A night out(side)

Yesterday night was an experience of its kind. I had hardly caught sleep past midnight when there was a power cut at about 1 am. The temperatures soaring to new heights everyday and the never decreasing mosquitoes in Noida make sure that you cant sleep unless the fan runs just over your head. Infact I feel these mosquitoes have become immune to these repellants now because nothing seems to make any difference to their numbers. Anyway, so we (Atul, Saurabh and myself) came out to the balcony and started chatting and roaming (you cannot stand at one place coz the mosquitoes will eat you up in a frenzy). The power was back by 1:30 am only to be cut again at around 2:15 am. Only that this time it was different. When I came out to the balcony I realised that other houses had their coolers/ACs running in full swing and it seemed that only our house was the "blessed" one this time. I informed Atul and Saurabh about it. They went down to check if the fuse had not blown up. It was fine !!

It was really hard to make out what could be the exact problem so we soon gave up on the hope of seeing the fan move again at least for the whole night. We were far from being sleepy now, rather in a very jovial mood spoilt only by the fits of irritation due to the mosquitoes and the heat. The whole of sector 15 echoed either with our laughter or "Kallu's" voice. Kallu is the street dog in our colony whom we have named on his appearance. Soon Atul and I started weaving a story on Kallu and his life. It was fun to act stupid for a change :) Suddenly Atul had this nice idea of setting up the mosquito nets at the balcony and make some arrangement to sleep there itself. It was indeed a good idea. Soon we had our personal "tents" lined at the balcony. Due to space constraints, Saurabh had to fix his "mahal" inside the living room while Atul and I made ourselves comfortable inside our respective nets outside.

Once finding ourselves relieved from the mosquitoe trouble and sleep having vanished completely, we started joking more freely, mimicking actors, remembering episodes from laughter challenge and playing music on the cellphone. There were still one or two mosquitoes who did not have to try hard to gain entrance into the net since they were already inside. We did try unsuccessfully to get rid of them in whatever feeble light our cellphones could help us with.

I don't know the exact time when we slept again but I could hear the birds and there were traces of violet in the sky so I guess it was past 4 am. There was a light breeze which was enough for us to beat the heat. Woke up on the bell rung by the maid at 8 am. It also meant that the electricity was restored. Opened the door and went to my room to sleep again. Abandoned my "mahal" where it was and instructed the maid to clean it up. Woke up pretty late (10 am) but still the "hangover" of the last night was enough for me to not feel panicky. Rather got ready for office lazily and was on my desk at about 11.

All said, an inverter is the need of the hour at my house :)