India Hates Me
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
View into the old city of Jodhpur, Rajasthan.
These words are coming in the heat of passion, backed by fear for my life. Not more than a moment ago, a bee the size of a hummingbird flew in through one of the eight windows in our hotel room that does not have a screen. Both Tina and I scurried madly around the room, until I finally found an object I deemed large enough to kill the bee in a single whack. As I returned from the bathroom with a plastic pail (normally for use as a manual biday), the bee had paused on the ceiling to do an upside-down hip-hop style belly flop. The power had just come back on, after the daily power outage, and we suspected that the bee might been drawn by the light. Tina jumped up from her spot cowering in the corner to flick off all the light switches. She exclaimed “I can’t take this anymore. I’m going outside!”, just as the bee circled the room once more. The bee landed on one of the two windows that does have a screen, and I grab the guestbook filled with names of French and British people, preparing to the trap the pest in my biday bucket. As luck would have it, the window screen was not sealed and the bee slowly waddled out. I quickly slammed the shutters behind him.