Holidays=drugs

When we (University Iowa students and I) first got here a seasoned Indian exchange student warned us that a lot of Indian street salesmen in Mysore make up certain holidays and insist on showing you where it is taking place. They then proceed to direct you in and out of side roads until they you find yourself in a remote part of town where they attempt to sell you hard drugs. Now the only thing that worried me about this is that if you've experienced street salesmen from Mysore you know that they do not take no for an answer. Last time I went to the city I spent 30 minutes saying no to the same man and somehow ended up buying a crappy flute.
So I went into the city today with friends and it happened to be a holiday according to a street vendor. It was in the old part of Mysore where all the Muslims lived because it was an Islamic holiday. So we walked for about a mile and the streets started becoming more and more deserted. We were all starting to get tired when we reached an incense shop. We went in to see how the incense was made and were told to come back to see how the incense was made. At this point I remembered the previous warning and became slightly uncomfortable with the situation. Everyone in the group looked uneasy and we were asked to sit down and then it happened. They asked us if we wanted to buy...

Incense! Turns out there was an Islamic holiday going on. I then proceeded to feel bad for assuming the nice man who was trying to show us a cool festival was a drug dealer. 

1st post!

I can't believe I actually made a blog. I feel an undeserved sense of technical saavy. Well I guess I'll begin by explaining the name of the blog. It is an Indian idiom (How appropriate!) which refers to having a no care attitude/being yourself. I just thought it was too cool for school and thus a blog title was born.
For those of you who don't know I am spending a semester in Mysore India. I've already been here for almost a week and a half and I feel like I've lived here all my life. The area I'm living in has beautiful scenery, smells and people and while at times overwhelming this is already one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. Highlights include but are not limited to:
-petting an elephant
-playing modified soccer with a group of school children
-traversing the streets via auto-rickshaw
-realizing that one can communicate surprisingly well with very limited knowledge of the language
-pretty much everything else
Well this will be a short blog since I have a scheduled skype date. Post again soon with pictures!