Summers, Flat tyres and the Mess

Times when schools close down, times when nights are shorter, times when you love your cottons and coolers, times when you prefer to be locked indoors in the mornings-noons, times when even the cooking lovers hate to enter their kingdoms, times when you gorge on cucumbers, kulfis & golas, times when sugarcane juice joints are the most crowded of all, times when Baroda’s Ratri Bazaar which are usually open till 2am past midnight and people crave for more, times when sunstrokes dance around, times when you tan and hair is a mess. 
I am wholly talking about my city Baroda’s summer where I am since 20 years. Yes, my father’s and hubby’s job did give me ample of opportunities to be acquainted to Dehradun, Moradabad, Delhi, Meerut, Ahmedabad, Pune and Gandhinagar but Baroda is a place where I belong to from the bottom of my heart and of course my native Trichur (Kerala).
   

The heat is on and monsoon much awaited……but sans the humidity and sticky climate. Working in the admin department in one of the renowned schools of the city doesn’t give me the privilege (unlike teachers) to get a month’s summer break but this year, the management was kind enough to grant us a 10-days off which gave me way to stay with my hubby dear in Ahmedabad. My hubby and brother-in-law reached the night before we left to pick me and Jianna. We decided to leave at 7am in the morning but it delayed to 7:30am due to my last minute titsy-bitsy packing.  The moment we reached our car, to my shock we had a flat tyre and of course the next step is to fix it with the spare one but lo behold, after all the efforts in the heat, greasy hands it was found to be flat too. I was blamed for all this….. Look how bad this could be now!!! Not all mechanics are open right away in the morning, except for a few so the hunt began…… It took us almost an hour to get the things sorted out. Half day was taken at the work places and finally our long drive began at 10:00am. The climate had taken its extreme heat avatar by the time we reached our destination, 12noon and the scorching climate with strong hunger pangs we finally headed for lunch. 

Our place at Ahmedabad was an absolute mess – a room full of clothes for laundry, stinky vessels in the kitchen sink, dirty bedspreads, over-flowing dustbin and me being the Clean-o-Freak just couldn’t stand all this and now the ball was in my court and there I began my blame-game -  the hullabaloo with the hubby before he left for work. Resting for a short while I began my cleaning spree, Jianna played around in the dust – fancied by the new place and things, by the time I could make the place where social human habitat was possible – Mommy-Baby were absolutely dirty and I was sweating like pig. 

A nice warm shower rejuvenated us and we were waiting for Daddy to come from work to take us out for dinner. 

As soon as he arrived home, we got a flat tyre for the third time and the running around started all over again. After an hour, the situation relaxed and hubby dear drove us to dine out. Even that was a heavy confusion and after much discussion the Mexican Cuisine was relished upon, yummy chicken momos melted in our mouths….all thanks to our walky-talky GPS service (read my Borther-in-law’s heights of Ahmedabad knowledge) and chothu loved the fresh mango milkshake. 

We returned to a cleaner-sparkier home for a good-night’s sleep.