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Living in India reveals our expectations ot the material world. 1 may think of myself as nonmaterialistic
and disapprove of the Indian attachment to Western conSumer goods, but Im forced to realize that I take all
too many of them for (g ) myself. As Westerners, our standard of living in India iS far higher than
that of most people around us. We tell house rental agents that were just looking for something simple.
But simplicity is relative. For We expect ( wー一一) Americans think of as basic requirementSs: electricitY,
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a telephone, e-mail, flush toilet, hot and cold water.
We are assured that all these things Wil be (a ). And in a way they are. But it takes five
weeks for the telephone to be installed, sometimes it goes dead, and we cantuse it to call abroad. There is
hot water, but not in the kitchen. The electricity goes out for half an hour every evening, and sometimes
for longer periods during the day. The voltage is high enough to work the e-mail modem only before 9
am. The municipal (W ) supply shrinks to a trickle in the dry season, and sometimes the pump to
our backup well fails. When the supply ijS adequate, the toilet flushes. So, all these basic services do
ぶ( eーー一), but they are unpredictable.
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This is a healthy lesson. For one thing, it connects us with others. If one or another of these services
isnt working, we share with neighbors or We do(W ) for a few hours, or for a day or two. They
use our telephone if they need to: they bring us candles 寺 we have no electricity.
