Since last six months, we are almost under siege. An arrogant engineer turned builder with a rouge security man and an equally discourteous supervisor is building the house in the plot on our left side. I expect that safety rules and building practices must be more neighbour-friendly. The builder is local and he hardly cares for an old man like me. All my advices go dead on his deaf ears. Knowing very well my credential and IIT background, he avoids me, but still doesn’t do anything to keep me in at least humour. These days they are carrying out stone (marble) fixing as is usual in India, and trying to decorate the external with red tiles. Both sound and dust are unbearable for a normal living, but I can’t do anything.

Over and above that neighbourly problem I went for one more by calling Asian paints to get inside of my residence painted. For last 17 days, we are almost living an imprisoned life in our own house. How can I blame them? The boys are serious and do much better job than some local contractor would have done. Rubbing the walls allover to remove the dead layers naturally generates huge amount of filth, dust and dirt. While all the household things have been covered to the best, we live with our door closed mostly. And we must be inhaling huge lot of unhealthy and harmful fumes and other dangerous enough ingredients.

As if we were not content with so much of problems, we invited today one more. Our wall fixed almirah came out as Yamuna tried to close it. When I called the carpenter he declared it as totally gone. And you may imagine what we got when we asked it to be dismantled (see photographs). It is all because the builders in Noida do not carry out the anti-termite treatment before construction. I had spent some Rs. 8000 for an anti-termite treatment too as post construction work even though it spoiled my beautiful marble floor.

Can one imagine my agonies? But we are to live with all these and move ahead happily for a better tomorrow.