And yet not at all, but I’ll get to that.

Firstly, I feel smart. I bought myself a lovely Bengali tant style sari last month from sarishop.com (I have been drooling over their spring collection), and then it sat around in my closet for a while, and then last week I made a concerted effort to learn how to drape it myself (I had gone into a local shop and the lady who owned it said she could sew the pleats in, but that’s for cheaters). I tried, got frustrated, and then stuck it in the closet. I tried again, then stuck it in the closet. I tried, waddled to the TV (perplexed as to why I couldn’t walk properly, and why the pleats weren’t looking right) to watch a movie, and then afterward managed the closest thing I’d gotten to a proper drape yet:

[back]

[front, and I apologize for the horrible state of the room; I’m in the midst of organizing]

Hooray! Pleats! You will notice (or I will point out) that I look unsure in the second photo, and that the pleats are suspiciously sparse, and that also the pallav is very short, and this is because I had been wrapping it one time too many before pleating it, which also explains the weird waddling thing I had to do. I have since figured it out, but my camera has no functioning flash and I figured it out at night. I will post other photos soon.

However, I think this is not a bad first try, and it can only get better from here, right? I’m feeling pretty confident about that.

The Hindi, on the other hand, is not so hot. I got through genders and plurals and mine and yours and other possessives, and how to ask questions, but I am still stuck on postpositions. Here is my problem. These two sentences, for all rights and purposes (from my English-speaking perspective) look exactly the same to me:

मे़ज पर पंखा है।

पंखा मे़ज पर है।

(pardon the weird ़ज thing that’s happening; I’m not sure where the “za” character exists on the keyboard)

Okay, okay. I know they’re not the same thing. One says “mez par pankha hai” and the other says “pankha mez par hai”, or “there’s a fan on the table” and “the fan is on the table”, but I cannot figure out why “mez par” is where it is, except that possibly in the second case I’m referring to the fan directly, and in the first case I’m sort of obliquely referring to it (this may, in fact, be the answer to my problem, in which case I’m an idiot and please ignore me), and that I can read it but not generate correct answers to any given question the book poses me. I read the paragraph, the book asks me questions, and my brain formulates, “main thik hoon” for all of the answers. Not helpful.

Aargh. I have devoted a week of my time to this and have made only a tiny bit of progress (though I have now learned the word for fan, so I guess that’s something).

Whew. Feels good to get that out in the open. My husband will be glad that I complained to somebody else for a change.

(And I’m super-proud that I can almost-kinda type in Hindi)