I am John, I am an American, and I am happy.

This picture was taken nearly a year ago, and is not indicative of life in Delhi in recent days, both because the people in the picture are wearing sweaters - its 9 o'clock at night and 99 degrees right now, so that's clearly an impossibility - and because it captures a scene not able to be seen from my apartment, which, until this afternoon, I hadn't left in more than 72 hours. Still, I thought a picture might entice you to read on. Only now you know better, and are fearing that what follows will be a banal recitation of my apartment bound life these past three days.

But, your intuition would be wrong, and always will be in India: quiet study and simple domesticity are but dreams here, never to be fulfilled. Banality: if only. Our best efforts to buckle down and study religiously for the LSATs were thwarted at nearly every turn.

First, the water. Or the lack thereof. We haven't had it in three days. Occasionally, a turn of the faucet will produce a slight trickle, enough to wash one hand, or perhaps one dish, if that hand or dish was already clean. This means: showers are infrequent (but with bottled mineral water - ah, luxury - when they do occur) and - worse yet - dishes piling higher by the day.

I don't enjoy doing dishes, and if we were in the US, I'd be content to let them pile for a few days, as disgusting as that sounds. But here, with dirty dishes come ants. Hundreds and thousands of ants, criss-crossing our apartment like graph paper. And unlike any ants I've ever encountered in the US, these ants don't just like sugar: they'll eat anything. We've found them in toothpaste. They devour globs of sunscreen. They've also developed a particular taste for eating pasta and cornflakes, and slowly seem to be adopting the proclivities of my own appetite. The one thing they don't seem interested in is their poison. Which is surprising, given that every inch of the apartment is covered in powdered insecticide that I know to be illegal in the US, and whose possession there would carry a prohibitive fine. And its not illegal because its ineffective. Other people here have described insects running through it and shedding two or three limbs immediately - but not these ants. Instead, I'm sure the powder is slowly becoming airborne and crystallizing in our food, and in our mouths and noses when we sleep. Neurological problems are sure to develop rapidly, and I expect my organs to cease functioning by next week. But what else are we to do? I certainly haven't learned how to request "EPA-approved ant traps" in Hindi.

In fact, the only thing I have learned to say in Hindi is the title of this entry. (To be fair, I've only taken one class so far, but optimism is difficult when a cold shower seems - and likely is - so far away).

(The cruel irony of this drought and its attendant pestilence, is that, for several days last week, it rained so hard that water began to seep into the concrete roof and poor in steady streams into our kitchen. The floor was littered with buckets, bowls and rags, all of which had to be emptied or squeezed every 30 minutes. Even with this Sisyphean effort, there was a half inch of standing water on the kitchen floor at all times. And worst of all, the roof is slowly rusting, and with a rusting roof comes rusty water that stained everything it touches. Clothes, the floor, dishes. Everything. We never expected to be punished so cruelly for the simple and seemingly modest wish that our apartment - what with its four walls and roof - actually effect a difference between the out-doors and the in-.)

So, in this land of extremes, we press on, hoping for a time when the heat and monsoon are weakened by cool, crisp winter air, and the city is once again a land of sweaters, (albeit polyester monstrosities that more resemble bear costumes than clothes). Until thatEdenic time, we'll sweat without respite in the cruel heat, knowing full well that as soon as we forget ourselves in the rigors of a timed LSAT section, the doorbell will ring us back into purgatory, and at the door will be seven or eight toothless men wanting to fix our leaks and mark the tortuously slow march to winter with heavy swings of their blunt tools against the semi-porous roof over our heads.