The bell rang at 7.00 am and Pawan, the “istri-wallah” stood outside checking if I had clothes for ironing. And that was my true welcome home to Gurgaon 🙂 Pawan has been ironing our clothes since 2002 and it is a ritual for him to be the first one to ring the bell whether its the weekend or a weekday, whether I had any clothes to iron or not. I have fought with him, my mother tried reasoning with him, nothing works. He will come everyday. So while we came home last evening and met many of our friends all of yesterday, I didn’t feel truly welcomed till Pawan rang the bell today. And asked his stock question for the past 9 months “are you back for good ?” :):):)
Yesterday was just the kind of day that makes me love Delhi-Gurgaon- NCR. We landed ten minutes early at 10.20, a wide smile lit up my face as soon as I could see Delhi from the skies as always. By 11.10 we were at the Lajpat Nagar Haldirams eating their famous Raj Kachori. We reached the Sindhi dry fruit store inside Lajpat Nagar and the dour faced son gave us all the various nuts and dried fruit we needed. Then mom and I went “bindi” shopping. I love matching my bindis to my saris everyday and Delhi has the best bindis. Then we went to my other favourite store in all of NCR – Desh Maheshwari, at Sab Mall, Noida. The person who owns the store Desh Ji and the girl who works there Anu know more about customer service than many professors 🙂 I spent a couple of hours there from 1 to 3 pm nearly browsing and buying the various semi-precious stone jewellery and Ganeshas and other gift articles. We then went to Nishi’s place in Noida, spent a couple of hours and then came to Nisha’s place to meet A to Z (Aaliyah and Zazou) … And yeah meet Nisha and Kishore as well. Reached home at 8 pm and from 10.20 to 8 pm we had travelled 130 kms and managed to do so much. We still had energy to atleast remove the covers, clear the dust a bit and relax with a cup of tea at home. Tell me one other city in India where I can do this – the only possibility is Chennai, but the sweat will melt you and you could not have moved me from Kumaran Stores 🙂
Today again was no less a packed day… We woke up at 5 without any alarm going off, felt absolutely fresh, Javed came home around 10. Then Prashant and family came over – I finally met Pooja and Veda and also Pooja’s mom. Veda was a complete delight !! She liked me, enough to ask me to come with her in the car, enough to eat bits of puri :):):) am super thrilled. At under two, she is the only baby who has liked me so much – all age groups take to Krishnan more easily, once they begin to talk then I am interesting because I can say something. Vedavalli and Veda obviously hit it off – both like the clothes clips, both like the sweet ParleG biscuits, both like Puris and both are gorgeous. Little Veda ofcourse stole the show and except for when she had something profound to say, she made sure we understood all the other things. Babies are smarter, just admit it and move along.
I got my hair cut by my favourite hair dresser Wilson and he does know how to make me look younger. Vishal dropped by to say hello and then dropped us off at Rajesh’s place for dinner and we came back after awesome food and even better gup-shup (chat) at 930.
We have managed to meet seven friends over two days – and sorry to harp on this point, but couldn’t meet one friend in seven months in Bangalore. 🙁
Feeling awesome and happy and atleast a couple of kilos evaporated in the Delhi heat … Guess that’s why we feel at home in this city, not because of what you called it Arun !!