Eric and Babu, watching tv

Babu watched cheesy Hindi music videos while I ate breakfast and read the Times of India this morning. This is a pretty big step, for him to hang in the same room as me. Usually he serves me my meal, then makes himself scarce, then returns periodically to make sure I’m still doing well. I would communicate to him that I don’t care if he watches videos or even if he eats with me, but I, of course, cannot tell him this because he doesn’t speak English.

Alas, when the music video show was over, he put the tv on Seinfeld, not dubbed, but the original English version. I guess he did that on account of me, thinking I wanted to watch it. It was a pretty funny one, though. Jerry’s girlfriend works sells paper goods, but she wouldn’t spare any tissues for Elaine. So then Elaine stole all the toilet paper at Monk’s from the lady’s room while Jerry’s girlfriend was going to the bathroom. Of course, this girlfriend was actually right in the middle of becoming an ex-girlfriend, as Jerry had just moments before accused her of being a phone sex worker on the advice of Kramer.

Postscript on the Times of India
I guess it is a respectable paper, but I would say it’s more akin to the NYPost, and not at all akin to the NYTimes. It’s full of murder news, strange happenings, crime news, traffic accidents, mixed with some heavier news, like about the mosque bombings in Hyderabad, and of course the impending marriage of Shakira. They’re all over that here. Yesterday I heard a cell phone in the office ring more than five times, and the ring was none other than “Hips Don’t Lie.” (“I’m starting to feel you boy.”)

There was also an article this morning about how we can conserve water by gathering rain and filtering the water. All it involves is building a set of drains and pipes from your roof and around your driveway or parking lot, digging a deep hole, and filling it with appropriate filtering materials, like charcoal, and I guess if you don’t want it to turn into ground water, you’re going to need a pump to bring it back up to your home. I just don’t see any Indians in Mumbai doing this. Even though the article wanted it to sound easy, it sounded complicated and expensive. But the article was interesting because it shows that Indians are concerned with the environmental issues that have recently become mainstream in the U.S. – or at least the journalists are concerned, which maybe is another way Indian environmental consciousness is similar to that of the U.S. – the journalists are interested, but maybe not the general public, save for those with time and money to spare.

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