#2

My new friends have given me a wonderful meal to welcome me to India, and now insist on buying me whatever I want.

The day continues fantastic, Trishna has mehndi done on her hands by a guy on the street, Angela buys an absurd straw hat and wears it for the rest of the day, we all try on ridiculous wigs.

We’re getting tired, but something’s missing. We meet Megan, who says she’s trying to decide whether or not to have her nose pierced. She barely gets the words out of her mouth when Trishna takes me by the chin and turns my face, scrutinizing my nose. “It would look great on you! Look, Shalvi, wouldn’t a stud in her nose look fantastic?” They don’t take long to convince me, and Trishna is so taken with the idea that she offers to pay for all of it.

They know where to take me. The shopkeeper gives me a selection of studs to choose from, together we choose the little white stone. With a file he sharpens it, pulls out a bottle of rum and disinfects my nose. I’m sitting there with his fingers in my nose, waiting for the moment of pain, when I realize it’s already done. I look at myself in the mirror and I have a little sparkly thing in my nose! What a fantastic sensation, finally a bit of healthy rebellion.

We return tired but satisfied, put on our new clothes, and sprawl in front of Pulp Fiction on my laptop. I don’t know how, but both Trishna and I managed to fall asleep in front of Pulp Fiction.

MomComm: We the parents resisted all sorts of piercing ideas for years, managing to ride out the Italian fad for pierced navels, eyebrows, etc. – much to Ross’ disgust at the time. On the whole, I’m happy she ended up with a pierced nose instead – it looks cute.

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Lean on me.

Certain habits, like red and pink, one never loses.

MomComm: A few years ago, Midlands, the girls’ dormitory, was rebuilt from the ground up, though in the same “footprint” it had always occupied, including the bizarre “bell tower” which has never contained a bell. Two floors were made into three, and the open roof of what used to be the senior floor was enclosed to keep out the rain and the monkeys. The thick, old stone and concrete walls gave way to thinner modern materials – no more deep, romantic window seats. And no more view of Witches’ Hill: the trees have grown up so high on that side of the building that you can’t see much out the windows even from the third floor.

The new rooms have color schemes: yellow, pink, green, blue, both on the walls and the plastic-laminated furniture which is attached to the walls and cannot be moved.

It’s new, modern, sparkling clean. And kind of sadly sterile. We liked being able to rearrange our furniture. Senior year, my roommate Lauri and I were considered kinky because we pushed our beds together in the middle of the room. Junior year, Ginny and I shared a small room that was usually a single. We put our dresser-and-wardrobe unit in front of the door so that Dham Singh, seeing it for the first time, remarked: “This looks like a railway ticket office.”

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