"Stuff and Nonsense"

On 7th October, Friday, after school and office for many of us, we met at the Dwarka Sector 21 airport metro station at around 7:30. Six of us, Elvis, Sreelekha, Natasha, Riya, Siby and I, travelled by metro to the Kashmiri Gate bus stand. The short walk from the metro station to the bus stand seemed like a battle: it seemed as though the whole of Delhi was leaving Delhi. For the first time I saw long lines of people waiting to enter the ISBT. We waited for Tom, who was coming from Gurgaon and running a little late. After finding out which platform our bus left from, we  hurried down and waited for Tom. He arrived, out of breath, a few minutes before 9:30. Luckily the bus was running a little late too, so we had time to catch up and have some of the rolls and brownies that Sreelekha had brought for us. The bus journey was very comfortable. We reached Shimla at around 6:45 in the morning. Then we looked for a place to freshen up and eat something. We walked upwards to a small dhaba ...

Ah Friday! After dodging Amma's repeated reprimands to do my homework the entire afternoon, I would gradually, grudgingly, open my bag, look at the time table and set my books... hoping and hoping for the door bell to ring. And there it was! The tinkling announcement never sounded sweeter than on a Friday evening when you wanted to escape your books. Amma would open the door on the kitchen side, and I would strain to hear the conversation that ensued. Some murmurs later, the much anticipated call would ring through to my room "Deepaaa!" Yes! I would hurriedly shove my books into the closeable study table and rush out, attempting to maintain a stance of nonchalant ignorance. "Hi!", I would offer in as surprised a voice as possible, hardly containing my glee at seeing her, my saviour.  "Badminton khelne chalegi?" Of course! Kuch bhi khel lungi! Bas chal! "Haan chal..." I would pick up Pappa's old racquet, fish out a shuttle cock and hurry o...

Right opposite the little triangular park with a pair of old and rusty see-saws was the house of the only other Christian family in the enclosure. They went to the same church as we did, St. Thomas, at Sector 2 R.K. Puram. They had a deep blue WagonR, an extended family and a son named Kevin. He was a part of the bunch of boys that made regular football attempts in the park. We possessed a stuffed dog with snowy fur, called Kevin. We’d bought it at an ITBP fair in R.K. Puram as a gift for somebody, which was later replaced with something else. The white furry thing was then christened Kevin but was never really an important part of my sister’s and my extended doll family. Though we didn’t interact much with Kevin’s family, my sister and I decided that Kevin should never know that we had a stuffed dog called Kevin, because he would feel hurt. He never found out.  Kevin’s mother was an outgoing lady. She would drive the car often and on the one Diwali that we were there, she burnt a ...

The extended dining room space, where I had spent my first night in the house, was not what it had been then. With the six by four cot always proudly sporting one of the good bed-sheets and the bolsters, and with two of our single sofa-chairs for company, the room looked inviting and sometimes even royal. During the summers it had an added advantage of being the closest in proximity to the cooler which was placed in the remnant of the balcony. Our good old cooler chilled the room and was effective even to reach out to the room where my parents slept. During this season, the hottest parts of the house – my room and the store room adjacent to it – were bereft of any of the cooler’s soothing air and remained abandoned.  I practically lived in that extension throughout our stay at Munirka. I did my homework and most of the daytime studying there. During the study leave that we had for our board exams I would sit there till around eleven, trying to study, and then slowly edge out onto t...

There was a big opening at the base of the wall in the room my sister and I shared. It had been used for an air conditioner by the previous occupants which they took away with them, leaving behind the hole naked. Since we had no air conditioners, the hole was boarded up with a plank of wood. Whenever it rained, water seeped in through the gap between the wall and the plank. Many times I almost slipped on the wet tract of floor that was between my bed and the cupboard. The room had earlier opened into a balcony, which too, like its dining room counterpart had been covered and converted into a small room with a tiny dusty cupboard. It could not have been used as a bedroom though. It was very un-homely and was hence used as a store room and clothes-drying area. The smallest cot that we had, and Pappa’s old iron book stand were the objects that occupied that room along with some clothes lines. I also used that room to study early in the mornings. Pappa had become uncomfortably serious abou...

Shifting to Munirka during my exams was a distracting event. I was impatient for the exams to get over, only after which I was allowed to set about inhabiting the new house in my own way. The last occupants of the house, the owners, hadn’t been able to take away a lot of the things that had belonged to them. As a result they remained in the house, to be taken care of and used by us. A bulk of their belongings was in the very large drawing room. An old dining table came into view on entering the room. The wall adjacent to the door and behind the dining table had an opening to the kitchen, with a wooden cover that could be used to close, or leave the hole open. It was a very fascinating thing for me: something that gave the idea of positioning yourself at the dining table and receiving plate after plate of food, fresh from the kitchen, through the conveniently placed hole, something like an open-kitchen restaurant. I remember we used to keep ketchup and pickle bottles on the ‘sill’ that ...

Of the few places that I have lived in Delhi, the worst stint I remember, was the one and a half years’ stay at Munirka. The house we rented out was a DDA flat behind the market, not far from R.K Puram, where I’d lived for ten years before moving. The reason behind moving to a rented flat nearby was that I was to appear for my tenth standard board examinations that year, and Pappa didn’t want my studies to suffer any long  tiresome  journeys to school at Vasant Vihar.  I distinctly remember the day we shifted to Munirka. I was not at all involved in the packing and shifting process. It was a February Saturday and our Final Exams were going on. My sister and I were deposited at Appu’s house, who lived in the building opposite ours at R.K Puram, the only other Malayalee family that lived on that lane. We were not to be disturbed by the shifting. So all I do remember of it, is looking out of Appu’s bedroom window to see our things being slowly and laboriously moved out onto ...

The other day after evening prayer the four of us sat chatting for a while. Divya and Pappa had been talking something about the fast pace of advancement in technology. I think it started with one of the occasional PJs (Pappa's joke) thrown around. When Amma said that she heard chickens when talking to my uncle ( he owns a poultry farm) on the phone, Pappa said she must have misdialled and called on the chicken's phone. So the conversation veered towards animals owning cell phones in the not-so-far future. Then we veered to our past with cell phones. The first cell phone in the family was a tiny black Sony Ericson. Amma usually doesn't make assertive statements. But when I said that it was gifted to Pappa by George Vallyappachan (his brother) and pappa verbalized his two-peg agreement, Amma claimed, loudly, that it was Thomas Uncle, her brother, who'd gifted it. Pappa contentedly agreed to that too. Everyone went into a reminiscent mood. The phone was an exci...

I was, and still am, a world class procrastinator. Unlike many areas of India, the school year in Delhi does not begin after the summer holidays. The month and a half's absence from school is preceded by a month and a half's rigorous classes of the new session. When the teachers bid goodbye to the students for the summer break they weigh them down with a hill of holiday homework. Now, this work is quite manageable if one diligently tackles a little bit everyday. But who does? The major chunk of my work would be done on 29th and 30th of June, the two busiest days before school reopened. The rest would be battled out in the subsequent weekends, prioritizing on the basis of the urgency with which a teacher insisted on the completed submission. Similar was the case during my eighth standard summer holidays and the better part of July. Harry Potter used to be the most sought after book in our school library. Every week I would hear at least two of my classmates whining about t...