posted by Strothi on English, India Project, Livin' my Life, WG

Hey folks,

though I’m not quite alright again, I’m really close to it and thus thought I should write a little update. By now my headaches have gone and I don’t think I’ve fever anymore – yeah. It’s almost scary how precise the doc nailed it, when he told me on saturday that exactly that would happen… Anyway, right now I still feel a little weak (who wonders) and my stomach has yet to join into the „I’m back and healthy state“ but I’m sure it will soon 😉 Even though there’s lots to blog about, I’ll only start with one „typically Indian“ story…

Episode 1

Yesterday morning I woke up as lots of noise was going on around me. If you’ve seen the pics of my apartment down here, you know that my room opens on one side to the veranda and entrance door. So barely awake I noticed at least three people standing in front of my room/door shouting/knocking. I decided simply to do nothing about it UNTIL suddenly the noise increased and there was LOTS of smoke coming into my room through all possible cracks in the wall!!! I didn’t enjoy that that much and thus fled into my bathroom… After 2-3 minutes the spook was over and I went back into my – now smoke filled – room.

Episode 2

Approximately 2 hours later my mobile rang with an unknown number – this is NOTHING NEW down here, as I don’t know why but strange Indians just like to call me 3-4 times per day, babble something in Hindi and end with HELLO?HELLO? HELLO?… So normally I tell them that they got the wrong number and hang up on them. So I did yesterday as well but the guy called again. This time I figured that he actually knew my name AND address! Still I did not understand anything he was trying to say to my except of one point when he somehow yelled at me „This is my house!“. I have to admit, I was really a bit confused but as he didn’t try it a third time, I didn’t think too much over it.

Episode 3

Well, what can I say, my poor flatmate got all the stress thereafter… Apparently our landlord called him 15 times, had him step out of a meeting and yelled at him that the foreigner had a severe illness (Dengue) and what he wanted to to about it… So my flatmate called me to inform me, that my neighborhood was about to went mad about me being sick and if somebody would call me, I should tell them to wait for Bala to come home and he would manage everything.

Episode 4

Well, coming home wasn’t that easy for poor Bala. Our landlord called him within 20 minutes about 5 times to ask where he would be and then „caught“ him even before he could enter into our house… After a quite intense discussion he finally arrived at our place with a best to describe „Fuck India and these stupid Indians“ message written all over his face… So, to put everything in context, what had happened?

Well, from what we know, this is what happened:

I guess, the hospital informed the authorities that they were treating a patient with the Dengue Fever. Moreover, without my permission the forwarded not only my number to the authorities but as well my address. The noise in episode one was caused by a governmental run action that sought to kill all mosquitos in the street – with some kind of smoke/spray. Doing this, my entire neighborhood freaked out pretty much as a combination of rumors and nonsense about „the sick foreigner“ spread word. That caused than my 90 year old landlord to call me on the mobile, which miserably failed due to not being able to speak a proper english. As he didn’t succeeded in talking to me, he than started harassing my flatmate that ultimately had to explain to them in person that I was already doing fine, had have the best medical service you could get and would pose no thread to anybody in the neighborhood. In order to quote Bala „These fucking bored out housewives“ did not know anything about Dengue but only acted under the asumption of „sick=danger=fear“. Actually our maid is working for other people in the street and they told her not to work for us anymore because of me being sick. Guess what, my maid, not speaking any english nor probably ever having had a „proper education“ told the „educated housewife“ that a) Dengue can only be transmitted via mosquitos and b) she would rather stop working for them than for us! Booo Ya 😀

Alright, so that’s been yesterday. Right now I feeling fine and I guess I’ll join my friends at „the table“ tomorrow again, thus FINALLY leaving this apartment 🙂

More to come over the next couple of days,

stay tuned, Strothi