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October 11, 2006
two clichés that turned out true
ONE.
traffic in India is anarchy. well known fact. noted. however, what turns my crank is the use of the horn. as far as I've managed to figure, a honk can mean many things, including the following:
"coming through"
"thank you"
"fuck off!"
"obliged, sir!"
"watch out for that bus!"
"yeah! that's me, I'm the bus!"
"yo, Murugesh! brother! long time."
"can i squeeze in here?"
"this is a lot of traffic. isn't this a lot of traffic, guys?"
"i can't believe there's no one else on this road!"
"wait, did i honk a second ago?"
"truth is one, paths are many"
this is a lot of expression for one sound only, so novelty horns are a craze. with the right composition blaring, you can add such subtleties to your tata sedan's highway vocabulary as "when you ride with me, you ride with the bumblebees."
TWO.
i'm just trying to be somebody I can talk to in the morning with a smile
the water AIN'T SAFE. this is well known. however, there is a genuine dilemma here I can't figure out.
I stepped into the shower this morning. gross thing one, as an aside, was that the bottom of the tub had leaked inside, and by shifting your weight some ancient waters under the near-rigid plastic would shift accordingly, gurgling. a part of me wanted to see what it looks under the tub, but that part came off with a good vigorous scrape and I flushed it.
but back to the water. i yanked the tap handle (which, if you're wondering, is not the name of a dance) and the stuff LOOKED clear enough, but it smelled like, well, so much rotting shit. almost threw up right there. I'd had a completely satisfactory shower the night before, but I suppose this happens every once in a while here. what are you supposed to do? I moseyed to the office unkempt as i'm wont, but I felt like I should have made some sort of excuse. "yeah.. you probably notice I haven't shaved.. it's because your country's infrastructure is a joke."
so yeah.. the work side of things was pleasant today; amazingly enough, after shaking the jetlag funk (which does deserve to be a dance), it's been way easier to relate to my local temporary colleagues. there's still a mite of spattered awkwardness about, borne out of the wide mindgap in subtle affairs like humor, but that's ok: i've been accepted, either as an ok guy or an amusing zoo animal, I don't care.
also, forget about having comments open. hundreds of spam messages a day. rather, drop me a line at keltanen at gmail dot com.
Posted by matti at October 11, 2006 09:24 PM