Saturday saw the plumber come and finish the plumbing work and water started flowing in all the taps at about 4 pm. Masonry work to plaster the wall and put in new tiles had to be done, and perhaps on Monday or Tuesday, the plumber promised to get this done. It was nice being able to use my bathroom again!
Sanjay, in his irresistible way picked on something that I had said casually in a conversation and got me a gift, a lathi. For the curious, the lathi has many memories for me from my childhood. I had been at the receiving end of that stick on many occasions!
Late afternoon saw a very pleasant surprise. A young lady, bubbling with enthusiasm, who works in my alma mater, on a visit home to Pune, came to meet me, to see what an old alumnus, would look like! We had a very interesting meeting. She has threatened to meet me the next time she is back home too. Aishwarya, I hope that you are reading this.
Sunday, Christmas day was very quiet till I went to the park and was pleasantly surprised to see my friend Sarala greet me with a packet of goodies!
Monday started off with a bang for me. One of my protegees, has made it good and has hit the newspapers. I was very proud of his achievements and rang him up to congratulate him and he was happy to talk to me too.
My friends Arun and his lovely wife Sheela from Mumbai, dropped in to say hello and it was nice to talk to them after a long time.
Tuesday started off on a bad note. I could not access the internet throughout the day. This however gave me enough time to finish reading one book and start another off. The latter was very thoughtfully brought to me from our club library by Ranjan. The plumber finally came and carried out the finishing touches to the plumbing work byt replacing three spindles of faucets. The bathroom is now totally dry as I need to have considering my current fear of falling. My friend Ramesh came to check up on how I was doing.
Wednesday too was sans the internet. We read in the papers that the service provider had an accidental fire in their dirstribution node and was working hard to restore services at the earliest. Once again the time was spent on reading and I finished reading one of the books from the library and started off another. I was able to go to the park in the evening and also do some shopping for the first time since my surgery. The supermarket staff were thrilled to see me and were very helpful.
Thursday morning had the internet working and I was able to catch up with some of the backlog mails. By late evening I caught up with all the backlog and started off on the blogs. Having waited for a mason for a whole week, Yakob decided that he will do the plastering and re-tiling of the bathroom and with great enthusiasm, did it as a stop gap arrangement. I also discovered that I no longer react to needling from my father who has his own ways of doing/conveying things. I think that this has been happening for some time without my being aware of it and having become aware, I was quite pleased. I prepared a pepper seasoned prawn dish which was much appreciated.
Friday was quiet till late afternoon when an old colleague from over forty years ago and his wife came over from Mumbai to spend a couple of hours with me. It was simply mind blowing to catch up after so many years.