Village People

I live in Delhi - a place where I can buy Mac make up and Heinz baked beans and garnier fructis shampoo. A place where I can go clubbing and eat expensive gnocchi and oven brick pizzas. A place where I get wireless Internet and blackberry service and where there's an entire mall dedicated to selling name-branded stuff that I've never heard of before.

And then suddenly this week, I am reminded that Delhi is in a country called India. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just makes me grateful to one day be going back to a country called America.

Splink Splink
I woke up from my slumber at 2:30 am to really annoying clanking sounds. So, I went out into my balcony and saw about 5 puny little Indian men emptying this gigantic metal truck filled with metal crates. They couldn't obviously lift the crates (too small for that), so they were dragging the metal on metal. The people across the street decided to move in in the middle of the night and let the entire neighborhood know of their arrival.

To make it worse, there was a driver who apparently was trying to drive past this truck and couldn't. He concluded that the best way to let them know that he was blocked was to honk profusely for about 15 minutes before deciding that it was actually easier to back out and take another parallel street.

Flush THAT
It is Day Three without indoor plumbing. Apparently, the motor that pumps water from the well to our facets broke. "When they dug down there to replace it, it was raining so they couldn't set it properly. when they tried to fix the motor the next day, the motor they got didn't work so they had to re-order the motor which be installed today" (or so my landlord said 2 days ago).

The experience has lead me to two conclusions:

• Indian landlords lie
• I am so grateful for gadgets like a "flush" and "faucet" and "tap"
  

While it has been slightly annoying to have to flush our toilets and wash our hands with buckets of water, its strange being able to actually measure the amount of water I need for certain tasks. For example, it takes one teacup of water for me to brush my teeth; and another to wash my face. It takes 3 half-liter plastic cups to flush the toilet when I've gone #1, versus half a whole bucket if I've gone #2.

oh, living the village life.
In a not-so-villagey city.