25th October, Delhirium

I've been away from the blog for so long I feel like a visitor! I dropped in now and then, just to remind myself it was there but I just did NOT feel like posting any updates. Maybe coz I was also writing bulletins to post to my Mom as well as making weak little attempts to do a bit of writing on the side? Maybe coz I was distracted by the amusements in the house I was staying in -- including a pair of very talkative Austrailian Zebra Finches? Maybe coz I spent a good half of my stay leaping on and off subways, buses and finally a train (back from Vermont)? Whatever. It was a hectic trip, but fun and I got a lot done, but have very little evidence to show for it! This little kitty was perhaps the only creature who got recorded on my camera, and she belongs to my Vermont family. I am SO fed up with my camera -- though I feel instantly disloyal writing this. Poor little thing! It does its best ... but I bought it at a moment in technology when cameras had just become self-aware but were not yet energy-efficient. So even though it takes acceptable photographs with the minimum of effort/thought on my part, it chews up batteries like a barracuda. I can never take more than about 30 pix in quick succession without being shown the "dying battery" icon and if, god forbid, the flash goes off at any time, well then pop goes the battery two pictures later. MOST FRUSTRATING. I try to remind myself of the days when the problem was running out of film or putting the film in backwards or of misjudging filmspeed -- but to no avail. It is STILL very annoying not to be able to use the camera spontaneously. gnngngngngnnnnggngggn, as Obelix might say.

Anyhow. I got back one week ago, last Saturday night, but was immediately felled by a monster cold. I mean, it had been threatening to break over my head the whole of my final week in NYC, but only really let itself go once I was back in Delhi. I didn't have a fever, so I wasn't worrying about H1N1 but omigod the FLOODS in my nose were like having twin rivers at high tide just pouring continuously. And a sensation like a saw-mill in my throat. Coupled with a desire to just burrow into my bed and DIE.

Which is pretty much what I did ALL WEEK. I have literally not stepped outside my house ever since returning -- I mean, yesterday evening I stepped into the little community park outside my front door and that was the first time I had worn outdoor shoes since removing them after the flight.

Speaking of which: it was one of those Continental Nonstops, filled to overflowing. I was scared to look out the windows in case I saw a few passengers clinging to the wings. Really. But I had planned well in advance, and had booked myself an aisle seat. My neighbour, however, was less fortunate. He seemed a very nice person, he was SO uncomplaining -- a tall, very polite and soft-spoken Afghan, he had been waiting to board a flight for two nights and this was his best bet. I even offered to give up my aisle seat in view of his discomfort but he was too polite to accept my offer. Half-way through the journey he got up and lay down in the space between the central bulkhead and the seat-backs of the middle section -- lucky for him, there was a lull in crew activity so no-one contested his use of that space. Poor man! 16 hours of being curled up like a shrimp. Yow.