the home alone saga....

Well...I am an independent single, young woman, wouldn't you say so? I mean, I have a place of my own provided by my organisation in a posh enough locality, I have people to work for me and when there are none, I attempt to do things on my own.... which turns out decently enough I should say. I have a bank account (with an erratic amount of deposit which keeps changing depending on the Sales happening in Malls). I have a small and handy basic model of Maruti 800 (right now probably the only non snazzy looking car in my locality). I can cook edible enough food (when my cook is not there), the only problem being that I might be able to cook my lunch in time for dinner and so on and the only person I will allow to eat that food is me. I am a pretty decent driver. And of course my parents do help, which has its downside as well (this will be covered in another post hopefully soon enough) So all in all...as my friends would say.... Tammu...you have arrived ..and you rock girl!!!!

But they do not know about the times when I was under attack by the inanimate objects in my flat.... the taps, the faucets, the curtain rods... the ceiling... oh yes... It must have been the wackspruts or Nargles or some magical creature as said by J.K. Rowling. I am going to describe the times when one feels that there surely is a God up there grinning away and saying...AWWW.... you look so comfy... let me rustle up things for you....and he did. Let me tell you all how. Living in a government quarters has the comfort of the knowledge that it's rent or any such other thing wont be suddenly hiked, or that you won't be thrown out unceremoniously... but at the same time, a government quarters is very often plagued with the contractor coming around for its "upkeep". So, one will always find dozens of people about in my colony doing myriad of things... one day I saw that they were white washing the walls, the next day they were painting the walls...and strangely, another day they were breaking away and chipping the same walls that they had painted because they had to change the piping... not that I am an engineer...but wouldn't it have made more sense to have painted after the pipes had been changed and the broken walls had been mended...? But I guess they had some mysterious logic in doing so...as a result of which, in some pockets we have the light mauve shade that was chosen for the outside walls of the colony interspersed with the the dark grey of cement that had been slapped on the broken parts of the walls.

Anyway, coming to my Flat...the number of which is 86....which I am sure was 98 before, but since maybe they could not find the actual 86, they made do with the 98..so the 8 looks kinda wierd...but as long as it gives the indication of my house number ..who cares. Anyway, when I moved in my flat, my mom and I went about the laborious task of setting up a cheerful and cosy flat...and days were spent in buying curtains...arranging the wardrobes with my dad giving quite unhelpful advice......trying to fit in as much things in my bedroom as that was going to be my prime place of habitation... and finally everything was settled and I had my flat ...all to myself. Sigh... bliss....

But that was not to be...hardly had two months passed when the doorbell struck and workers poured into 'renovate' the bathroom... which basically meant break down the entire floor and walls and taps and toilet and take off all the shelves and handles etc etc... I watched horrified as all the three bathrooms one after the other fell into the hands of the contractors and laborers.... I would weep silent tears for the grime and dirt in both my bedrooms. And strangely enough the work never seemed to get over because the workers and contractors were also simultaneously breaking down bathrooms of other apartments as well... so all the hollow promises of functional renovated bathrooms within 3 weeks was completely ill-founded and all my bathrooms, finally after two months, looked habitable again... if any of you think that I had not taken bath during all that time...well obviously that was not the case...but yes..one does wonder how much help was the bathing in the end....

So now, I have three pretty decent bathrooms... but my smugness was short lived as just as my bathrooms were completed winters were approaching...or rather it had already descended. The extremely chilly conditions prevented the paint from drying up completely and it would seem that some mysterious leak somewhere made the ceiling of my bathroom look as if it was suffering from some skin disease!!! And I suffered along with ... I would find myself taking a lovely long warm oil bath to find a square inch of the peeled of paint landing plonk right in the middle of my just shampooed head. The "papdi" as the engineer called would be scraped off leaving a highly discolored looking wall beneath it which slowly turned interesting colors due to the onslaught of some mysterious seepage somewhere. One fine day the engineers and contractors decided, that it was the problem of the house above and they re-broke their bathroom... I am sure I must have been their least favorite person in the block during the time. Now...one would think that the problem has been found and rectified so all should be well.. well apparently... the leak was not in the bathroom and is in one of the pipes that run on the outside.... and of course...I was told..Madam ..woh to bahut bada kaam hain... abhi uske liye alag se tender nikalana padega!!! So all in all, I always a bathroom cum a partial wall of the bedroom always in a state of wrinkles and pimples!

Let me now tell you the story of a girl... a sweet girl ..who cozied up in her warm blanket deep in sleep... and she was dreaming of running water... very strange topic for a dream... water is running and running and running... BOING!!!! Wait a minute... the water is actually running.... and that's me dreaming!!! And that's my bathroom!!! And its F***ING three AM!!! I rush to the bathroom thinking I have left the tap on... I must add here..that I have very deep problems with wasting water and paper. I find that the newly installed bathroom tap is dangerously askew....I was now faced with a very serious dilemma... should I just close my eyes and go to sleep as the drip was not exactly of alarming proportions...or should I just close the tap and actually find that its not a very big deal. Opting for the latter...I ventured closer to the tap and turned it... AND!!!!!!! YES!!!!! It came off!!! And reality of that dawned on me when ice cold water was spurted upwards and fell on me. Those who have been in Delhi know what the temperature is like in Dec-Jan. And to go all the way up to the terrace to try and close the main taps in the freezing early morn was not a very relishing aspect...and anyway I did not know which pipe connected to which bathroom in my flat. So I did the only thing a 25 year old ( I was that old at the time) would do.... that night-morning I turned for help to the one man in my life who has never said no... APPA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say it did not occur to me that a phone call at 3 a.m in the morning would be not taken by sleeping mortals in a cheerful manner. After I overcame my parents fears that I was not close to puking my guts out due to some disease or that I was not going to be murdered in bed... I told them the actual problem at hand... I mean ...I was practical enough to realise that they may not be able to help me. My father made it amply clear by asking... my dear Dale... How do you expect me to mend your broken tap all the way from Guwahati?!!??? I mean ...I knew that... I guess I just needed someone to tell me that it was ok that there was a mini Niagara falls in my bathroom!!! And after copious tears were spent on the event and warmer clothes worn I fell asleep just as the water in the tank ran out and mericfully the rushing water stopped.... of course it just started again when the supply came back in...and I had it fixed the next day. Though to this day, my father tells me I need a man in my life I could turn to at 3 in the morning instead of my father. Right! So an additional quality I need to look in guys... whiz at fixing broken taps.

There were two more such incidents of bursting faucets..thankfully at a more humane hour and weather. The most trying incident of my battle against unknown forces was in my kitchen. Whoever has seen my lovely modular kitchen would obviously not believe the horrendous tale behind it and the agonising days spent in thinking that that I shall never have a kitchen in my house and that like the migrant gypsies I would have to make do with the old rudimentary kerosene stove. As the bricks, and plaster slowly were being taken apart and the floor all being broken up and the pipes all mashed and bashed, I once came home at the same time as my cook and both of us opened the door to find muddy water all over the living hall..!!! Landslide!!!! But, wait a minute, there can be no landslide inside a house!!! We peeked into the kitchen to find that the intelligent labourers and the pleasant contractor had broken the pipes but since they had failed to remember the timings of the water supply, we had water gushing out into the mound of earth and other soily muddy stuff which was slowly and merrily making its way into the living room!!! Well.... I got a good work out mopping up and running up and down my colony and blasting all and sundry.

But my tryst with my kitchen was not over... no Sireeee.... for some incomprehensible reason, the workers scraped out nearly a foot of the ceiling and at least a a foot and a half in diameter leaving behind a relief very similar to that of a crater. So while 90% of my kitchen was done in beautiful cabinets and gleaming marble top, I had this crater on my ceiling. After much coaxing I got the workers to fill it up. Now had I been an engineer or an architect or anything that dealt with such things or had the knowledge of such things I would have asked intelligent questions. The dear lads filled it up with what I think was still wet cement or concrete... and having faith in them, I allowed them to do so. One hour after they left.... I heard a queer SPLAT!!! You know... the kind that one hears when a lizard has fallen on the floor. I figured it must have been an unusually big lizard to go splat like that. After some time, I wandered over to the kitchen and words fail me .... I saw the entire concrete filling on the floor (that had gone SPLAT, remember) and the remaining dripping from above eager to join the ones below!!!! I will not go on about this and relive my torture...suffice to say..my kitchen is good and safe now.

Well, I have settled into my home and its been over a year now of amicable relations with the invisible forces around. How long it lasts is still something I better not think about.