En-Light-ened.

When you are new to a country, there are these thousands of small things you notice that perhaps others do not. Ever since I moved here, I have been marveling at almost everything I see around me, the buses, traffic signals, and elevators. G decided to call me a “dehati”, since I was awed by everything I saw. 2 months down the line, I am sure I wouldn’t even notice these things.

I had shifted to my new home and I was looking around, trying to figure out the lights in the restroom. G had just dropped me, and a car full of my things that I had bought here. However, I was surprised that there was no light in the restroom. I asked one of my floor mates, “No light in the restroom?”, to which she mimicked my tone, making a weird facial expression, and repeated, “No light in restroom?” It seemed as if she was shell shocked that all this while she had lived there and there was no light in the restroom. Perhaps she didn’t understand my English. Perhaps she didn’t need light at nights in the restroom.

So once again I tried to figure out the lights when I touched the boards on the walls that looked like the electricity meter readers back home. Suddenly, my fingers hit something and the place was flooded with lights.

It is then that I actually got to see the switches. Those were the same stuff that had looked like the electricity meter readers. Here, take a look.

If you needed the light for say 5 min, 10 min, 15 min, or 30 min, you clicked on the necessary button. If you clicked on 5 min, the light automatically went off after 5 min. In the pic, there is this tiny red glow beside the 30 minute mark, that indicates that the timer had been set for 30 minutes.

I found this concept really cool. If someone forgot to switch off the lights, the lights would automatically go off after a while. And if you were done before, you could always use the last button and shut it off.

Amazing concept. Surely there are so many things to learn in this world.

sunshine.