If You Looked in the Dictionary Under the Word Stubborn

You would find my highschool yearbook photo there.

Yessiree.

I'm sorry to report, here's the new score:
Eufemia 9
Cockroaches 1
Yes, it's a new game in Delhi and oh how the mighty are humbled. At midnight, when you've killed your 6th cockroach, you begin to wonder what you had against mosquitoes in the first place. Especially if they didn't carry Malaria, what's the big problem? The buzzing? Okay, that's supremely annoying but they can't help it. That's how they were made, it's in their nature.

On the plus side (is there one? Of course there is, there always is. Uhm, just let me think for a minute) I got better, faster and faster. Nailed them faster and harder, so that what happened with the first 3 cockroaches, where I killed them and then realised I clearly hadn't succeeded because the played dead for a few minutes and then got up and walked, or actually sauntered away, well that stopped happening. (Let me help you do the math: so this means I really smacked 12 cockroaches, but only nailed 9) I hit, they fell, and the when others came to attend the funerals of their friends, I showed no mercy, especially the closer they got to my backpack. I had a bad, heat-stroke type moment where I thought "You gotta show them who's boss." You know as well as I do, since they've stopped preparing to survive the certain Nuclear Holocaust of the 1980's, what with building their bunkers and scurrying away tins of spam, cockroaches don't work for a living so, they don't have to, so showing them who's boss was a waste of my time. They thought it was hilarious. I could hear them chuckling.

Eufemia to cockroach #5, because she's not getting on a first name basis with anything that has to die by her hand: I don't think this is funny, why don't you guys just BUGGER OFF! Fish fish fish!

Actually, there were several bad moments: I had to sleep with the light on because I could not imagine turning it off and letting them all run wild - as it was the light didn't really intimidate them much. Not as much as my shoe, which I believe they are currently meeting about in the bathroom and strategising how to handle the flipflop menace now known as "the purple bomber" in the insect world.

Then I couldn't turn off the fans, I couldn't imagine how to sleep with them on, but I could not turn them off or I would have melted. These fans were sold to this hotel by the American military back in 1945, when the soldiers returned and there was this boom and the old, indestructible stuff was shipped off to other countries - this was before disposable was a big part of our culture. In fact, I'm postive one of the fans is made with the old propellers from the Memphis Belle.

Somehow I woke up at 8:15, so I must have slept somehow though I have no recollection of it - and when I looked in the mirror this morning, it looked like I had a whole 15 minutes of well-rested sleep.

Maybe you don't want to hear this, particularly after a long, hard winter but - you know it's hot when you pick up your water bottle and, at room temperature it's like touching a cup of very warm tea. When you touch your bedsheet and it's hot like those eye-cover pillows people microwave and then cover their face with. When you wait 5 minutes for cold water to come out of the cold water tap.

In a way I guess this is very funny: I long for a cold shower. I never thought I'd see the day, definitely not when I started off freezing and trying to wash my hair and self with a bucket of cold water in December, because there was no option for hot.

Are you wondering about that "Cockroach 1"? At 2 a.m I thought I had a fruitfly on me, but it was a baby cockroach. And knowing what a cockroach egg looks like, well, it has it's pluses and minuses doesn't it? Shaking the egg out of the bedsheet but not having the presence of mind to flush it down the toilet, I realise that's another 36 friends and family joining the party in Room 104 any minute now. And when I went to the loo, seven of the smaller cockroaches had drowned in the toilet bowl over night. Perhaps they felt it was a choice between my flipflop frenzy or just taking the matter into their own feelers.

The thing about changing rooms is, first I'd have to go to a different hotel, mine doesn't have any AC. And after enduring the man yelling at me yesterday and trying to make me pay for a room I wasn't keeping, I have no desire for another scene. What is it with hot climates and hot tempers anyways, and did I tell you my theory that I should be able to prove with a history book, that thousands of years ago people migrated from the Indus Valley to Italy and this is why I'm feeling related to everyone on the subcontinent. I noticed it again yesterday, feeling like I was in Italy, while moving around in traffic, when all the street signs and lines on the road are treated like suggestions, not the law, but some suggestions say, on staying alive.

Also I can't really stand air-conditioning, I find I get sicker going from cold to hot than just bearing the heat. Another instance where I can thank my parents for the parts of my childhood that toughened me up. Built my character. This is like a Toronto summer, to the power of 10.

Four more sleeps and I'm home. Two sleeps inferno, one sleep on the train (AC!) one on the plane. There's that 12 hour stopover in Kolkatta airport, which looks as much like an airport as my laundry room but I guess I'll cross that Howrah Bridge* when I get to it.

Howrah Bridge: The bridge is a famous symbol of Kolkatta and West Bengal. Apart from bearing the stormy weather of the Bay of Bengal region, it successfully bears the weight of a daily traffic of approximately 150,000 vehicles and 4,000,000 pedestrians. It is one of the longest bridges of its type in the world.