Gabby speaks

I finally got Miss Gabriella to write a post for my blog. She has been learning lots of fun things about India and Desis recently so here's her take.

I am honored to be the guest blogger today for Miss Priya, my Hindi Friendi. OK, so I know that was a ridiculous statement, but I have been wanting to say that ever since I was given the homework of writing this blog. So my name is Gabby and I was the devil on Priya’s shoulders when she was contemplating getting a laptop just the other night. I was also her camera wielding buddy at the Gay pride parade last weekend. I have been awarded this privilege of writing a blog merely because I have learned so much from my new friend who urged me to write about my experiences and thoughts on India. So last night I was overwhelmed with the idea of writing a blog (my first, my only!) so I started like I did in high school and wrote an outline with little sub headings.

First impressions: My first impression of Priya was that she was rude and ignored me. No seriously, she did it on purpose too! I later found out that she was intentionally testing me, because she needed a new person to hate at her job (if you have been reading this blog long enough I am sure you have heard of Dull girl C) and all the hate-ees had left.

Food: I have been eating Indian food ever since I can remember. The first actual time I remember being at an Indian food restaurant (Taj Palace) was when I was still a little kid. Mind you, it's kinda odd for a kid in Texas to be eating Indian food in the first place. So I remember my youngest sister walking back to the table with a big bowl of what she thought was soup, and we later found out it was some sort of salad dressing/chutney. When I moved to Denver earlier this year, I was so hard up for some Indian food (it was snowing and I couldn’t leave the house-plus I didn’t know a place to go or how to get there!) that I had to cook it myself. Not knowing the first thing about cooking Indian food, but being fully equipped with a griddle for pancakes, a frying pan and a couple pots, I assumed I could pull it off. The Butter Chicken (ha!) tasted like rubbery chicken with yogurt and tomato puree. I tried to make Naan and put it on my griddle, and they were more like fat pancakes. So when I finally got Priya to like me, we decided to go to an Indian food place that she liked (called Taj II) It was sooo good! It’s funny how all the Indian Food places here are called either Taj or Bombay something. I asked her a million questions about her family and “her people” and laughed about the more traditional Indians and their ideas. The fact that a normal marriage is actually called a “love marriage” ha! Its all so foreign to me, but really interesting.

In the next couple of weeks, Priya and I got really close (I thought so at least) and we really talked a lot and I came to appreciate her a lot. To her it was nice that I knew what Saag Paneer was, and how to make Garam Masala, so we could chat about all types of good food and in turn make us both very hungry! Hungry enough to order food from a not-good place (located on Hooker Street!) that makes Chicken Makhani with the leftover dried up Tandoori chicken.

Another buffet experience included me driving 20 minutes trying to find the Taj by myself because I was really craving some Indian food! Assuming they opened at 10:30 am I left the house early enough for me to get there right when the buffet was fresh. When I arrived the workers were packing a van for a catered event, but the owner saw me drive up, park and look at the opening hours. I was a half an hour early!! But he nicely left the door open for me to come in and waved me in. It was quiet, I was the only customer in the room and the music hadn’t even been turned on yet. The buffet was all ready, so I got a plate and started eating. The waiters would casually walk by and look at the weird white girl who had polished off two plates of buffet food, and my waiter kept bringing me more fresh naan (probably thinking, good god how much more can this skinny bird eat??)

Indian Music: I really needed to know what this awesome Indian-ish sounding song was. I had heard it on MTV many times before, and the best way I could describe it was that it sounded like “dwing-da-dingda-dwing-da-dinga- dwing-da-dingda-dwing-da-dinga- womee backa lisha combey neyah backalar souptey camba shista camba linga anga lar, push it cadelay, holy holy holy holy backalaaar” I eventually found out that the song was from a state called Punjab, and the song was in Punjabi. Priya says its called “Mundeya Tu Bach Ke Rahi” and she gave me a CD with that song on it, I just put the song on repeat and played it over and over driving in my car like a white-Indian rapperette.

Geography: One day we were discussing word pronunciations (such as Rupees-which I thought were pronounced Droopies for some reason) I pulled up a map of India online and she showed me where she was from (Bangalore) and where her friend was from (Bhuwaneshwar) and where the party city was (Goa) and where the awesome music was from (Punjab) and where her father’s family was from (Tamil Nadu) All these un-pronounceable words were baffling me. We worked on my pronunciation. Luckily for her, I am from a state where there are lots of Mexicans so I could correctly roll my R’s. I told her that if I were from India, I would like to come from either Tamil Nadu or Punjab, but I hastily added that instead of either of those that I would be from Goa. No hard feelings when you’re from a party state.

Indian guys: So I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what kind of guys Priya considers hot and this one day I saw this guy who looked either Black or Mexican walk in. He was really hot, and when he was leaving Priya asked me what ethnicity I thought he was. So I responded something to that effect (MexiBlack), and she told me I was wrong, he was Indian!! Wow, he was a hot Indian guy! So I started looking for hot Indian guys. I wasn’t getting a lot of help from Priya, so I just googled “Hot Indian Model” which then turned up a plethora of porn sites with hot Indian girls! Ugh. So I then typed in “Indian Male Model” and found this page. We cracked up as we skimmed the pages and pages of male models ( I have taken a particular fondness to the man on the first page with eye liner as well as all of page 14 - hint: look for the deer-in-the-headlights look) She later told me that most of the models on there were just wanting to be Bollywood stars…What, no male models make it in India as supermodels?

Fun videos: Priya showed me the funniest YouTube video ever! She describes it as a Desi version of the car show Top Gear. You must watch it. The husband is my favorite part. Especially when he says “ Hat!” and the wife has to wait for him to go first. Also everytime he said "Aaho" i would crack up. And the turban on his head looks like it has been bandaged on.

Indian clothes: I saw Priya wearing a long tunic thing one day and it looked really comfortable. I asked what it was - a kurta. I wanted one, it seemed like the perfect thing to have when you have nothing to wear, or if you feel like you look terrible one day, just cover it all up with a kurta! She gave me the names of places to look online, but naturally I had to look on eBay….Needless to say it didn’t go so well on eBay. Sure they had kurtas for 99 cents, but the material looked terrible, and the designs were not so hot. I am still looking… I feel like I am going to look like the weird hippie white girl trying to wear Indian clothing! I might have to permanently pass on getting a kurta. She also taught me the difference between a kurta and a kutta and now I think I’m going to name my next dog that. I think it would sound cute. “Come here kutta.” She also taught me how to say benchod which she thinks sounds Chinese when I say it. I asked her if I needed to spit when I said it and I was told that I didn’t. :(

Smart Indians: Whenever the computer is being funny, I always ask Priya to help. When I need help with my math, I ask Priya. Sure, we learned early on (by way of the media and our parents) that Indian kids were much better educated than we were and it’s kinda embarrassing but I probably think even Priya’s mum knows more about American History than us American kids!

So I truly hope you've enjoyed this guest blog from my fantastic self. I have learned many more things from Priya that are very interesting that I cant even fit in here. I’m gonna miss that betch when she’s gone.