I have been in the permanent guest apartment for 3 weeks. I had a temporary stay in a guest house in GK-II, [Greater Kailish] considered a well to do area. I did indeed see some very opulent homes but I also saw cattle & poverty coexisting with the duckets. T’aint no cattle where the diplomats are. Not a one to be found. The roads are paved & everything is lush & squeaky green. Reminds me of when I was in Kauai with the revenge of the Moa, [wild chickens who basically own the place] they were everywhere & didn’t know when the heck they were supposed to crow. Of course they did that with great relish, preventing the phenomenon of sleep to occur. But they sure as heck were not near the ritzy hotels. Who said money doesn’t buy everything?
Anywho, one good thing about the first guest house was that I had access to an internet café though it was a bit of a trek, but the owner was cool & he let me use my own laptop. When Kali & I found the place I could have burst into song, I was so happy. Kali is the boy caretaker of the guest house & I absolutely adored him! Me-ilkuh? Brahk-fast? ‘Ten menits.’ He didn’t speak English & I don’t speak Bengali but we made quite a pair, until I almost got hit. That’s for another post that’s coming sooooooonnnnnnnn.
I had spent DAYS in internet withdrawal. I thought I was ‘bout to lose my mind. [Actually, that happened many times during this trip!] I also didn’t have a phone & felt TOTALLY cut off from the world. You never know how much you miss things until you don’t have them [The Office did eventually give me a phone]. I mistakenly thought hey, the US outsources everything techno to India it should be a given there will be access in my residence, or at least WiFi in a coffee house—NOT! & it didn’t behoove me to include that little ditty in my contract. To my chagrin, WiFi is new to India & not widespread in the least. Wey-all, this falls under the category of You Live & You Learn! At that time, I had no idea how insufferingly impossible impressing the need for that creature comfort on the folks in The Office would be & spent most of my 6 week stay in search of remedying the situation [though they say it’s improved, there’s so much begging that goes on in this city, people become numb to it, so my begging totally fell on deaf ears]. As a matter of fact, they couldn’t fathom the need; guest teachers just use the internet cafes. Yeah! I can’t believe I’m the only one who was grossly inconvenienced in this way.
Because of terrorism, a very complex system is in place to get anything done here. You have to provide proof of identity & go through a LITANY of paperwork. Then you wait for ages to have it approved. And you also get searched up the ying yang, and I mean SEARCHED. Before entering the turnstile on the Metro, or to attend a movie, you walk through a metal detector. There’s a line for each sex & the search is usually conducted by an officer of that sex. They really go through your bags & use a wand detector over the body. And if you are buying tokens to board, you have to buy one in each direction though there is a card for frequent riders. Like Japan, you have to hold onto that token for dear life until the end of your trip, & then you drop it into the turnstile’s slot to exit. Even when you go to an internet café, you are required to show proof of identity & to sign a book. Every time you go. Though the guy in GK-II was cool & I only had to do that once. The local internet café in the area I’m in now is sooooooo tired! The man won’t let me use my own computer, it’s damn near claustrophobic, the monitors are older than New Delhi dirt, & he is RUNNING WINDOWS 98!!!! WINDOWS FRIGGIN’ NINETY-EIGHT!!!! We’re in the doggone 2,000’s & have been for almost a decade! Clearly all the outsourcing the US is doing isn’t to the city of Delhi. [From what I’ve read, it’s Bangalore].