It's Getting Hot In Here

Current temperature: 42C/108F

It is sometimes hard for me to believe that I am spending my third summer in Delhi. And if anything has changed for me, it is that I have almost no patience for people in the US or Europe who complain about their local weather – y’all know who y’all are. I can honestly say that unless you have spent a summer in a place like India, with the same conditions faced here, you really have nothing at all to complain about.

First off, there is the temperature that climbs to over a hundred in April and stays there pretty much through September. The weather forecast for this week is steady at 41C/105F. This is actually a bit cooler than it was just a week or so ago. And those temperatures won’t change much until September or so, although they might occasionally and for a very limited time dip down after a small rainstorm that raises the humidity to very high levels.

Buildings, including homes, are not built with nice insulation keeping desired temperatures in while keeping the undesired out. Buildings here are made of concrete. And if you happen to be as smart as a fifth grader, you will know that concrete absorbs and holds the heat. So it is a constant battle between the ceiling fan and/or air conditioner and the hot walls, which is usually fine until the ceiling fans or air conditioner turn off.

Why would anyone turn off the fans or the AC? Well, we don’t. We don’t have to. The regular power outages take care of that. Often, like yesterday evening, the power goes out for a few hours and within minutes, the indoor temperature climbs. It can quickly be hotter in the house than it is outside. Ok, maybe it is still over a hundred outside, but at those temperatures, very single degree is felt and suddenly one has to choose between sitting on the “cooler” terrace or in the oven of a house.

And don’t even get me started on the dust storms, having to get around Delhi in those mobile microwave ovens known as rickshaws with hot exhaust fumes coming in at every direction and the almost complete lack of cold water. Try taking a semi-cold shower to cool off and you will find the sweat is dripping before the toweling off has even finished.

But one bit of good news is, I actually like the heat. It doesn’t bother me so much. I am just tired of everyone else complaining about how bad they have it. I can honestly say that for the bulk of those complaining, you don’t even know what heat is.

And then there was the that one evening last week when I stepped out of the house in temperatures that could not have been higher than 102 and seriously felt a bit of a chill and wondered if I should have worn my jeans instead of shorts.

Attacks in Delhi

Between 18:07 and 18:38 yesterday evening, five bombs were detonated across Delhi. The last two explosions happened at M-Block Market in GK-1, just a few hundred meters from where I live. I was at home at the time, playing music and getting ready to go to Danielle’s for dinner. Manuel and I didn’t hear anything. We didn’t know anything. It was only when we got in the car fifteen minutes later and my driver got a call from his son that the first details started coming in. All he knew was that there was a bomb at Connaught Place and one in GK M-Block. It actually seemed absurd. I was sure he had some wrong information. There are 2 GKs, and each have an M-Block Market. He must have been talking about GK-2, which is close but not within walking distance like GK-1.

We live on a quiet street, bookended by one very busy street and another street that gets somewhat busy during rush-hour but nothing to really comment about. As soon as we hit the smaller of the two streets, it was obvious something had happened. For the first time in 3 months, traffic was jammed. On the way to Danielle’s, I tried to get some news, some details. I phoned Ankit who works for a TV station but couldn’t get through. Finally we got to Danielle’s. She didn’t know anything of it at all, so we turned on the local news and suddenly everything changes. Manuel was planning on going to Connaught Place to do a bit of shopping. He was planning on going to Palika Bazaar after the movie in Saket, but for some reason came home instead. Had he gone, he would have arrived just a few minutes before the bombs went off. He would have been there.

I am not going to pretend to be directly affected by the bombs. Too many people are dead and injured. As far as I know now, I have no friends among them. Had it not been for my driver or the messages I received asking if I was ok, I still would not know. I was planning on going to M-Block Market today. It’s our weekend market. It’s one of the places we go. I am typing this with the news in the background. Images from my neighborhood. This is the closest I have ever been.

Last night Anjali cancelled out on dinner to stay home. If I had known what was happening, I am not sure I would left the house. Danielle lives in what is probably the most secure part of the city, but it is 30 minutes between her place and ours. The restaurant which would have been normally crowded and turning people away had at most 4 tables of people eating. Everyone taking and making calls whenever we could get a line out. Text messages checking if everyone is ok. Promises to phone or text when we all reach home safe. Calling home to make sure our parents don’t worry when it finally hits the local news in Europe and the US. Just as we got to the restaurant we heard that some markets were being closed, markets and restaurants evacuated. Our conversation kept drifting back to what was happening in our city.

This morning on the news I heard that India is only behind Iraq and Afghanistan in the number of terror attacks. For me, one of the scariest times of these attacks is not knowing when it will end. Yes, five bombs went off and several more were diffused. Not knowing if that is it or just the start of something much bigger is what I find the most difficult. Everything becomes suspect. A car on the side of the road. A person putting something in a trash bin. The saddlebags on a bicycle. That’s what was used yesterday. Trash bins and bicycles.

No bombs have gone off since yesterday evening. The city and country are on high alert. Hopefully it is over for now, but we know that another is on the way. It is just a question of when and where…

Dr. Manish Gupta to the Rescue

Every morning on my way to work, I end up stuck in traffic just like every other person in Delhi. And after having sat in traffic in Los Angeles, New York, London, Amsterdam, Milan, Barcelona, Tel Aviv and Beijing, I can honestly say that there is no traffic like New Delhi traffic. Except for maybe Bombay traffic, but that is a different story all together. If the past year has taught me anything, it is that Delhiites are professionals when it comes to creating jams and pure traffic pandemonium. Not that I can really complain as I am normally only twenty minutes of traffic between work and home, a time frame that can triple if there has been a bit of monsoon passing through town.


And every morning I pass my time by either posting Tweets on Twitter or more likely just checking out the scene from the streets, peering into cars, making up stories in my head about the people in the car next to me and sometimes feigning sleep in the usually unsuccessful attempt at keeping street vendors from knocking on my window selling their wares of the day.

So today I was checking out the sights and sounds on the street that runs between my house and office when I found myself stopped in front of a sign that has always intrigued me. I first noticed it over a year ago when I first moved to Delhi and it never fails to conjure a sense of wonder and inquisitive curiosity in me. It is the sign for Dr. Manish Gupta’s clinic for skin, hair, nail, sex disorder, laser and cosmetic surgery. It's all right there, listed on the sign in bright red letters.

Normally when I look at that sign, the first question that comes to mind is “which of these specialties does not belong in this list?” But this morning I looked at it from a different angle and realized it is the perfect combination. I mean if you are going to have blemish-free skin, a to-die-for do, cat-like nails and corrective cosmetic surgery to snag a potential mate or play date, then it only goes to reason that you would want to ensure that all the fun parts are working properly.

Do They Know It's Not Christmas?

I seem to be colliding with Christmas. I’m not sure if there is some rupture in the time continuum or perhaps I am playing the lead role in my very own version of Groundhog Day set to a “Best of the Christmas Classics” soundtrack. In the past few years, India has been invaded by that ultimate symbol of unimaginative middle class suburbia, the shopping mall, and just a few short kilometers away from my front door stands the main entrance to the one of the shiniest and upscale ones in Delhi, Select CityWalk. Like most self respecting malls the world over, there is always music wafting through the air and more times than not, it is the instrumental versions of all your favorite Christmas Classics. I first noticed it when I arrived back from Europe in February. I was trying to shop and for some reason found myself humming “Winter Wonderland”. It took me a few seconds to realize that the music I my head was actually not in my head, but coming out of the speaker system. I immediately phoned Ankit to check the date and time and sure enough, it was a couple of days before Valentines. I chalked it up to an oversight on whoever was in charge of supervising the CD player.

But after several visits during several months, I noticed not only do they love their Christmas Classics at Select CityWalk, I hear them all over the place. Always an instrumental version. Ringtones, doorbells, ambient music in Chinese restaurants. I’m dreaming of a fried wonton…

At every major intersection in the city, every time the cars stop at a light, out come the vendors selling everything from one-time best selling novels to current issues of Vogue, old issues of IKEA catalogues (not that there is a singe IKEA in India), sticky stars to put on the ceiling, hand towels in assorted colors, tennis racket shaped mosquito zappers, steering wheel covers and on it goes, each week bringing with it a new theme. A few weeks ago, that theme happened to be dancing Winnie-the-Pooh thingies in complete Santa gear. It was 104 degrees outside. In the shade.

A few weeks later, Manuel and I went out to dinner and passed a shiny silver “Happy New Year” banner hanging across the doorway of a restaurant. We decided not to eat there just in case the food was not any fresher than the décor. We opted for another place to eat and all through the meal, in that really annoying sound of a toy keyboard was a looping medley of poorly played Christmas carols.

I finally came to the conclusion that as Christmas is only celebrated in India by a tiny portion of the population, nobody knows or recognizes these songs any more than I would recognize the song about a little dreidel, dreidel, dreidel that was made out of clay. But today, there I was, shopping at Select CityWalk as “Do You Know The Way To San Jose” played on the centrally located piano, which happens to be one of those that plays on it’s own and the keys move as well as though the ghost of Liberace had decided to spend a day of his afterlife hanging at the local mall. Anyway, I was convinced that the mall had finally gone all Grinchy and got rid of Christmas, at least until the holidays rolled around in a few months. And then I walked into Tommy Hilfiger.

Today is July 31. I walked into Tommy Hilfiger as everything was “up to 70% off” and suddenly I was slapped across the face by George Michael. From what I can gather, last Christmas he gave someone his heart and the very next day they gave it to someone else. This was not some musical background ambient music, this was full Christmas lyrics. At high volume. I was stunned. My whole theory went out the window. I think I might spend the night downloading some Hanukkah songs to burn on CD for them and they can give Christmas a bit of a holiday... Just for a week or so...

Clean-Up in Aisle Seven

I have never been a fan of grocery shopping. In fact, I hate it and if it wasn’t for the fact that I simply don’t have the time to grow my own veggies and meat, churn my own butter or milk my own cows, I would never step into a grocery store. Ever. It was bad enough in the US, with the over sized stores, numbered aisles and checkout counters spanning as far as the eye can reach and they were open 24 hours day. I used to do my shopping at 23:30. I preferred Vons Pavillions with their fabulous Deli and the best chicken salad I think I have ever had.

When I moved to Holland, I was shocked. The stores were only open from 9 – 6 and closed on Sundays. Not only that, but I had to bring my own bags or pay for new ones. And I had to bag groceries myself. How was I supposed to know that the eggs don’t go on the bottom of the bag

The local grocery store was the size of the 7-11 I lived near in New York, only without the 32 ounce Big Gulp and not a Slurpee in sight. No longer could I choose from 500 different types of ketchup, I got what they wanted to offer. Skippy Peanut Butter? Out of the question. Fruit Loops? No way. I couldn’t even get Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. I know, it was a barbaric existence.

But then I moved to India which took grocery shopping to a whole new level. No aisles. No carts. No hand-held baskets. Being in a store meant being in a human sliding block puzzle. Everyone had to move in a certain way in order to get through the store. One wrong move and we were all stuck. At Malik Brothers in Defence Colony, where we normally do our shopping is a bit smaller than our flat, a rectangle with 3 meter ceilings and goods stacked from floor to ceiling like a Junga game. Pull out the wrong item and it all comes tumbling down. In the middle is a little island crammed with more stuff that gives the store 2 aisles. Well, aisles is putting it a bit strong. They are very narrow passageways with a one person occupancy rule. And there are usually 50 people in the store at any given moment. The one thing I do love about shopping in India is the fact that one can strand at the counter and other people will run off and get whatever you want. Manuel, however always feels the need to browse as though he is there for the very first time. He will spend long minutes lingering over the three brands of soap. Each time he makes the same path through the store and each time he “ooohs” and “aaaahs” over the same products and laments about the available selection.

Last Saturday we went to Gurgaon, the dust bowl to the south of Delhi. We were on a mission to check out a new grocery store named Spensers’ Hyper. I had fallen for the hype of gourmet stores here before and so didn’t really have any high hopes as we pulled up to the MGF Mega City Mall, a rather small and unglamorous mall. Spencers’ was in the basement. We walked down the ramp and soon we were standing in a store unlike anything I had ever seen in India. It was a smaller version of Carrefour. Television, the largest bookstore I had ever seen in Delhi, DVDs, appliances, clothes, and groceries. Everything in wide aisles with room for shopping carts. We wandered here and there, taking it all in and then made a mad dash for the international section. Tabasco brand Bloody Mary mix. Blue Diamond Almonds. Campbell’s Soup. Wasabi peas! It just wasn’t going to get any better.

But suddenly, through the plate glass walls where the new bakery will be going, I saw it. That very specific color of yellow that can only be found on a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. I made a mad dash over the wine section, and there it was, a yellow labeled bottle of bubbles, flanked on one side by Moet and the other by G.H. Mumm. It was the first time since moving here that I found champagne anywhere outside of a restaurant. Normally it has to be brought in when returning from abroad. And suddenly here it is, just in time for my birthday which now I can guarantee will be a bubble filled bash.

After the emotional overload of shopping in grocery store heaven, we went upstairs into the mall for a bite of lunch in the food court. I have always thought of Gurgaon playing the part of New Jersey to Delhi’s New York. This point was driven home, and hard, the moment we walked through the main doors of the mall. It was Hannah Montana day. There were larger than life banners and flat screens and a stage upon which children too young to audition for Idols were doing their best Bollywood karaoke. The highlight was the girl singing “Salaam-e-Ishq.” I almost choked on my chicken shwarma.

Enough was enough and so we went back to downstairs for groceries. It as then I realized the problem with Spencers… Nobody understands the rules of shopping cart etiquette. The vegetable aisle was worse than a Delhi traffic jam and it seems that some tings are universal. Parents everywhere seem to find it cute when their toddlers push the shopping cart into others. For the record, it is not cute, and neither are the sneakers that make sounds with every step. They are annoying, should be illegal and considered a crime against humanity.

We finally had enough excitement for the day and so sped home to Delhi, where I made a very yummy BBQ thanks to Lawry’s Louisiana Marinade and the BBQ we received from Stephen and Pierre.

America's Next Top President

Summer in Delhi. It was great while it lasted, but now we have temperatures in the mid 20s and Wednesday was cooler than the average temperature in November. But over these past few days it has been raining cows and stray dogs, flooding streets and knocking out the TV. That meant no American Idols finals for me last night. It was the only reason I got out of bed yesterday and I spent the evening sitting lonely and depressed on my sofa wondering exactly what the meaning of all this is. The weather is supposed to hold this pattern until sometime next week. The creek/river/drain across the street seems dangerously close to spilling into the street. Thankfully we live on the top floor. However, it seems we have a bit of a clogged drain and the water on the terrace is rising. It will be okay as long as there are gaps in the rain, but a solid downpour of a few hours and we could easily be looking at a partially flooded flat, so have to make sure that there is nothing electrical on the floors. It wouldn’t flood more than a centimeter to so, but that would be enough to cause a bit of an electrical inconvenience. One can never be to cautious when faced with the possibility of putting one’s pedicured foot into a puddle of electrically charged water. What I want to know is whatever happened to the good old days of global warming? I was enjoying the relentless heat. The kind that makes the house so warm that by the time I am done toweling off after my morning shower, it is time to shower again. Ah, the good old days.

Speaking of American Idols, there is one thing that absolutely amazes me. In the US presidential election of 2004, a total of 122,267,553 votes were registered. In the US, the majority of states have a 12 hour time frame in which people may vote. That boils down to 10,188,963 votes per hour in a 12 hour day. The American Idols’ finale registered over 97,500,000 votes in just 4 hours, meaning an average of 24,375,000 per hour. If this number is extrapolated across 12 hours as is the US Presidential vote, then total votes for the American Idol would come out at 292,500,000 - more than double that of the last US Presidential vote.

So I have a suggestion. We need an American Idols type presidential race. Let any eligible person “audition” for the role of President. Then, after being narrowed down to 10 or 12, we can have them participating in all sorts of contests which could range from finding the US on a world map to naming the capitals of all 50 states in alphabetical order. As far as judges go, I would keep Simon – “Your speech on foreign relations was worse than a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction” and the oft teary Paula – “Hillary, I think your hair really moved tonight, you are what this presidential race is all about... I salute you!” but I would replace Randy with Paris Hilton “Obama’s hot!” or Tyra Banks “I have two candidates in front of me, but I have just one Oval Office.”

Personally, I think it would be a HUGE improvement.

An Evening With Royalty

Thursday evening there was a little do at The Claridges. It was a party in for Leiber, which is all about the crystal encrusted clutches coveted and carried by women in the know everywhere. From Sarah Jessica to Eva Longoria to Heidi Klum, crystal clutches seem to be the new pastel Louis Vuitton. I received an invitation today – hand delivered to my office, I might add - and decided to break out the white wing-tipped Gucci sneakers, which in Delhi are as practical as, let’s say, white wing-tipped Gucci sneakers in Delhi. I almost never wear them and in between their limited excursions around the various five-star hotels and restaurants in Delhi, they stay in their little individual cloth shoe bags tucked snugly in the brown box with the word Gucci written in gold letters across the top. And there they sit, waiting for some glamorous invitation that warrants pulling them out of their individual pouches and dusting them off for a night on the town. So given the fact that this party was being thrown by their Highnesses Maharaja Sawai Bhaani Singh MVC, Maharani Padmini Devi and Princess Diya Kumari, all of Jaipur, I decided I should pull out the sparkly white sneaks and parade them around Delhi for a few hours. I was bored and an evening with royalty seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

I had phoned Ankit hours before and he assured me he would be there as well, and so off I went, full speed ahead to the garden at The Claridges. I walked into the party, a vision in Paul Smith and Gucci and took a look around. And what a sight it was. I almost fell into a coma, but instead ordered a glass of champagne. I decided to entertain myself by taking a tour of the new collection and the few vintage pieces they had on display. My favorite piece was the reason for the party. A sparkly Ganesh that made me wish I could carry off a cocktail dress and glittery clutch, but I am afraid there just would not be a pair of Christian Louboutin’s in my size. I walked around the party in awe at how entertained people can appear in even the most boring and numbing of occasions. Ankit had a change of plans and didn’t think it at all necessary to let me know, so I hung around waiting for his camera crew to arrive.

Contrary to popular belief, I get very shy in situations like this. I simply have no idea how to break the ice. If is a situation of a conference where someone has expressed an opinion or talked in an educated way about a topic, that opens up a door to engage a complete stranger. But being a guy at a party for handbags, I didn’t really know what to say. Fortunately for me a glittery Ganesh smiled down on the party and just as I was about to trip over the shoelace of boredom and stumble into a glitterless coma, I met three fabulous women who came to my rescue. Fiona, Caroline and a tiny stylist for Elle. We chatted, we toasted and we compared notes on our boredom and all too soon it was time for us to part ways. But not before getting invited to Fiona’s Luxury Vagabond book launch party which promises to be a spectacular affair.

And after 2 hours of jewels, champagne and camera crews, I walked out of the party and was handed the parting gift. A copy of the current Indian Vogue, a gift worthy of royalty.