Hotel President - 27th April, Tuesday

They are building in Ahmedabad as they are everywhere else. They are building right opposite my room, and they go on well into the night. The concrete mixer launches into its chugging tirade at 8.30 in the morning, and from then on there is no peace for good or wicked alike. Today it broke down, which was good for me as our early start into the country for another site visit was cancelled, and is giving me time to write.
I watched the labourers yesterday, shoveling aggregate into baskets, which are lifted onto the heads of women who take them to the mixer, all day and into the evening. I’ve worked in the building industry, and always considered that I worked hard. Hmmmm.

This is a very clean and comfortable place. The sheets are changed daily and they are constantly sweeping the dust from the corridors and stairs, with what resembles a bunch of twigs. All the cleaners here are young men. In fact there doesn’t seem to be any female presence here at all. And yet next door the hod-carrying ladies have just finished their stint. A strange contrast.

I’ve been looking in the Yellow Pages for a shop which sells radios. I have withdrawal symptoms. There are some intriguing headings in the index…. Cattle Control Department, Dead Animal Removal, Food Adulteration Checking. There’s also a heavy plant spares company called Anal Enterprise…..

Well, the phone book is just that – phone numbers, no addresses - so I’m none the wiser. A brief tour of the locality in the midday sun to find a radio shop resulted in a rapid return, hot, exhausted, radio-less, in a tuc-tuc. I’m still a target for grubby urchins carrying smaller grubby urchins.
‘Baby, for baby’
I also had a woman following me, pointing to her bandaged arm. The bandage kept slipping and there was no visible sign of an injury. Ever sceptical, I had the urge to squeeze the arm, but obviously I didn't.

Later, guided by a hotel porter, I found my radio shop and returned clutching my prize, but not as satisfied as I should be. The radio wasn’t the one I was after, was more than I intended to pay, and not for the first time I regretted dithering at home, looking at the merits of this model or that, so that finally it was too late to order one before I left. With the distinct feeling I’d been shafted; an extra £10 - 15 having been added to the cost for 4 batteries, the use of a debit card (even though I volunteered to get cash from an ATM), and probably the mysterious ‘government taxes’ which pop up on an ad hoc basis; I sat in my room with no idea where to look on the short wave as I had mislaid the meticulously researched list of frequencies.
Searching through the ‘white noise’, walking round the room, turning the aerial and holding it above my head, the fan struck the aerial and knocked the radio from my hand. Misery. I’ve brought an expensive pup, (because I would have paid the same price at home) and now I’ve broken it. Grumpy or what? And then, I’m sure I heard a crackly Claire Boulderson. Yes, left to its own devices on the floor, my suddenly lovely radio has tuned itself. Newshour – deep joy.

More joy, when I received a phone call from the Sulabh International in Delhi arranging to send a car to my hotel there on the 1st May. Brilliant. Obliging people, but more of them later.

At 20 minutes to 10, the lights are still on at the building site, and the workforce are hammering poles into place for concrete shuttering. They've spent the day cutting rebar into lengths for this. At 20 to midnight, a tipper truck arrives to deliver sand.