You Can't Always Get What You Want

…but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.  It sounds like the Rolling Stones lived in Jaipur at some point in their careers.  Maybe not.  However, this tune is an apt summary of our first week in India.  There have been some challenges, not the least of which is our necessity to stretch and widen our scope of perceptions about what we need, what we want, and what those things might look like.

We began apartment hunting immediately upon entering the pink city, and began readjusting our expectations for cozy housing concurrently. However, we lucked out upon the place where we now are settled, but there is an outside kitchen only with no hot water.  We will have a gas connection, though, and that is apparently quite a big deal here.  The government has limited the number of people who can have gas connections, and limited the number of gas cylinders one can purchase a year to 5, which, according to our landlady, is woefully inadequate.  We hypothesize the government’s reasoning was to try to ration the use of gas, but in fact what it has done is to create a healthy black market for the materials.  I think there is an economic lesson in there, but I’m not the one to deliver it.

Equipping our rooms with the accruements for living was the next step, and that provided another lesson for the Iowa Guru. You might find a department store, but you might not find washcloths in that store, nor laundry hampers, nor drinking glasses. However, you might find a single Winnie-the-Pooh plastic cup and foldable laundry hamper with jungle animals painted in primary colors, both of which you snatch like they were auction block pieces.  A mini-projector purchased for work quickly becomes a home entertainment center.  You might not find any Luna Bars or granola mix like at Trader Joe’s (really, I’m not that naïve!) but you might find one box of Apple Crunch flavored Nature Valley granola bars, even though the expiration date goes back a ways.  What is that saying about when you are hungry everything tastes delicious? A stainless steel bowl quickly is expropriated to serve as a teapot, and curtains become a closet door. All this seems pretty trivial, I know, and not much about it is surprising, but it’s still an adjustment.

The bigger adjustments have included getting used to some very extended couple time.  After living in a 4-bedroom home and moving to a single room with a bathroom, S. and I are seeing more of each other on a daily basis than we ever have.  So far, so good, as we have realized we constitute our own Mutual Aid Society. Adjustments to the elastic time concept in India have caused some growing pains, as well as a bureaucracy that has a penchant for paper unrivaled to our experience.

We weren’t prepared to have to give a passport-sized photo and 2 copies of your passport and visa to buy items like a mobile phone, broadband connection for the computer, an reverse osmosis machine for clean water production, and gym membership.  Who knew?

All in all, it’s been a good first week, with many major tasks accomplished.  Next week the top of the list is securing a driver who knows English.  I’ve been trying, it’s been difficult, but I still hope to get what I need.