A Bucket of Hot Water

A bucket of hot water.. 

oh how was a bucket of hot water so welcome? I wonder if we are being tested - being shown how trivial our lives are that we cannot manage without a hot shower?

Leaving home comforts on Friday 22^nd , arriving Delhi lunchtime Saturday 23^rd,  perfectly reasonable room – senses overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, smells, traffic, honking  - its going to get worse. Lunch – lovely but only cold water for washing – maybe tomorrow the water will be hot!.

                                                   Visit to the old fort and a mosque, reminded that women are not equal – they are the workers, the doers, the behind the scenes? Children begging, snotty siblings asleep in outstretched arms - fingers make the sign for food, reach out to you then back to their mouths… money for food, money for food.

 Is it real or the oldest trick in the book - we dont know but what does a few coins cost? 

  

Jump on Rickshaw – old Delhi traffic, congestion, honking, fumes, smells, shouting, motorbikes, carts, people, people, people, we can’t get through, wheels locked with other wheels, elbows tight against the body, forget the fear and the dirt, eyes wide at the gold and silver, fruit and vegetables, look inside the shops, shoes at the door, piles of silk and cotton being chosen – women in control again – the buyers, the ones to be satisfied.

 Its tomorrow - no hot water. But the Sunday visit to boys in the project brings realisation that they had nothing - safely held inside the project walls they don’t care about hot water – they have beds, education, food, love, hope and a future!
 

Maybe the next hotel will have hot water? It’s an obsession – clean hair? clean clothes?

A new hotel – a welcome, a rush to change, a wait, a sigh, leave it running longer?

I grit my teeth and wash under cool (lets be positive) water - I am grateful for rough towels and a hot meal. It is irrelevant – it is what it is and I’m alive and safe and satisfied and have never felt quite so privileged.

Monday – another cold wash, early breakfast – a promise the boiler will be fixed, sunrise through coach windows – watch the streets of India waking up, those have been sleeping on the streets, wrapped completely in old blankets and grey plastic, they are burning rubbish to warm themselves and to cook breakfast? We watch as these street dwellers ensure they are visited by the god who makes your business thrive - they must start the day clean or the god will not visit – they sweep the streets, wash the tuk tuk and the taxi, they shower amidst piles of rubbish in outdoor facilities provided by the government. I wonder if their water is warm.. enviously…?

Animals and people side by side sacred cows, precious oxen pulling carts, dogs playing or sleeping under rickshaws whist their humans sleep on top. An elephant on the road carrying its cargo.

The Taj Mahal, a little love shack – sorry the lack of a hot shower is getting to much?

Lunch, bike fitting and finally are off on the first 45 km through dusty villages and roads – surely tonight – but I cannot obsess over hot water. I am cycling sweating under the hot sun and I should be dreaming of hot water – but I cannot. 

I am overwhelmed by the living that I witness in these villages.                   

The closeness of it all, the smells of cooking, of flowers and vegetation and animals, the sounds of children shouting hello and bye, waving, running, smiling, laughing. We shout and wave and laugh and smile – but secretly we think “maybe tonight!”

Back at the hotel Noooooo we scream silently!! Some swim in the freezing outdoor pool, I am offered and accept the bucket of hot water? It is divine, it is everything I could ever wish for and everything I ever wanted.