Woke up when a pigeon flew into my window, flapped at it for a bit then, deciding it was in fact glass, it flew away. Bloody annoying. I am a little bit hung-over I think. Shows what no alcohol for a month does to you. I missed breakfast, so instead of throwing up that, I threw up my vitamin pills instead and a mix of water and stomach acid. Lovely. I now have the hiccups and I can’t stop. I also somehow ripped my salwaar (probably while dancing like loonie) and so I must sew them up. Bah. At least they are black, so no one will know.
After a lazy morning recovering, I feel infinitely better. Went down with Lauren for lunch, and was delighted to find chickpea things waiting for me. I do love the chickpea dhal, it is just so much more exciting than lentils. Marie apparently got off with her Dutch Embassy man at the party they were at yesterday, despite his wife being there. Not so cool. She just seems to have no scruple.
Lauren and I went out to Coffee Day and met Ben to do some work. Ended up just chatting about my Imperial Control class and I think I have converted Lauren and Ben to taking it instead of Peninsular India. Apparently their course is focusing on economic history, whereas my course is taking the racial theory route and looking at the effect upon social and state institutions. It is actually very interesting, and the kind of history that I love. If only there were more courses this semester on it, perhaps I wouldn’t be changing my mind to English Literature for my dissertation. Coffee Day had mosquitoes in it: is there no escape??
When we came back to the hostel, I managed to get a cup of tchai and took it up to my room to read for a little longer. I finished Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys today. I couldn’t put it down: I only bought it on Friday. It is a brilliant book. Rhys was a half white creole woman who lived up till the late seventies. She was completely ignored as a writer until the sixties, when Wide Sargasso Sea came out. She was ignored because her books were ahead of their time by some way, all dealing with debauched women who were trying to place themselves in the world and in society, struggling to keep their identity together. Wide Sargasso Sea is the masterpiece: it gives the woman in the attic of Jane Eyre her story back. The wife in the attic in Jane Eyre is supposed to be a rich heiress that Lord thingy has married for her money as the younger son of a wealthy family. It was a common practice, going to the colonies and marrying a rich plantation heiress. Rhys gives the madwoman back her story, her identity and her voice. The character is Antoinette Cosway, a white creole woman who is surrounded her entire life by hostility and the memory of slavery and ill begotten wealth. She cannot place herself in her society, as she is despised by white and black people alike. Then, she marries an English man who has come to Jamaica with the sole purpose of marrying her for her money. The narrative comes from Antoinette and her husband, and it shows why Antoinette becomes the madwoman in the attack, why she is forced into that role by her circumstance, history, society and situation with her husband. The descriptions of the islands are so verdant and exotic and yet there is an underlying sinister note that comes through most when the author describes the house of Christophine and her person as bright and colourful and floral, and then the brief mention of the pile of chicken feathers in one corner and immediately there is a dark reality beneath the flora.
I enjoy the fact that there is ice cream at dinner on a Sunday. We tried practicing Hindi afterwards, and we made flash cards with the consonants on it. Unfortunately, many of them look almost exactly like one another, with just a tiny angle of the line or a particular loop shape being different. Some are exactly the same, except one with the dot above the letter is an ‘r’ and the other with the dot below, is a ‘d’. We gave up pretty quickly. I don’t understand why there are four forms of ‘ta’ either. And you don’t know where they have to be used! They just appear and there is no difference as far as I can tell. Most perplexing.
Goddamn I just burnt my keyboard again….this computer is going to be wrecked if I am not more careful…
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