Wednesday, April 30

We woke to the sound of heavy rain. A look outside showed the road cosplaying a river in full flood. The rain stopped, the sun came out, and an hour later the leaves still had water on them but the road had begun its impersonation of a desert trail.

Sanu came at 10:30 and Shanti wanted to leap in the car as soon as she saw it. We went to Petcity for her post-camping checkup. She had her ears cleaned, and each ear had a candle-full of wax in it. She had a worming tablet “just in case”, and she decided to sit down on the scales without anyone asking her. She now weighs 28.5 kg, four more than she weighed when we took her to Coexistence.

Abilash said her weight has become the weight a labrador her size should have, but her blood test showed she still had iron deficiency. She used to have a big deficiency but now she sits at the bottom of the normal range. Ideally she should sit right in the middle, so I got her some more tonic.

On the way back we stop for some time at the junction in Pallichal, a small area whose name I know solely from seeing it on several shop fronts. I take a photo before our lights turn green.

Later I will have huge emergency kerfuffle about an unpaid electricity bill. Udaya will show me how to get from the bill to GPay and the emergency will end. I will continue to get numerous calls and WhatsApp messages from a variety of people (at least one of them someone I don’t know) to warn me that the electricity will get cut off unless I pay the bill.

I will spend the rest of the day at home because I feel very confident that unless I remain here to wave a screenshot of the GPay receipt in front of the KSEB men when they arrive, they will have the electricity cut off before word reaches them from the billing department that I have paid on time.

We used to have a very simple system that avoided this ever happening until certain people, who we shall refer to as “certain people”, suggested certain changes with the result that chaos crept rapidly in and now nobody knows who has done what and when.

It’s like Trump’s attempts at world rule writ small.