Grabbing life by the earhairs

Well, the spectacle that is living in 601 Raj Garden continues to this day. The coolers our landlord promised finally showed up 3 days late. They don't work. They just make the room much more humid (which is an achievement in Jaipur during monsoons) and raise the temp 15 degrees. We had to turn them off because it was so agonizing having them on. The promised drinking water has been sporadic at best, we've had to go to the market every day to pick up about 15 one liter bottles of water because he brought us 12 (which were finished in a day...I don't think he gets how dehydrated white people get in Jaipur) and keeps trying to slip ones into our fridge that he's refilled at his house. He claims to have an aquagard purifier, which is okay I guess, but our doctor has told us to avoid even aquagard water and just drink bottles or RO water. The cook hasn't been sorted either. His wife has been cooking for us, which has been okay, except that when he brings us the food he snoops around our place and we caught his wife in Ashwin's bedroom poking around a few nights ago. The food as of the last few days has been pretty bad too, alternating from "this is bad because my wife is a bad cook," to "this is bad because I'm a stingy bastard and can't be arsed to get you real food." It hit an all-time low when we were served breakfast today, which was 5 rupee samosas from a street cart and bread and butter that we bought. We're paying this guy 2000 rupees per person per month and he can't even be bothered to not starve us? It's ridiculous. The TV hasn't been sorted, and now I think he wants us to pay for it. That's minor, though, we all have laptops. The धोबी (washerman) that we sorted is ludicrously expensive and he's overcharging us by a factor of 5 compared to the other building residents. We just fired him this morning because he won't change his crazy prices. And the electricity keeps going out in the middle of the night which means that the fans go off and the whole apartment turns into a tandoor. We boil as long as the fans aren't on, because the apartment rests at a toasty 88 degrees at night.

The funniest part about the whole situation is that he flees every time we try to sit him down. We've decided that we're blocking the door tonight and if he tries to run out when we talk to him, we'll wrestle him down by his earhairs, which are at least 3 inches long. We're sick of the bullshit from his end and we're probably moving again next week. Watch this space.