Thanks, Macklemore, but here in Delhi we’re popping bulbs, not tags.  Due to reasons both entertaining and unfathomable, we pop lightbulbs on the daily.  Every night when I come home empty corrugated paper tubes, the packaging for lightbulbs worldwide, litter the trash.  These are the Indian version: pale blue or orange,  standard-issue flimsy.

 Are the light bulbs so weak that a few days worth of work exhausts them?  Or is the wiring in our 40-year-old house so antiquated that a mismatch occurs, with no update in sight?  Or maybe the inevitable surges and spikes of the erratic supply from the power grid – and the green tank-sized generator in the yard – do in the bulbs?

Or perhaps, as I think on my conspiracy-leaning ‘it’s all a plot’ days, they are intentionally feeble and defective.  Someone is making money from the sale of those bulbs, after all, so why not design them to force frequent purchases?

Whatever the reason, we are a graveyard for light bulbs, with no end to the slaughter in sight.

(By the way, Sarojini Nagar, my favorite local thrift shop equivalent, has no tags. Tags have been replaced by pawing and burrowing, followed by haggling, threatening, and finally proffering velvety old 10 rupee notes.)