The Monsoon has officially started, and thank God for that!!!!

It was SOOO hot in Delhi, unbearable! This was the hottest summer I have experienced here so far...especially the month of june was terrible. It seemed the air contained no oxygen anymore, breathing got difficult, sleeping got difficult...doing anything except hanging in front of the airco got difficult! But this the power and water demands soaring powercuts and watershortages got more frequent by the day, leaving millions of people without water and electricity for hours every day!
Obviously people got angry and started protesting...we expats keep wondering how a government can not foresee that powerdemands will grow as more and more people can afford to buy an airconditioning and how water supplies cannot be fed during the many rains that India does have...India does not have water shortages, but it has shortages of drinking water and it has no even water supply. When it rains India floods, contaminating drinking water and sweeping away fertile soils, villages, roads, electricity cables etc. When it doesn't rain, and the water has flown away instead of being stored in -for example- underground storage systems, there are water shortages. Simply said, of course. But in fact, it is this simple.

Water shortages do not only affect people, it also affects animals. Monkeys, to be precise. Monkeys that live in the forest across our street, and that come into the city to find food and water. can't blame them really, but unfortunately they found a source of water allright: OUR watertank! They also found out it is relatively easy to break the plastic pipes that come out of the tank, so we have had several downpours of 600 liter at the time and now left that one tank empty because repairing will only result in more damage. They didn't like that their watersource was not properly refilled and so they distroyed my palmtrees as revenge! They "visited" our terrace several times and the result was the above mutilated tree (and all the others look like that as well).

Needless to say that pissed ME off..but then there was T to protect us!!!

In an heroic attempt to stop the beasts from ravaging our surroundings T climbed up the roof with a big bamboo stick and whacked the alpha male of the monkey troop one across the ears...and then he stood up, waved his arms and stick in the air and made a lot of noise...the monkeys must have understood his body language and figured this ape was too big for them, because we haven't seen them since!

T the Monkey Man! There is money to be made of this in Delhi....!