I Got The Power...

This morning I woke up to no electricity and no hot water… While I have heard that cold showers are great for the body, they are not really my idea of waking up in a nice and relaxed way. One of the things I learned from my last time in India is that electricity can be dicey and unpredictable, but until today I had no issues… Ok, so I know this is only day 4, but it was all going so well… I left work at 9:30 this evening bought a beer and ordered out for some Chicken Masala (the spiciest I have ever had) and tucked in on my sofa to watch some reruns of the 4400. TV here isn’t anything to write home about and all the channels I have seen are either not worth watching, or I don’t understand them. What I do find funny, is the universal corniness of daytime soap operas… It doesn’t matter if you are in the US, Mexico, Korea, China or India, they are all the same. The same stupid looks, the same bad lighting. You can almost sit and write your own script out and probably not be too far off… Either it’s a love triangle, blackmail, espionage or the star crossed lovers. But this evening, it was none of that as the power has decided to take the evening off and I am now relying on whatever battery I have leftover… There is a generator running that is keeping on one light in the living room/seating area, but that is also shaking the glass table causing a whole lot of noise that is quickly getting on my last nerve. So, here I sit in my flat that has been decorated with open yet pretty full bottles of Johnnie Walker and Chivas, neither of which I drink. I stand very firm in my belief that if it aint got the bubbles, it aint worth the troubles.

I had thought about tucking into bed early, but just as I was about to shut off the one working light and brush the teeth, a party has started up outside at the tent-like structure (which, it turns out is a taxi stand) and they have a band that is playing heavy on the drums and from the looks of it, it is going to be a New York house party, Delhi style!

The first pangs of being homesick are starting to kick in. I feel lonely here in India. Not lonely in the sense of not having anyone to do anything with, my colleagues are great, but lonely in the sense that I have nobody to talk to, and there are certain aspects of my life which just aren’t really shared in this country. So, conversation stays on a superficial level and I am always on guard to make sure I don’t tell the wrong joke or say anything that someone might find offensive. It is weird to be 39 and have to censure ones life, but then again I guess there are people that spend their whole lives that way…

Hey! The music outside just suddenly stopped and looking out the window I see the lights and fires are out and I don’t see a single person… Could this all have been in my imagination? HEY again... My lights just flipped on, the vibrating of the generator just stopped and suddenly the world is a normal place again! Yippee! And I have internet connections… Suddenly I feel a part of the world again…