Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Shockingly Clean

There’s nothing quite like coming home to an unelectrified plumbing system – because, I don’t care how tough and rugged you are, sometimes you just want to wash away the day’s worries without having to turn the hot water knob using an insulator. Trust me – a bucket bath just doesn’t live up to the hype if you’re in a constant state of careful estimation regarding whether or not there’s an unbroken circuit of water between the sink’s faucet and where the soap sits on the edge of the counter. When you don’t feel like jumping at the most minute twitch of a muscle because you think it’s the first sign that you’re about to be the path of least resistance between the water-covered floor and the capricious voltage source that sometimes manages to coerce the water pipes into collusion. Perhaps the most hilariously frustrating part is when, as you see the bucket below the lower faucet nearly full, you hurriedly grab some cotton shorts and use them to insulate your hand as you turn the lower-faucet on–everything off–shower-on lever to the middle, “everything off” position, but, in your hurry, go a bit too far, crossing over into “shower on” territory, and those handful of drops fall straight down, directly onto your shorts, on your hand, on the metal lever, almost instantaneously turning your shorts from quality insulator to great conductor, and sending that telltale throbbing pulse up your arm and down your leg.

Food for Thought

In India, there are appoximately 700 distinct foodstuffs considered “good for digestion.” In fact, if you are eating Indian food with an Indian, and said Indian begins a sentence with “It is...,” you can be 95% sure that the next words out of said Indian's mouth will be either a.) cooling, b.) good for health, c.) good, na?, or d.) good for digestion. Almost never will you here the more expected “hot as all get out to begin with, and eating this stuff would make you sweat in a meat locker.”

Lunch, Lunch, Lunch, Lunch...

As an objective outside observer, I believe I'm in a position to confidently say that they have a bit of a lunch complex over here. They always want to know, namely, if you've eaten it.
They also have a particular way of expressing it, specifying that it's your lunch they're referring to. You hear it so much, it becomes a cliché:
“Have you had your lunch?”
As if you just might answer:
“No, but I stole Renji's – don't tell the poor bastard, though, or I won't be able to steal it again tomorrow.”
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