Originally posted on 12 April 2010 :

No. There is nothing very historic about the date or the year. All that happened was that I was allotted C-535 Defense Colony(FF), in New Delhi as a house hired under the defense pool.  The accommodation consisted of three bedrooms on the first floor and a servant quarter as a ‘barsati’ on the second floor. I was then posted in the Army Headquarters and had been desperately waiting for a roof over our head. My wife was expecting our second child and we needed a place near the Military Hospital. This was the closest which the military could give to us, and so we accepted it for want of choice. I am impelled to recount the following memories:

·       A few weeks before we shifted there was the infamous ‘oil crises’ and the petrol prices went up sharply. We found it difficult to run our scooters to the office. Consequently, I made a ‘pool’ with Maj Nandu Barve and so we shared our conveyance.

·       There was no difficulty whatsoever in parking cars, since it was easy to own a car, but difficult to run it.

·       We could easily walk to the market in the South Extension which was about a mile away with our two year old child and choose our first black-and-white Television set and that was our proudest possession, for a long time.

·       As is our habit, we tried to befriend our neighbors. We called on the ‘gentlemen’ who lived on the two sides of our house. They were friendly people, but even though they lived in the “defense” colony, they had nothing to do with the military. Even their distant relatives had never worn uniforms.

·       Economically, we were several notches below them. We did not feel the difference during the winter, but when the summer set in, I noticed that their world was different. When the sun began to shine, their air-conditioners began to purr.

And that is the time when I discovered what it is to live in a prosperous “civilian”  colony. The air conditioners provided cool comfort to our neighbors. For us, it was plain misery. We got the hot air which they puffed out, and the noise. As if these two irritants were not enough, we discovered that to overcome the power shortage, a ‘thermal plant’ had been set up in our vicinity to generate the energy needed for the air conditioning load. It spewed out tones of coal soot and since we slept on the open terrace (with the regulation mosquito nets) to beat the heat, we got up with a layer of coal dust each morning.

Our social calls on the neighbors were duly reciprocated. One evening, our very kind neighbor dropped in. They asked us whether we had chosen a good nursing home for the arrival of our child, due in early May 1974. He then wanted to know which air conditioners we had installed in the rooms. When I gave the obvious answer, the lady said,

“Are you not being cruel to the child who is arriving at this time of the year in India with no air conditioning?”

* The next morning I made a fervent request to be allotted a dwelling, even if it was a tented accommodation, in the cantonment. I had learnt a lesson which I have never forgotten,

          “If you want to feel poor and be miserable, live in a rich neighborhood.”

Soon, we were given shelter in a newly built flat on the SP Marg, and were able to live and bring up our children without an air conditioner. In fact, we never had the luxury of having an air conditioner, until I retired from service in 1997.

Surjit