Death by Palaak Pakora

[picture - Progress!]

[music – boards of Canada, Bishop Allen, other b songs from Gavin and Amit]
[drink – Assam tea from Brown Sugar. Apparently rented. They call it stomach troubles, but really it’s just delegation of responsibility for trouble to the guts]

Three days in, this trip has still been a good showing for faith. The sewage drainage pit is downwind, and it is cool enough to sleep at night without an air conditioner, at least until 6 am. Delhi as also done what I expected it to, which is crystallize my identity as a white woman. I’ll have to try very hard to break out of the expat tracks. My helpful upstairs neighbours recommend a restaurant that is full of expats, and actually serves sushi. Right now that seems tasteless, but perhaps after a few more months of unrelenting infamy I’ll be ready for anonymous whiteness, however expensive. It’s not just people who are defined against elsewhere. The drygoods say ‘export quality’ and the sugar says ‘refined to European standards’. The coffee shop has faux 50s women on the walls and Avril Lavigne on the radio. [addition Sept 4 – it’s not just top 40, it’s the same top 40. They say ‘Justin Timberlake! Timbalake! every 3.5 hours] The table decorations are either non-functional hookahs or non-functional bongs, but too far from either to tell. Of course, this is the location that I paid more money to obtain. It’s quiet, and the rickshaw drivers who follow me home in the dark are comparatively deferential.