How many Indians does it take to change a lightbulb?

Well, first you have to have a six week discussion about the merits of various lightbulbs, and whether to buy domestic or import a lightbulb from overseas. Once you've decided on the best product, you find out you can't get it anymore due to chances in import regulations, so you decide to buy domestic, but you can only get an appropriate alternative from a Kashmiri company that hand-blows the bulbs which are then blessed by an in-house Nepalese Bhuddist monk.

Then you place an order for the lightbulb and get told it will take another six weeks to deliver, provided that there isn't a nationwide strike, in which case it might be ten weeks. Next you need to hire a lightbulb installer to do the work, but the only guy available in the area isn't in the Light Globe Installers, Bulb Fitters, Electrical Light Fixers and Allied Trades Union, so you need to hire two guys who don't actually know how to fit light bulbs to stand around and watch the skilled labour do the job.

After waiting ten weeks you ring the bulb vendor and find out that the order had been misplaced and the monk has larangitis which turns his blessing chants into a curse on the bulb and the purchaser's family, so it'll be another six weeks, but we're willing to ship it for free if you choose overland shipping, which will take another two weeks.

So you give up and buy a local cut-price bulb that looks like it was made by a blind glassblower with chronic hiccups, but you can buy three and a half thousand of them for two Rupees plus service tax. You finally get the bulb to the house with the empty socket, but you can't get the bulb fitted today, since its Sunday and the bulb fitter can't work Sunday, because working on Sunday makes God angry and that's the reason that he sent to Boxing Day tsunami, to punish those working on the Sabbath.*

So you wait another day, but the following day the union goes on strike over the fact that someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum chopped the arm off one of their members and they're not going to take that, so here's a strike you bastards.**

So the next day you bring the bulb to the house, but you can't bring it inside unless you pay a special 'house-entry' fee directly to the union secretary and by this stage you've been sitting in the dark each night for seven months and you just can't take it anymore and besides you got the bulbs cheap, so what a few extra Rupees and fer-god-sake-its-just-a-lightbulb. So you pay the 'fee' and walk the bulb to the bulb installer and he spends the next fortnight trying to put the bulb into the wall outlet.

So you direct him to the bulb socket, only the socket is a screw-in one, not a bayonet one like the bulb is, but you have anticipated this and purchased one of every possible variety of bulb even known to man, for a pitance, and he fits the bulb.

And he descends the ladder.
And he walks over and calmly flicks the switch.
And the bulb lights.

And the one next to it blows.



And I'm not exaggerating nearly as much as I would prefer.

* Actually uttered today by one of our sub-contractors as the reason that they refuse to work on Sundays.

** Also has actually occurred.