Now I live in a posh area of Delhi, on the second floor of a three-storey block owned by a lady in her late sixties. she's the widow of an Indian army officer and she's slightly obsessed with money and Ganesha, the sweet-gourmand elephant god. It's a very big apartment with a huge terrace on top. From there we have a view on our neighbourhood...as usual for India, an indefinite twine of buildings, water tanks, antennas...and terrace gardens. here each rich family (part of that 5% of India, but still not the very rich ones) builds a family house/block. Several floors host the different generations of the family, the elderly folks occupying the ground floor. Few maids usually work there all day, drivers park and get the several cars out as soon it is needed. Normally a security person sits, rather annoyed, on a chair in the front of the gate. They seldom look very scaring or nasty, or even just able to stop anyone trying to get in. On the contrary, they open the door for you.
When children go to study and live abroad, the apartments and rooms are rented, as in my case. Still, it keeps being the family house, that is you have to become part of the family. Our landlady would tell my flatmates to consider her like their mother (she only knows I am the cousin who stays over sometimes a week, but this a longer story), she gave us sweets for Diwali, the Indian Christmas if you like (sweet were both Indian and western patisserie, in fact she feared we wouldn't like to much Indian stuff), she wants to get Indian clothes for us, she said we can stay at her daughter's place in London and at her son's place in the US. She gave us silver coins with Ganesha on it. All this is not only about being kind (she rarely is), it's something more. I feel she has to build some kind of blessed relationship with us in order to feel less lonely and all right with rules of hospitality and house sharing. We are ritually part of the family, and so is the Indian girl living on the first floor, the one who smiles beautifully, wears mini skirts and lives on her own.
I like to see from the terrace the few beautiful domes of sultans' tombs from the Lodhi period lost in the middle of the South Delhi, from back in the beginning of last millennium, the sky in the night is somehow orange and at 6:30 every morning I get 10 minutes of drums and bells madness to wake me up. I haven't seen any temple very close-by, it may be a frenzied neighbour. And then start the shouting of the sellers in the street.
I don't know how all this holds together, but it does. And you never get bored, I can assure you.