We know we have Slog readers all over the world because we asked once and got responses from France, England, Germany, Norway, Australia, Scotland, and even Antarctica. I don’t know how many readers we have in India, but I do know we have at least one, Daniel, a friend and business journalist who recently sent me this letter about his day.

Which gave me an idea for a Slog feature. Maybe this will work, maybe it won’t, but I’d like to publish some letters from our far-flung Slog friends. You don’t have to be that far-flung to qualify—just somewhere interesting and outside of Seattle. San Marcos, Texas works. So does Burien, Bremerton, Brooklyn, Boise, Oslo, Omak, Pullman, or Paris. So if you’re reading this blog from somewhere outisde the Seattle city limits, send me a letter about your day, and maybe I’ll publish it. Here’s my email address: eli@thestranger.com.

And here’s the first letter, from Daniel Sorid, whose assignment in Bangalore ends this month:

Sussy, the maid, and Vasant, the driver, had left for the evening. I lay in bed, ill. My 8-pound maltese, Napoleon, sat beside me and playing with a stringy toy. I could take no more of the stomach pain. It was time to call the doctor.

Dr. Sri is an ergonomics specialist, which means he consults for foreign companies on how staff should sit in their chairs. He may possibly have some other qualifying medical certifications. At the very least, he is a sharp dresser and can prescribe drugs. Sri and I have a deal: I call his cell phone when I’m sick, describe what’s wrong, and he rattles off some medicine that I’ve never heard of. I look it up on the Internet to confirm it’s not some pill for hair loss or acne. It usually works. “Norflox TZ and Astymin Forte,” he told me this time, and I duly scribbled it onto a blue Post-it. Doctor’s visit, Indian style.

Unfortunately, I felt in no shape to go to the pharmacist. It was a good 15 minute walk, and a perilous one at that, and I could barely make it around the apartment. Barefoot in Adidas shorts and a bleach-stained T-shirt bearing the name of my college newspaper, I walked downstairs to our guard, as my lazy foreigner insticts perked up. "Come on," I thought, "This is India, the land of service and inexpensive labor. I can give the guard $2 to run down to the pharmacy for me and pick it up." 100 rupees would have been a pretty good take for the guard, about half his daily wage.

I reached the ground floor, where an awfully frail security man sat, next to an equally scrawny guard dog, who was balled up and sleeping. "Chemist?" I asked, holding out the Post-it note and a 500-rupee note ($12). "I'll give 100 rupees. Very sick." After an extended dull stare, he grabbed the bill and the note. I watched as he ran across the street to a small grocery, where the only medicine on the shelves is shaving cream. He returned empty handed. "No stock." I hit my head. I took my money back, grabbed a pair of sandals from my flat, and began a painful stroll to the pharmacy. Feverish and looking ridiculous in my sporty outfit, I set off along my road, Alexandria Street, to the pharmacist.

Alexandria Street is a classic Bangalore neighborhood road. It is paved but lumpy, with long scrapes in the pavement that look like a bull cart manicly dragged along a steel anvil. The sidewalks are a feast of the imagination. I noted all the wonderfully bizarre sights. A big pile of sand. A giant wicker-like leaf. A rusty iron trash bin, opened with its jagged edge pointing into the walkway. Smashed bricks, gravel, dogs, cats, old men, pushcarts selling roasted peanuts and spicy cucumbers and milky tea, intersections with motorbikes and three-wheel buggies screaming around the corner. All this and more is on my street.

As I approached the field hockey stadium at the corner, I worried that my fever had the best of me. I was seeing lights -- endless chains of lights as if Christmas had come to Bangalore. Trees were covered, poles were decked with luminescent strings, and I began to hear recorded Sanskrit chants emananting from the stadium. I let the thought of my impending insansity pass.

Music blaring around me, I passed a temple, a flower shop, a cold drinks shop ("Cold charge 1 rupee, bottles only," a sign said). Finally, I was at the pharmacist. Four men behind a small counter awaited my order. "Name of patient?" One asked. "Deniyal," I said, using a pronounciation that seems to works well with speakers of Kannada, the local language. He handed the blue Post-it to another man, who retrieved the medicine. Another man typed up the bill. A fourth man checked the packet of pills before it was handed over to me. Pharmacy, Indian style. "A billion people," the owner (the one who typed the bill) told me, after I asked why he needed four people at his small shop. "Mostly they do housekeeping."

I looked back to the entrance of the stadium, and saw a beautiful idol of Ganesh, the beloved Hindu God who Webster's defines as "a short fat man with an elephant head," dazzling in lights. Ganesh is the god of wisdom and the remover of obstacles, and many Hindus pray to him before all other gods. Men and women sat around the stadium and observed the blinking Ganesh. It was Ganesha puja, an annual celebration of Ganesh, when Hindus all over India celebrate days of prayer that climax in the immersion of the idol in water. It was a beautiful moment, to see the devoted assembled around the God, who had been decorated in a red garment.

That is, until the cold drinks guy filled me in. "Political people," he said, as he handed over a cold Sprite (21 rupees, 20 + 1 rupee [$0.02] refrigeration charge). "BJP did this," referring to the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationals who have recently attracted attention for bills that restrict conversions to non-Hindu religions. I shrugged. Everything is politics, and politics is everything. Resigned, but happy to have the medicine in my hand, I strolled back along crazy Alexandria Street, ignoring the guard at my building, up the stairs, and into a quiet apartment where an 8-pound dog greeted me with licks and a plea for a game of catch. I popped a Norflox and went to sleep.