Kitty Chachra finds life in India like a carousel  -- round and round at furious speed, getting nowhere in particular.

We are back in India after eight weeks away --  and it's a good time to be here. It hasn't been very hot, as it has been raining steadily. I am estimating � okay, guessing � that it has rained more this year than in the three previous years I've lived here combined. The flip side is this has made it seriously humid, which we are not accustomed to in Delhi [Images] at all, where it is usually a dry heat.

As I tend to do in this occasional series, I'm going to start this with another movie reference.  Last year, I saw Blood Diamonds about the diamond trade in Africa. The movie's catchy line, used to describe all that was unexplainable, was TIA � This is Africa. 

My new mantra is TII � This is India.  Admitting that is my new goal -- not fighting it, and I figure this will make my life easier, and I'll be a better human being for not complaining quite so much.

Coming back to India always hits all of us hard.  On one level, we are home with all of our things rather then camping out at the homes of our siblings, cousins, parents or in hotel rooms across the United States and Canada [Images]. For the two months we spend there we are pretty much a traveling caravan � each week a new city, and people we love that we have not seen all year.  On the other hand, coming back forces us to again try to imagine and re-imagine what home truly means.  Is it the flat we own in Gurgaon where our little nuclear family lives?  Is home a place bigger than just the house?  Is it a city?  A country?  A type of people?  A lifestyle?   

Well, TII.  While you are busy defining what is it about India which works and what does not work, life keeps throwing you curveballs. After two months, our home needs my tender loving care. You need to fix things in India � constantly. Several of my curtain rods have fallen down, pictures have come off their hooks, and the walls show distressing signs of seepage. Vertical marble slabs have fallen off their placement. A cabinet door in the kitchen has come off, and wood everywhere has expanded to the point where it is impossible to open and close doors.

I've never been particularly handy, but I could always put a nail in the wall to hang something up, and I've painted plenty of houses, put in floor tiles etc.  However, with cement walls, we actually need a drill to put up something simple.  Of course, labor is cheap.  I should be able to get someone in to fix all of this by next week, right.  Wrong � labor is cheap, but what you get is what you pay for. You may get lucky � and I sometimes have -- but for the most part, getting someone in means endless phone calls and conversations leading to non-shows. 

TII. You see, the thing with India is no one ever says no. Even if they mean no, the answer is always 'ho jaayega' [It will be done], a phrase that covers everything, but leaves unsaid the question of whether it will be done in his lifetime, or mine.

You can also be sure that if something does get done, then other stuff will be ruined, requiring fixing, thus effectively ensuring that the circle of fixing goes round and round. If wall seepage is fixed and painted over, there will be paint on the furniture and on the cabinets which will require extensive cleaning.  If curtain rods are nailed back up, a curtain will certainly be ripped -- an insane dance in which the fixing of one thing leads to the ruining of two other things that have then to be fixed, which in turn� TII. But yes, getting it all done each individual time is cheap, at least from a monetary point of view though if you consider it from a sanity point of view, I would have to disagree.   

Well, since TII, I put a full stop to fidgeting over the little things that crop up while trying to take care of my family and writing. It's the big things which take over that are not as easy to solve. My older son for instance has a huge asthma attack.  He's had asthma since he was one, but rarely succumbs when he is in the US. However, in Gurgaon with its perennial construction and consequent pollution, the asthma manages to become much worse, to the point where for the ten months we are here, he is on constant medication.

He is not the only one � statistics indicate that about half of Delhi's children under 6 are wheezing. In the case of my son, his attacks mean that my life comes to a complete stop for a few days each attack, and the threat is omnipresent. Then there is my younger son, who on Independence Day, August 15, came up and cuddled against me. His touch was like a panic button � he was running a fever, and it proved to be a touch over 104 Fahrenheit. To make a long story short, my younger child had dengue fever caused by the bite of a single daytime mosquito. 

My pediatrician was as composed and lovely as ever as she rattled off what I needed to do.  We have known her for four years now, and she has calmly shepherded us through one medical crisis after another.  'It's an epidemic in Gurgaon, there's no hospital beds left for children.  I think it's not covered by the media because the Haryana government has kept it out.  Gurgaon cannot look bad, it's not good for industry.  Such is life,' she says.

Mentally I nod, and go, ah yes, TII.

Mosquitoes are rampant because of the greater amount of rain we've had this year, and this is compounded by the runaway construction absent civic amenities, which means no major sewer lines to connect the beautiful new neighborhoods where apartments cost north of half a million dollars.

Yeah, TII. This is India. As a mom, I can provide my child with the latest Nintendo wii, but I can't keep him from contracting a disease which should have been eradicated in the last century. What to do?   

Kitty Chachra migrated from San Mateo, California, to Gurgaon, outside New Delhi in 2005