Thursday, January 26, 2012

Republic Day

Today is Republic Day, one of those days that I think became a holiday because there hadn't been a national holiday in two weeks. See, independence day is back in August, but apparently the constitution didn't come into force until January, so hence Republic Day, 26th January.

Delhi has a severe lack of cafes with wifi. Trust me this will all tie together. But for the record, there are lots of cafes, and lots of nice restaurants with wifi, but the overlap between a casual cafe and wifi is surprisingly quite rare. This is unfortunate for me, because I am so much more productive when there is coffee and comfy seating, as opposed to a cement building that gets no light and gives me the feeling of being either under house arrest or in a monastery, depending on my mood.

Well, today, in celebration of Republic Day, they did actually put us on house arrest. Apparently there is some law that no one is allowed inside of an educational institution on Republic Day...So what does that mean for those of us who live in educational institutions?

I walked out of the dorm around ten forty-five, eager to get on with my studying, heading to one of the three cafes with wifi in all of south Delhi. I was unfortunately stopped at the door by the assistant warden, who said I couldn't go out until 12:30. By the goodness of her heart she gave me an orange, which kept me from starving for two hours as I waited impatiently. Finally when the time had come I went to the gate and was, there, not allowed to leave. Yes, the intention was to lock everyone inside the college all day. Yes, we were expected to abide by this. No, nobody had mentioned anything about this before.

They have, on past holidays, not let us out until lunch, I suppose the assumption being that all the troublemaking goes on from 8am to noon. No, shedding reason upon decisions will get you nowhere but backwards. Finally with enough hassling and complaining to the assistant warden, we were set free. A good thing, because I was starving and considering the weakest points of the wall to jump over just because I could not abide by being locked into a space with a perimeter of half a mile all day for absolutely no reason but because they could. This thinking, perhaps thankfully, did not need to continue from the initial idea stage before being set free.

I think perhaps what is most frustrating is being kept from doing my homework by the institution I'm doing the work for.

But I ate chinese food and stocked up on food for my room so I should be able to survive if I am again imprisoned. If I'm smart, I think I can stretch my resources for 48 hours. Not that they don't feed us, but I don't always want to eat it.

Happy Republic Day. 

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