In Memory of Hot Showers

Since arriving in India I have not had a hot shower and chances are good that this will continue. Let me tell you about my bathroom. On the far wall is mounted a strange appliance called a Geyser (pronounced "geezer"). The function of a geezer is to provide hot water on demand, although your typical geezer takes at least 10 minutes to heat up. Once warm, the geezer provides intermittent hot water as the tank empties and refills. Next to the geezer is my shower area. At about knee level there are two faucets, one for hot and one for cold. Below the faucets is the bucket (I’ll return to that later). Higher up the wall you have your typical showerhead and hot and cold controls that stare mockingly at me each morning. You see the geezer, great salvation of the developing world, is in fact not attached to the showerhead, but solely to the hot faucet at knee level.


So basically what happens is that I freeze my ass off in the cold shower, and occasionally douse myself with a bucket full of lukewarm water from the faucet attached to my surly friend the geezer. This continues until I achieve a reasonable level of cleanliness or hypothermia sets in.

The messed up plumbing in my bathroom is symbolic of India’s infrastructure woes, all the components are there (or could be) they just don’t work right. As I learned from an expat friend today, an equally big problem is that this passes as acceptable under the rationale that “this is India”. India will have to expect more from itself if it is to achieve its goal of truly becoming a global economic power.