bare bulbs
without exception, India is a country illuminated by raw flourescent light. every room in any structure has a 3 foot tube, usually mounted about 7 feet up, horizontal, with the rusty ballast clinging to the peeling paint and the glass naked to the world. this is the staple whcih lends all indoor experiences their characteristic hard shadows and flickering outlines. sometimes, in the nicer hotels, a bare compact flourescent will jut from the wall or hang from the cieling by a threadlike wire. these are slightly less oppressive in the way that they imitate your archetypal multidirectional incandescent bulb, but without cover or shade their effect is still that of an interrogation room or a seldom used basement. i suppose that the efficicency and cost of flourescent light makes it a necessity cum standard… perhaps it is also a celebration of a not-so-new resource: electricity which has now snaked its way through most of even the smaller towns.