Sunday, May 23, 2010

We are in the middle of summer now, and the usual problems occur....powercuts, electricity fluctuations (causing half the house to shut down) and water shortages.

Watertankers like these can be seen everywhere, either pumping liters of sort of drinkable water into the roof-tanks of hotels, expats and affluent Indians, or dripping and leaking on the streets while street-dwellers fill their buckets and bottles and whatever else they have managed to obtain.

The "government" water that is delivered into underground tanks of the various houses (and then pumped up into the roof tanks, that is, if there is electricity) is not very dependable these days....our staff complain frequently that "no water came" or that water is trickling in veeeeery slowly...not sufficient obviously for the increased needs. Because Delhi is HOT. Today the weather forecast predicts 49 degrees Celcius, and we have not yet reached the hottest point of summer!
Apparantly it is the hottest summer in a hundred years....

We had planned to go a few days to Darjeeling, to celebrate T's birthday, but yesterday a Gorkha leader was stabbed to death in Darjeeling, and the shops have closed, there are roadblocks, and uproar is feared....so I think we will have to cancel our trip and face more of Delhi's sweltering heat.

The heat is making me slow and grouchy. I have to resist slamming a dent in the roof of a car everytime they feel the need to honk when driving right beside me....a favourite pasttime at Khan Market! I suspect that the nouveau riche in their big cars do not do this out of concern for us pedestrians but merely to draw attention to themselves and their big cars.....
I also cannot stand the slow wobbling fat ladies that take up all the space on the pavement, chatting away on their mobile phones while deciding in which establishment to gobble down the next cake, pie or chocolate....and most of all I cannot stand the spitting and peeing which is going on everywhere!
Even the indians start to notice that India is being used but not cared for, as our masseuse puts it. She does not "have a lot of english" but she certainly has a sharp ability for observation!

Now we are hoping for the monsoon. It is predicted for the 30th of May and apparantly has already started in the south...we cross our fingers because last year the monsoon was 1,5 month late and very little, and the normal febuary rains also did not come, so we are facing drought and failing crops....may the Gods be with us!

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