This phrase supposedly means a nice, pleasant summer with clear skies and warm breezes (actually, now that I actually look it up, it means a nice, pleasant, brief sunny period in autumn, but whatever) and you really have to experience Summer in North India to laugh at the immense irony in that obviously American figure of speech.
Today I had the immense privilege of spending a little less than four hours just sitting in an auto, after spending a full hour of minor running around (the bank, the wrong branch, finding an auto that was actually willing to take me where I had to go, etc) in Late June New Delhi weather - and anyone who has spent a summer in New Delhi knows what I have just been through.
Right now, even the English language seems inadequate for what I'm trying to describe - Sunlight doesn't do justice to the death-rays shooting at you from the sky, seemingly piercing the invincible Tarp(!) that covered the top of the auto. While the thing was running it was breezy enough, even though I realized the hot wind was dehydrating me faster and I didn't have any water with me, I still enjoyed it every chance I got. I didn't get much of a chance to enjoy it though, being stuck in a traffic jam that stretched practically across South Delhi (if you're familiar with the area, the jam stretched from the BRT corridor to the Mehrauli-Badarpur road.
Actually it stretched all across the M-B road too, but they had a couple of nice Delhi Traffic Policemen standing around telling people to go around because 'there is a really bad jam up ahead.' Half of me wanted to club the guy over the head with his walkie-talkie and half of me wondered how 'really bad' the jam must be up ahead if they're turning people away.
So the auto took a few turns as the policeman suggested and got us stuck in a back-alley traffic jam, which seemed worse because somehow the clustered buildings made it even hotter and humid-er. So after about 40 minutes of waiting and sweating and listening random pedestrians going 'no use turn back' we finally made it to the main road (M-B road, which seemed suspiciously devoid of 'really bad jam', after that it was seemed like the smoothest, most refreshing ride ever after that bylane parking area I was in.
But eventually I reached where I had to go (it was across the street from a BSF training camp ... thats how far away it was from the city ... though technically it was still in the city) and I dripped up to the counter, and dripped right back, and this time the auto (same auto, gave me a round-trip deal) took about half the time to get me back, even though we caught shitty slow traffic in Khanpur and stopped for a drink along the way.
I had a fun time and I drank a full bottle of pepsi. And that was how I spent my morning.
THE END
Adhiraj Singh
(Age 20)
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