Computer Repair

The compulsion of most blog-writers is to write about the things which they imagine will capture the popular conscious. This is so true as to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: the twin ideas of 'buzz' and 'popularity' ensure that tastemakers are both ahead of and behind the curve in terms of pertinence. While they have some measure of control on the topics of interest, they are also at the mercy of the currents of popular caprice and therefore must blog about what needs blogging.

My relative obscurity on the internet (my impression is that this blog is visited mostly by friends and family) is a blessing: I only have my readers to impress, not some abstract notion in my mind about what is popular or necessary to blog about. In the future, I'll try and hew more to the idea that the people who visit this page are more interested in the quotidian experiences which so often speak more profoundly about a place and time than the anthemic events the mass media uses to keep us appraised.

Yesterday, I went to the "apple store" in Jaipur to see if I could purchase a charger that would work with Indian power outlets (fyi: Indian outlets are 220-volt direct current, while American outlets are 110-volt alternating current. Even though most computers come with a power adaptor meant to handle all kinds of voltage and current types, plugging an American computer into an Indian outlet often yields interesting results: with my computer, it gives the entire body of the computer a slight electrical charge which tickles ones' hands while typing). The store was called "iStore" and it is located in a mall conveniently close (about two or three blocks) to the office I work at in the C-Scheme of Jaipur.

The mall in which this store is located is called "Crystal Palm". It's interesting to see the different transmutations of that quintessentially-american architectural-commercial concept, the mall. Crystal Palm shoots up from the decrepit streets of C-Scheme like some kind of polyurethane and aluminum fungal growth: Monolithic, square, with a giant plastic faux-glass facade shooting out of the base and into the air like an arc (doubtless within the school of international trash-architecture spearheaded by planned commercial hubs like Dubai). Outside the mall, several derelict houses stand as notional reminders of what must have existed before the mall's construction.

As you approach Crystal Palm from the street (I am convinced the place was entirely designed to be approached from the car window. There is no way to conceptualize this architectural blight when working from the standpoint of the pedestrian), one is first approached by the beggars who hang around outside the mall. They are of a more tenacious variety, doubtless because they must avoid both police and mall security in order to perch on the sidewalk between the mall and the street.

The beggars resort to the classic methods of impediment: nagging, pulling at ones' clothing. More ingeniously a young boy threw himself on the ground in front of my feet, so as to cause me to step on him. I impressed my companion with an apparently-new beggar-avoiding technique: vaulting over him with my legs, as if he were a kind of hurdle. This duly impressed my companion, as well as the beggar who absconded to his mother, unsure of how to deal with my novel contrivance.

If the sun-dazzled exterior, with its beggars and shit and noxious automobile fumes was bad, the interior of the mall was far worse. Imagine a giant square box air-conditioned approximately to the same temperature as a dead body approaching rigor mortis. This box is a 10x5x10 grid, the exterior composite cubes of which consist in various stores selling cheap handbags and the like. On the ground floor is a Costa Coffee stand. In its miniature seating area are several well-dressed Indians, students or businessmen (the funny thing about this country is that they both dress the same), chatting over lattes in ice cream parlor-style glass mugs.

I found out that my battery couldn't be fixed or replaced at the apple store, and that I had to go to a place called "Redington Ltd.", Another few blocks in the same direction as the office. We found the office on the second story of a lime-green plaster office complex. Inside was a waiting room, with several sullen-looking men reading newspapers and letting out periodic sighs.

I was told that it would take ten minutes to inspect my computer. I sat down with the other men and read a pocket Kierkegaard I'd bought from the Penguin tent at the Literature festival. Five minutes later, the engineer notified me that it would take another day to diagnose the problem and that I should come back on the morrow to pick up my computer.

We left Redington, nothing gained, nothing lost. I'm starting to get the hang of things, I think.