A whole lot has happened since I last posted. I have begun to understand the personality of Delhi -- its neighborhoods, its traffic, its culture, its dangers (for example: http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin...). The last three days I have continued in my frenetic apartment hunt. It has been tiring and annoying at times but also has been a complete blast at times because I have met some real characters. The craziness of my search really has less to do with the particulars of Delhi as it does with my determination to live in the perfect place. I have 10 different agents working for me at the same time and for the last three days I have left the hotel at 10am and spent until 7pm just looking at more and more apartments all over the city. Its kind of like the Amazing Race around Delhi. Two different apts have been snatched up before I could act on them now so I am honing myself into a lean mean apartment hunting machine.

Tonight I let the cabby who has been driving me around for the past few days introduce me to one of his friends, reportedly a real estate broker. This is generally speaking a terrible idea as time is precious and these types of friend-of-friend arrangements are usually a huge waste of time. Anyway, this time I agreed to meet with the friend and sort of hit it off with the guy -- Mr. Gupta.

Mr Gupta is an older fellow, he only had one apartment he wanted to show me and although it isn't really a possibility, it was definitely worth the visit. He brought me up the stairs to this quite beautiful house and explained that we couldn't see the actual unit but we could see the identical floor plan one story below where his friend, the landlord, Mr. Gupta lived. Turns out Gupta's Gupta was even more of a character. We had a hilarious exchange, the three of us. We drank whole lot of orange Fanta and just chatted -- mainly about the immoderate decor of the apartment's prayer room. just imagine a 200 square foot bedroom and attached bath without an inch of wall or floorspace left uncovered by flashing, sparkling, chirping and over-the-top gaudy tributes to hindu gods, bollywood actresses and Bambi. including in the shower (see video below). Mr. Gupta, Mr. Gupta and Mr. Waxman: three peas in a pod.