'Garma garmee ki chhuttiyan'

There’s no doubt that August has started and not only it has started, it’s the 3rd day already (by the time I am actually posting it, its 4th actually). I am still in July. After my semester 4 exams till the last week of May, I have been on vacations. But these vacations were more or less not vacations. Here is a list of what all I had to do in these holidays of about a week more than two months: -


1. Spending some real early holidays in hope to get ideas to spend the rest of them and enjoying the beginning of the vacation with no tensions about the so called “summer project” or whatsoever of my so called college.

2. Not going out of station or anywhere except going to watch a couple of movies and trying to help out my sister with her new (right now critical) modular kitchen business by being an extra man.

3. Hoping to learn the business but coming back again and again to being an extra man.

4. Realizing that it actually is the best I can actually do in an alien field. I have spent my working years in and around media so I simply don’t follow handling middle aged ladies, demonstrating our termite proof, water proof and this is where my instant creativity delivers well, “fire proof” solid wood shutters and rustproof hinges and representing a product I am not much aware and sure of or even passionate about.

5. Spending most of the month driving here and there, picking and dropping hardware, tools, shutters, baskets, glasses, wrongly cut glasses, corrected glasses, water bottles, my sister’s partner because he cant drive, my sister because she shouldn’t drive because of her back pain, plywood, metal sheets, plywood covered with metal sheets, fittings, fitters etc. When it comes to choosing the basic work in a family celebration or something, driving is the best I can do. I, more or less, just celebrated working at my sister’s place.

6. Thinking about the rest half of July and trying to think of some final executable chill out plans. Still going to movies, still driving, still feeling weird about joining back college in August.

7. Senselessly fighting and arguing with friends out of my frustration and the mismatch by being rude when they’re actually feeling bad about something already. Basically wasting most of the first half of July in doing the most worthless things if we talk about friends and possibilities of setting up good times and feeling further hopeless by being even more angry on self for rapidly executing the friend pushing process.

8. Chatting online with a friend and making us both feel miserable on the mid day of 16th July. Feeling angry about her ignoring my then ongoing bad feeling about random stuff and feeling angrier on self again for making things that way myself and complaining about everybody who doesn’t listen when I am the one who doesn’t speak. Creating confusions. Understanding the actual stuff. Being pissed off totally and seeking time till night.

9. Finishing my dinner on the 16th night, hearing the popping sound followed by screams, feet rushing outside and voices of our tenants yelling for a fire brigade, climbing upstairs with instantly helping servants from around, yelling to stop them from rushing back outside on hearing rapid bottle breaking and thinking that somebody’s stuck inside, passing them buckets on the top of the front wall and having a bucket full of water poured liberally as it just slipped and got wrongly aimed at me instead of the fire upstairs, going out in the street and meeting two hundred faces in a single second, showing way to the very first policemen on a bike, ringing door bells of neighbours to get their cars moved for the big fire vehicles on their way, rapidly questioning people watching from balconies about unknown cars, coming back in front of the house, seeing big flames coming out of the burnt windows, realizing the whole thing being a big deal, going back in to check on Brownie (our dog) locked in one of the inner rooms of the house, finding it quite uncomfortable to walk around in the house with absolutely no light and water in the main passage, taking Brownie to the rear veranda and convincing him by pushing to stay there, being able to push open only 6 inches of corridor because of the fat water pipe all over the stairs, climbing up from the other way with a malfunctioning emergency light in a hand and rapidly slapping it with the other, standing breathless in the smoke, sitting with fire fighters, knowing that the head fireman turned off the dinner warming stove in a burning kitchen with a gas cylinder right in the middle with no mask or helmet on, crouch walking all over the ashes, glass and broken things, further cooling of the living room by splashing water on the remains of the living room with a mug, losing the mug in the second round and doing the same with just the bucket, sweating and suffocating at the same time, going downstairs again to get the birds out, going outside again to further meet people, listening to neighbours and their quick situational solutions to things and being partially convinced, seeing everything, meeting everyone, explaining things, hearing reasons…

10. Climbing upstairs the next morning, seeing things, in fact, the unrecognizable things in the living room, calculating the damage, looking at things like looking into a fresh newsreel, hearing the strange sounds of footsteps all over the house upstairs, further calculating the damage, trying to find the blades of the ceiling fans and finding them nowhere, analyzing the remaining 3 inches of the living room door made of soft coal still standing in closed position, finding only springs of the sofa set, checking out the strangeness of a burnt floor, analyzing the bent grills of the front windows and the iron rods of the ceiling and walls well naked at places, further calculating the damage, checking out other rooms, finding all the initially pure white ceilings deep black, walking around, celebrating in silence, touching the walls and finding them still hot…

11. Seeing firemen and police a few times with my brother in law. Hearing stuff. Feeling tactful in a pathetic way.

12. Listening to suggestions from everywhere who visited the house after that. The process still continues. You tell them again and again what happened. You tell them about your family’s fear of having the tenants to flee without paying for the damage. Thinking about the worst cases. All kinds of dramatic solutions run through your mind when you sit down at night, still sensing the unavoidable smell of a burnt house, like writing a journal about the whole thing and waiting till someone makes a movie out of it as the trend is kind of popular these days and then finally hoping to sell a few copies of your wrecked work and ultimately getting some money to fight the case if it turns into one because anyways cases don’t pack up in just a couple of years here.This is our sweet city! (I love Delhi for this in fact!)

13. Being sick in the last week of vacations and considerably losing some serious weight. Recovering one day and again having a dramatic day with the tenants, loading of a truck with their stuff, senseless arguments, police, neighbours, talks, discussions, further arguments and so called (pat of) settlement the police tries to console you with.

14. Meeting friends and trying to have the best time by the tail of these two months or so.

15. Making a water park outing plan in the last day of the vacation and going somewhere else instead.

16. Wishing friends on the Friendship Day. Doing nothing.


Besides that it isn’t that I didn’t do much for fun in this time (though I just had a lot of it, especially as compared to the time I could actually put into fun; Had some of the best time of Summer '09 officially). I watched a couple of movies. Driving around with friends at 2am on the night when the first metro accident happened at the LSR college site. I still haven’t seen Harry Potter which I wanted to accompany a friend to.


Feels quite strange when I think what did I do in these two months or if we just vaguely talk about any lapse of time in my life so far. Nothing. There are still a lot of times in my bucket which I don’t have photographs of but yes, they are all good times. Strangely, even if you don’t talk about the right man’s curriculum vitae or anything that official or academic, still there are a lot of things that a living person just randomly gets gifted with. Drama would always be there. Sometimes less or sometimes too much. Sometimes you’re thrilled, sometimes scared or sometimes you are just simply entertained.


Today was the first day at college. First day of my fifth semester. I didn’t go. I am just assimilating my vacation activities for now and will go tomorrow if my will builds up well!