Lazy Summers In Chandni Chowk
Every summer vacation my mom would travel with us three kids to Delhi to spend time with our nana-nani (maternal grandparents). It would be the height of summer and Delhi would be dry, dusty and unbearably hot. My second brother would scoot off to my Dad's uncle within hours of landing in Delhi and my eldest brother and I would stay back with mom at her parents' home in Chandni Chowk. My nana owned a quaint two-storeyed building in one of the winding bylanes, on the mouth of a narrow alley. On the ground floor was a tyre godown, on the first floor were two tenants with large joint families. The entire second floor housed just four persons: my grandparents and my aunt and her husband. The floor between the first and the second story was a jaal , a see-through floor comprising half-inch-thick iron railings. You could sit on the second floor and casually look down into the bustling activity in either tenant's home! It was a bit like being in a special zoo which had horizont...