After a night of pouring rain and thunder, Ari woke me up to tell me that Nina's room was flooding. "Big deal," I thought. "This is old news. It's probably just a trickle." But then I heard shouting, and upon investigation, was surprised to find a veritable deluge coming in through Nina's window. With water well over ankle deep, our entire house was threatened. Basically, our landlady's consistently bad construction sense had struck again, this time aiming the rain run-off from the entire house into our flat. The rest of the morning is a blur. Ari donned a past intern's gigantic blue rain suit and turned into Superman, making makeshift pipes and giving sound advice. Nina ran about half-naked, soaking wet in her pink pajamas and rain-spotted glasses, piling mud and sand in front of her window to stop the rushing waters (her efforts were successful, if scandalous). For the most part, I played the useless assistant - fetching old pipes, building Lego-like contraptions to make up for the lack of gutters in this country, and bailing out Nina's now rather silty room.
Must remember that 2300 people lost their lives in Bangladesh from the cyclone. Must remember that our housekeeper did not come today because of massive rain damage to her own home. Must remember that we still have it pretty damn good.
Today on the phone, Jeff laughed and jokingly asked me "and what's so appealing about India again?" The truth is, at 7:45am in the pouring rain, with landladies and roommates yelling and mud streaming into our house and the bed bug rash spreading, if someone had asked me in that moment, "Do you still want to be here?" I would have screamed back, "YES" with all my heart. Perhaps India isn't appealing, but I still am exactly where I want to be.
Happy Three-month Anniversary, Interns!
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