Several things have influenced me on this little piece: Reading Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, starting to read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, browsing an article that mentions "marketisation of citizenship" and finally having been locked out of my home yesterday because I lent my keys to my new room mate, a guy from Munich doing a development traineeship, who usually arrives home before me.

Here, individual´s living zone seems to be his/her home. Murakami´s book reminded me of the beautiful feeling of being alone in a big city. Tokyo seems to offer as much as any western city for an individual seeking a peaceful time without having to hassle with other people.

India's big cities suffers from the 'tragedy of the commons' - all the space has been either occupied by private homes or has been harnessed for moneymaking. One of the oldest capitalist systems could not be transformed even though the decade or so of independence it was under socialist government rule. The problem in a lone westerner's eye is that you essentially have no public space to hang out. Sure, there are the streets and the few parks. But you don't have any benches. There are no libraries, no designated 'dynamic meeting points'. Sure, Delhi has its own share of starbucks clones. But once you're done with your drink they bring you the bill - it is just plain impossible to go there with a book and spend a few hours reading. After the museums and galleries have closed, your only chance to spend quality time outside home is to go shopping, eat out in an expensive restaurant where they don't throw you out as your plate is empty - or to go to someone else´s home!

A manifestation of this is a nuisance caused by our new flatmate, whom I will now publicly bad-mouth. (This girl had dreamed of coming to India since she was 15 and had read and researched about India since then. Somehow, she managed to avoid any relevant information about dress-codes and arrived without a single decent piece of clothing.) When we threw a welcome party for our 3 new flatmates, she managed to find an indian guy for herself, and now they are demonstrating the lack of public space in Delhi by locking themselves into her room regularly for hours almost every evening - and not letting her roommate in there until very late in the night!

Not only does this demonstrate a total lack of room sharing etiquette, but seems to repeat the pattern you can see in the Indian roads and in queues of shops and offices - wherever there is empty space take it and claim it as your own.

And now a completely different subject. I promised Kaisa to post a picture of our new water dispenser. It is called 'Mister Cool' and it is pink. Sadly, the pictures were not sharp enough to be published.

Edit: preliminary intelligence reports indicate that Chandigarh, Corbusier's child, offers park benches and public spaces in the european style.