I've noticed something funny about the scene in India, and indeed Dubai and Switzerland too. Pretty much the only way to be cool is to be Western. All the ads show people in leather jackets, buttoned shirts, jeans, whatever, and most everyone under thirty tries to dress the same way. We were at a club to watch a blues band on Saturday night, and I wore my kurti, which is a loose Indian shirt. I'm positive I was the only person wearing any Indian clothes there. It takes all types to make a world, the saying goes, but soon it's only going to need one - the generic American cool dude.

Anything with English words on it is also in. Pointy case, the shirt I got in Dubai, which I promised to tell you about. It's half black, half white, split down the middle, and is covered with badly translated ranting about how teenagers aren't respected and how revolution is imminent. Along the sides are printed newspaper clippings about gangsters or revolution or something, and it's completed with spots of blood across the front. I figure it's stylish just for the kitsch factor.

I have to say, I'm kind of homesick. Friendsick, too. I keep thinking: "If *friend* was here, he'd probably say something like *friend's generic phrase* right now. Oh well. I think I can make it through three more months, easy.

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Bashu