A Very Different Date-night

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Venturing Out

Tonight, we chose a restaurant from an attractive ad in the hotel room's city magazine. During the drive back, we passed through a neighborhood that was reminiscent of Mulberry Street in Little Italy in New York City in its wealth of lights strung over the streets.

The resemblance ended there. Suddenly, it was like being on a northeastern U.S. ski slope in the '70s, when a number of them pumped music through loudspeakers on the slopes.

The music would follow me down the whole run. Here, though, the music was liturgical chanting in Hindi by a single male voice. And it followed us for blocks and blocks and blocks. Both of us figured that our friend and colleague Dorothy would have loved it.

Pat found it soothing whereas after the 10th block or so, I found it the stuff of nightmares. I wanted to be more open to new experiences than I felt tonight. Beyond the 10th block, I felt menaced, like the voice would follow us all the way home. It didn't.

Now, I'm drowning it out in my head with Indian MTV, which is twice as thrilling visually as the American version. Before we left for Bangalore, a new, American friend who had lived in Mumbai for a year said, "In India, you'll learn more about yourself than you will about India."