This has to be documented. Delhi summers have made me
partially demented. Take a look at the events of the past few days.
Night One.
I am unable to sleep even after showering three times in the
evening. My flat being a corner flat kept locked up throughout the sweltering
hot day is like a furnace at night. Unfortunately, I can’t afford an AC either.
It doesn’t matter that I spend all my money on shopping and eating, this is the
only thing I am going to be miser about and suffer in pain.
Somehow late at night, I fall asleep with my Symphony Cooler
so close to me that had I been wearing a wig it would have flown away. Sometime
in the middle of the night, I wake up feeling extremely hot. The room is humid
and heavy with the cooler’s constant thud thud.
In my sleep induced state, I imagine that the water in my cooler
has finished. It lasts precisely for 3hrs in Delhi heat. Perhaps that’s the
reason why the copywriter christened it Junior Jumbo, ‘Jumbo’ being the
addition made by the client. I sleep walk to the bathroom and fix the pipe to
the cooler. Opening the tap, I go outside to the balcony for some fresh air.
Not finding any respite there either, I turn back only to be
greeted by a sound heard when water pouring from the tap hits the floor. I
frantically search for the source of the sound and discover that my cooler has
been designed with a hole to drain out the excess water automatically in case of
an overflow. By the time I figure this out, my bedroom floor is a pool of water
and my slippers and laptop cord is floating in that pool of water. Quickly, I throw
the laptop cord on my bed and start disaster management.
After staring at the hole for quite some time, I decide to stick
my finger into it. Luckily it works, and the water stops pouring out. I vaguely
remember the Dutch story of Hans Brinker that I had read as a child and find
great similarity in our situations. The only difference being that while he was
rescued, nobody was coming to my rescue.
Few minutes pass. While still standing in a pool of water, and
not too sure whether I was dreaming or not; I look around myself for divine
inspiration. I see my bucket lying near the door. For once I am happy that I
keep my buckets in the living room not inside the bathroom. But here too things
cannot be simple, the bucket has to be out of my reach. Now I am calculating whether
it would be wise to pull my finger out of the hole and let my room submerge in
some more water or come up with some other plan.
Operation ‘other plan’ begins. I twist and turn my body,
till I am almost lying on the floor, while my finger is still stuck in the
hole. I try to widen my legs and push the bucket towards me. I can hear my mom
saying in my subconscious mind ‘Keep your feet together. Sit properly’. Instead
of the pulling the bucket towards me, I push it further away from me and fall
almost flat on my face. Wide awake now, I resume once again. This time, I am
able to stick my toe under the bucket’s handle.
With a sigh of relief I pass the bucket from my toe to my
other hand and finally place it under the ‘overflow’ hole. Like a weirdo, I watch
the excess water empty into the bucket, not daring to move an inch away, lest
some new adventure begins in my absence. By 3 am it’s all done. There is still
a lot of water on the floor. I tell myself it will all dry up by itself and
proceed to crash once again thinking something about the concept of evaporation.
... to be contd.
... to be contd.
