Indiranagar: Our New Home: Nov. 20th Living in simpler times often makes us think of our childhood. Drying our clothes in the sun, Sue remembers being eight years old and watching her mom hanging clothes on the clothesline. Today, lacking any better place we played badminton in the street. The only rule change since I was a kid, was that if the birdie landed in the gutter, the game was over. Gutters here are ditches about 1 foot wide by 2 feet deep, and contain refuse, filth, and the e-word (excrement), so if the birdie goes into the gutter, you’re not going to lean over and take it out. Luckily Sue and I play pretty good street badminton. Indiranagar, the part of town where we live, contains an incredibly varied mix of ostentatious rich-man’s architecture. Styles range from castles with moats and drawbridges to 80’s style mixed-angle grids. Some of it is pretty good. Most of it is in horrifyingly bad taste - "Punjabi Baroque" is what one architect calls it. Occasionally, for a change in scenery in our walks, Sue and I take a dirt road, instead of a semi-paved one. This inevitably leads into a "servant’s ghetto" where the really fun action occurs; roosters chasing hens up and down the street, little girls taking pots of water home from the well, guys sitting out on front stoops watching the folks go by, smoking cheap cigarettes, saying lewd things about Sue, and grinning quite evilly. Race and diet makes most of the people on the tiny side. I feel like a giant here. All 5’-6" of me! If anyone gets a little out of line, I grab two sticks and start hitting them together with a loud "thwack". Folks get the idea pretty quick.