Let.me.out.

Our 2007-eve celebration was wonderfully private - we stayed home to dance in the kitchen because no one can see us from there - it was New Year's Eve after all - but we've no desire to risk the clubs where strangers gape and reach for a touch as you move through the crowds (seriously - ick, no thank you) so we stayed home and shared a bottle of imported wine and played the stereo too loud like kids who's parents have left the house for the weekend.

But at midnight, when all of our neighbors were outside shouting in the new year and lighting off firecrackers the realization that we are going to leave this God-forsaken India in five months no-matter-what brought me more joy than anything else that night.

I am, quite simply and unapologetically, tired of India.
Exhausted, in fact.
I'm watching Jeremy Piven stroll around these streets courtesy of the Discovery Channel with his little leather satchel and happily-unkempt-traveller stubble, his lazy baggy pants and wide-eyed holiday attitude making India seem like a land of adventure and charm...and I change the channel with a sigh of disgust.
I've seen more travel, wedding, and real estate specials on this country lately than any other on the planet and they all make me cringe because I know the truth that isn't visible in the televised folds of a rich bride's silk sari or a star's private estate in the suburbs. Sure, on the flat screen it looks almost shiny and exciting - and for a few solid weeks it can be - but I've lived here for three years - long enough to see what can't be seen from behind the nicely polished windows of the five star hotels other westerners pack themselves into.

There are the obvious things: cows and people alike eating garbage and depositing their digestions wherever they happen to be, the sewers running rivers into the roads every time it rains and sometimes even for no good reason at all, the absolute stench of these streets - years of people using any old street as a toilet - urine and decaying trash wafting up and stinging my eyes in the hot afternoon sun. The endless generations of dogs constantly mating and fighting and dying in heaps of mange and sad-eyed sickness at the side of the road - left to rot for weeks before whatever civil service is supposed to be on top of these things finally decides to do it's job. The tiny squeaking offspring of these wild beasts are kicked and battered around like footballs by thoughtless people walking the streets in the middle of the night. I've grown heartbroken standing on the balcony trying to defend their little lives as if it would ever make a difference - even our houseman has trained his little four year old daughter to hit the smallest dogs with a stick that he keeps for that purpose alone. The actual toilet that has remained in the street of our neighborhood for six months - moved once or twice by a passer-by likely inspecting it for possible uses but otherwise left like a lame garden ornament in a patch of dead grass and litter; the toilet's previous owner not the least bit ashamed to be responsible for such a thing.

I'm not Indian and I don't pay taxes here - so perhaps I've no right to complain. But while the president of India has stated out loud and in public that he's perfectly happy to let his people eat grass as long as he has nuclear capabilities I've been living among his people - and though I've not actually seen anyone eating grass it looks to me as if there are more than a few who'd be very grateful for even that. While the various other politicians loll about in Mercedes parades and brand new white linen trousers the poorest children of their country go to schools that can't even manage to spell the text on their own signs correctly. The most recent offense I've seen - a local nursery school titled in bold blue freshly-painted letters "Nersery School.' The typos and abuses of grammar in print and media here are so blatant and so common I've actually started to wonder if they're made on purpose.

Our building goes without electricity on a regular basis at the whim of the landlord who may or may not transfer the money we've sent to the company that controls the frenzy of wires, wrapped haphazardly around a palm tree, supplying our current. The neighbors in the house next door inexplicably have control over our water in the same way and have lately taken to turning it off completely and escaping their house with what we've paid toward the bill.
There are no laws about this kind of thing, or, if there are I've not seen them put to use or even acknowledged.

Recently I heard the pleading of a voice, barely audible from among the chaos of what was a group of twenty men all shouting in Kannada. They stood over the cowering top-naked form who clung to the street he'd been flung to as if it could offer comfort or escape. From within the circle of twisted faces and raised arms the sound of the victim came pouring out, clearly begging to be released. But no one obliged him and they only moved in closer.

As the ring of abusers parted a bit I could see that the man had been stripped not only of his shirt but his pants as well. And then, incredibly, his underwear were also unceremoniously removed as he was beat about the head and shoulders a few more times before being released to run down the street completely naked, dusty, and humiliated, holding his hands to what was certainly an aching head.

We were told that he'd been caught trying to steal something - from where or whom I've no idea. And while this may be true I am still thoroughly unimpressed by the actions of my neighbors and the passers by who pitched in to this strange kind of vigilante justice. To have seen this treatment of another person, criminal or not, in full view of the entire neighborhood and all the children in it (who came running to form a border of excited aniticipation at the edge of their screaming fathers and uncles) was simply disgusting, and for me - the last straw.

India makes no sense to me - and frankly, after what I've seen lately I'm quite finished trying to figure it out.