Trials and Tribulations of life in Delhi – and the Compensating Joys.

Every summer for the ten years that we lived in Delhi, I continued to fret and fume about the heat, the aridity, the exhaustion. It was sometimes too much even to come home in that heat for lunch, despite the distance being negligible and the time on the way being hardly ten minutes. As for exercise, the swimming pool and the lovely Lodhi gardens nearby were our only solace. A year or so after my leaving Ford, however, that pool was barred to us and we had to take a season membership at Claridges hotel.
We had had an air-conditioner installed in the living room, as also a desert cooler in the back verandah. The former was of little use, as there almost always was a ban on its use in the hottest part of the summer, due to the load shedding that the city experienced. The latter did the trick more than adequately till the weather turned humid before the monsoon. In fact, most nights, we had to shut it off in the middle of the night as even the bedrooms that were on the side became too cold!
In office too, the load shedding took its toll on our work. Unicef had moved to electronic typewriters by the time I joined. So when the current was out, our secretaries could only take dictation or file!
In winter, the meagre heat from the room heaters left one shivering, even with all our layered clothing. One visitor from the New York office found himself in this predicament as he came in his shirt sleeves, imagining 'hot torrid India'!
In between these two extremes, the lovely post-monsoon autumn and the gay spring again lifted one's spirits.
One special treat during the Delhi winter and spring was picnicing. Our family cirlce was large, with all three of Ramu's sisters and their families living there at one time and with at least two of them there all the time. On my side, we met occasionally with Malli and Jasbir, Gita and Ravi.