I’d never been to the new office, my supervisor offered to drive me in on my first day to show me the way. He wasn’t free to take me on Thursday, so I spent the day working from home. To increase my productivity, I opted to find a coffee shop to work in. My curiosity got the better of me and I ended up at the Starbucks that’s just a ten-minute walk from my house.

Obviously I made a great decision. There’s no extra charge for soy milk in this country. And just look at those eyelashes. However, my caffeine tolerance has apparently become quite low despite my tea intake over the last few weeks. I think I was high as a kite for the next few hours.

I made a friend during my visit to Starbucks—a woman named DJ and I bonded over the unfortunate non-functionality of the wifi. She lives in C.R. Park, is trying to start her own business that has something to do with home-dining options, and wants to go to Peru with her husband before they start having kids. She gave me her phone number and told me she hoped we’d run into each other again some time.

Three cheers for delicious corn, settling in, and the unique brand of instantaneous comradery one only finds in a coffee shop.

Happy Monday.

The weekend we didn’t go to the Red Fort.

As I was preparing for the summer I would spend in Delhi, many of the details remained vague or undetermined until the last couple weeks before my departure or, for some of them, until I arrived in India. The one thing I knew well in advance, however, was that the city had an ultimate frisbee team and that I wanted to be a part of it. After I settled in, I sent a message to the Delhi Ultimate Facebook account, got practice details, and, before I knew it, Mary Kate and I were meeting Jaidip, one of the captains of the team and the president of the Ultimate Players Association of India, at the metro station at 6:15am to go to practice.

The team is called Stray Dogs in Sweaters, named for the activity of a strange NGO that clothes the stray dogs of Delhi when the temperature drops in the winter. Practices happen every Saturday morning and Sunday evening with various informal meet-ups throughout the week for throwing and workouts. We’ve joined the team right as they’re gearing up for the Bangalore Ultimate Open, the biggest frisbee tournament in India. Next weekend we’ll be traveling with them to Bangalore to play three days of ultimate in south India. The jury’s still out as to whether or not I’m currently living out a dream sequence.

After our first practice, for which we were poorly hydrated and under-fed, Mary Kate and I went and got brunch with some teammates and then headed home to sleep it off. This past weekend, we decided to be a little more ambitious and planned to do some sightseeing after practice. We went to the apartment of our new friend Lisa, an ultimate player from Yale, and showered off before heading into the city in search of street food and aiming to make a stop at the Red Fort.

We wandered for a while before making a food decision, and eventually opted to make our first foray into Indian street food where all the locals seemed to be congregating. We each ordered dahi bhalla, fried lentil balls drowning in a sweet yogurt with spicy tamarind chutney and pomegranate seeds.

The difference in the time stamp between the before and after photos is approximately 11 minutes. Clearly no comment on quality of taste is necessary.

The menu board at our lunch stop promised mango shakes, but the cashier said, “I don’t have that” when we requested them. We were committed to satisfying our cravings for creamy mango sweetness, so we resolved to find a place to stop on our walk to the Red Fort. It didn’t take long to complete our mission.

Yes, they were topped with golden raisins, cashews, and shredded coconut. Yes, they were served in “for here” pint glasses of questionable cleanliness. Yes, they cost the equivalent of 66 cents. Yes, consuming that mango shake was one of the most blissful moments of my short life.

After we sucked up every last drop of mango ambrosia, it was a short walk to the Red Fort. We had been told that there was an entry fee, but we couldn’t find anyone taking money at the entrance, so we slipped our shoes off (this appeared to be customary based on our brief observance of other entrants) and walked right in.

The red tile was blazing hot. Someone had considerately rolled out these rope mats, presumably to preserve one’s feet from being burned beyond recognition. However, scratchy rope mat isn’t a significantly more pleasant sensation. Pick your poison.

These sweet girls ran up to me on the rope mat and began saying, “hello, my name is” over and over and over. I’m not sure what their names are, but I told them mine was Kati.

After sitting for a bit beside the algae-filled fountain, Mary Kate and I headed by metro to meet one of our teammates to go to a clothing exchange for interns that were coming and going and looking to get rid of some extra clothes. We each acquired some excellent finds for the low, low price of absolutely nothing. I went home with three full traditional outfits, all of which got some wear time this past week. I’m a happy camper.

At work on Monday, I was feeling a little curious and did a quick Google search. Turns out we did not, in fact, visit the Red Fort on Saturday. By turning the wrong way out of the metro station, we ended up paying a visit to Fatehpuri Masjid, a 17th century mosque on the western end of the oldest street in Delhi, Chandni Chowk. Apparently we were looking for the eastern end.

This explains the shoe removal, lack of general fort-like qualities, and men praying all over the place.

Happy Friday.