In through the out door

Cheerful D (I discover later that his habitual expression is a smile) has come to pick me up in San Francisco. It takes me a few extra minutes to find him because he has an A4 sized paper with SHETH written with a ballpoint pen. The letters aren’t visible properly but it is more because I am used to recognizing myself by my first name. My son would be very impressed because D has come in a Mercedes. After stowing my suitcase in the boot I walk around and stand near the passenger door. D says, “You might like to go over to the other side ' I am sure you are too tired to drive!”

Over the next few weeks I discovered everything is the other way around. They drive on the right side of the road which is of course the wrong side; before crossing the road I was looking first right then left which is the recipe for getting run over. In true Pavlonian fashion I go over to the left front door of the car, then have to remind myself that the passenger door of the car is on the right. I have done countless pradakshinas of the cars and taxis here (I wonder what punya I’ll get for propitiating the gods of the American freeways so many times a day) to get to the correct door and by the time I get it right, it will be time to go home.

In the hotel room, to turn the light on you have to turn the switch off. In the lamps on the bedside some have switch you have to tug, some which you click twice to the right to light up, some which you press down for a long second. And there is no indication or instructions for this ' its either ESP or many minutes of fiddling in the dark. Every water and shower tap turns on and off in a new way ' some flip up and down; some from side to side; other go around 360 degrees rather like the quern in which you grind idli-dosa batters in south India. I have still to find a ‘normal’ one which just goes round anti clockwise to start the water and clockwise to shut it off.