Glass half full or...

… glass half empty? Nowhere is perfect and having been here for three months, I thought it’s a good time to look at some of the daily things that make India both incredible and infuriating.

It’s not easy being green…

Well actually, in India, it is most of the time. You can instantly be an Eco Goddess by not really doing too much. Firstly, you only heat the water you need. You switch on your geyser 20 minutes before you have a shower, go back to bed, hit the snooze button to awake to warm water. Power showers haven’t quite made it over here yet, so washing your hair is done with a couple of jugs of water like a retro Timotei ad, but it does the job whilst you save water.

You don’t need to worry about recycling as everything that gets thrown away gets recycled by hand. We pay the going rate of Rs50 (about 66p) a month for someone to collect our rubbish from our front door. They take it to the local tip, sort through it and sell on the recycable items for a bit of profit. We hadn’t realised how much of a high commodity beer bottles really were at Rs2 each until we had a box of empties from a party. We left them outside in the afternoon for the morning collection and in an hour they had mysteriously disappeared… so even drinking beer is good for the environment and someone else’s pocket, love it.

But all this easy eco living only tends to be in the confines of your house. When you get outside, rubbish is everywhere. Even in the nicest areas of town you will find piles of the stuff. It’s not really helped by the fact everyone seems to be obsessed with sweeping. Dust is everywhere and if you don’t sweep your flat every day a delightful black layer appears on every surface. On the street everyone meticulously sweeps outside their house or shop but fails to do anything with the swept matter. You will find a strategically placed pile of rubbish outside most houses, the breeze then picks it up and deposits near by so just spreading the love around…

By the time you get home at night your hair is dusty, your skin is dry and you cleanse off a thick black layer of grime. You are then in need of another shower to get clean, hmmm, so perhaps not so green..

Domestic help required…

In order to deal with the dust inside your house, everyone tends to have a domestic help. Sweeping everyday is pretty time consuming and if it means a job for someone else I’m all for the cause. Our cleaner, bless him, tries his hardest and I’m sure we are not the easiest of people to deal with. He’s supposed to come at 8am everyday but tends to work on a rolling 2 hour start time which is a tad frustrating. In a world where as a female you have to be covered up at all times, it’s not the most convenient if he arrives late and you are in the shower. You sadly can’t pop out and open the door in a towel. I’ve had to jump out the shower fully shampood then put my pyjamas back on to greet him. With my morning scowl, dripping pyjamas and foaming hair I don’t who was the more startled when I opened the door.

We’ve managed to get him to come within a 30 minute window now, but when he does arrive I then turn slightly OCD and follow him around like a possessed banshee. He has a unique style of cleaning. He tends to favour using toilet bleach and dirty cloths for most chores. We’ve trained him off the Domestos for floors and kitchen surfaces. My particular bug bear is his style of washing up which involves a running tap and lots of noise. I would not mind if it was effective but the end result doesn’t pass my hygeine test. I’ve happily demonstrated several times to him, like Nanette Newman in a Fairy Liquid ad, the harmony and sparkling results of a washing up bowl, hot water and a scrubbing brush. But he favours his style. Every morning it’s a battle of wills by the kitchen sink. I tend to inspect every plate as it goes into the rack then return it to the pile, it’s like some bizarre circus plate spinning game where nobody seems to win…

Highlights: spending the last two days with my colleagues at Techshare a technology and disability event (laughing a lot and meeting lots of fans of our radio programme was really great), finally getting my resident’s permit (it took 4 hours, minimal queuing, whilst being entertained by a very charming retired German professor, you have to love the system), sunny times on the balcony or anywhere (it’s getting to a lovely temperature in the day, sipping chai outside the office is a nice afternoon activity and way to pass the time when there is a power cut), being caught in a thunderstorm and getting a subsidised lift home (stranded on the side of the road, no brolly, trying to keep my laptop dry a kindly auto driver only charged me half the usual rip off price to share a rickshaw home), discovering ladies night at the local bar where there are free mojitos and beer for the fairer sex (the quality of the alcohol is yet to be determined, by the third drink I was quite enjoying the stinging sensation with every sip...)