It's one life. Living it Kingsize.

Here I am again, awake in the middle of the night. This internet access is just too much for me. The day I got it all my friends came over and we huddled around my laptop waiting for Sarah Palin videos to load on YouTube like a Depression-era family’s first radio (or those private televisions you find in Turkey these days!). Now, like perhaps all technology, it is both a blessing and a curse. But I feel like I should use it as much as possible as it was so difficult to come by. The story of Becky’s internet is far too long to relate here, but it took months, followed little logical progression, and at one point someone was urging me to file a police case against multiple people and the firing of one internet company representative seemed imminent. In fact, two employees of the same company had a very heated argument in my presence about who was going to give me the internet which involved one of them shouting in English “THAT is my WIFE, SIR.” Someone still owes me like 3,000 Rupees, but I have faith that Mr. Broman, the fickle internet fairy he is, will show up just when I think he’s gone again forever to restore my faith in humanity. Let’s just say: Emotional Rollercoaster, that.

Since Puja ended there’s been an awful lot of “load shedding” going on, which isn’t quite as disgusting as you might guess but unpleasant nonetheless—power cuts, for extended periods of time, to make up for all the power used during the holiday. It’s also been extraordinarily hot for the season, which without the fan has created a situation probably quite similar to Hell. The other night found several friends and I having something like a dinner party on the floor of my living room in the dark, watching a quasi-controlled fire in a bowl and Ben make shadow landscapes on the wall with his leg hair.

Speaking of evenings well spent, last night some friends and I ventured far out of our comfort zone to attend a show at the Tollygunge Club, which celebrates itself as one of the “top 20 country clubs in the world,” whatever that means. Lured by an announcement in The Telegraph, we were there to see “A Tribute to The Doors” sponsored by Black Dog Whiskey and featuring a band called Insomnia. The audience was completely seated in plastic chairs on a lawn and was made up mostly of people in their 50’s and 60’s, for the most part seeming like the crowd I’d expect at a country club anywhere. The band itself was horrible, but the lead singer, despite looking very much like the front man of the Barenaked Ladies and reading from sheet music the entire time, was GREAT and did a very impressive job of channeling Jim Morrison. Between songs a woman standing offstage would read little biographical tidbits to frame the next number, and after the second song she actually said into the microphone, “Oh, thank God you clapped. I thought you would all leave, listening to the music.”

We all headed to the bar for Kingfisher, the purchase of which involved an inch-thick pile of cash coupons and paperwork in triplicate. As the evening wore on and more Black Dog Whiskey and malt liquor was consumed, the crowd began to get a little rowdy. Near the end of the first set, the lead singer coaxed us to “Show us some love, Tolly” to which a single girl in the front row screamed “YEAAHHHH!!!!” amidst complete silence from the rest of the crowd. Between sets someone named Francis Lepcha came onstage, announced that he was just filling in for someone else, and then told us that he was going to sing a cover of the cover of “Light My Fire” performed by a contestant during the last season of U.K. Idol. Almost everyone migrated to the bar during his performance, which was backed by a karaoke track and was cut off halfway through by a complete power failure onstage. In the sudden quiet, a man from the back of the lawn screamed “HAVE SOME RESPECT FOR MORRISON!” Poor Francis. Needless to say, everyone was quite pleased to see the return of Insomnia to the stage. I wonder how much it will tell you about the last 2 months of my life when I say that this may have been the most fun I’ve had in Kolkata this fall.