A/C

In the year 1842, when A K Hangal was a teenager, the then Viceroy of India Lord David Gower ordered four Air Conditioners from England to fight the Indian summers. The four A/Cs continued to serve Gower and his successors Lord Atherton and Lord Collingwood at the viceroy house for next 105 years until India got independence in 1947. By then 2 A/Cs had lost their lives and out of the remaining 2, one was handed over to Jinnah during the partition. The last A/C was fitted at Nehru’s residence. The A/C continued to be in the prime minister's house until 1990 when P V Narsimha Rao became the PM. Rao was allergic to Air conditioners and his lips used to swell by 5 centimeters whenever he came in proximity of an A/C. Rao immediately ordered the antique A/C to be removed from his bedroom and couriered to his in-laws' house in Hyderabad. Rao's in-laws had a museum that used to store items from the British era. The A/C remained in the museum for 17 years and was a major attraction for the visitors due to its "not-found-in-modern A/Cs" looks, noise and vibrations. It is believed that A K Hangal’s last wish, before he breathed the last lump of oxygen in 2012, was to sit by the historic A/C once – the only electronic thing in India older than the actor himself. In the year 2007, Ram Gopal Verma dropped a nuclear bomb in the form of "RGV Ki AAG" and Narsimha Rao's father-in-law, who was a heart patient, made the blunder of watching the movie in the Prasadz IMAX screen. The poor old man had a severe heart attack the moment Mohanlal appeared on screen as Thakur and has since been in the ICU at Gandhi Hopspitals. After her husband was admitted into ICU, Rao's mother-in-law sold the British museum to NVS Sai Reddy, a small time businessman in the city. Sai had a sharp business mind. Instead of keeping the age-old items in a museum, Sai started renting them out to common people. Sai is still running this business successfully in Hyderabad and rents out sofas, dining tables, refrigerators from the British era at cheap rates to his customers. Being 100+ years old, the items do lack in quality, for example the refrigerators sometimes function like ovens, or the beds often come with a little nest for cockroaches, but Sai's customers never complain about these ‘minor’ glitches. Those of you who are wondering about the historic A/C, well I can proudly say that the 171 year old antique is now hanging on my bedroom window for the next 3 months - for as cheap as Rs. 3600 only (excluding transport & fitting charges). So what if it vibrates like a drunk rhino and makes scary noises to wake me up every couple of hours at night? So what if its face looks like an Egyptian mummy with bandage of cello tapes all around? So what if it puked 20 kilos of dust on my face the 1st time I switched it on? The fact remains that it is the oldest functioning A/C in India and I am proud to have borrowed it (I cannot claim Asia as I don't know the whereabouts of the A/C handed over to Jinnah. That A/C was last seen in use during the 1st birthday celebration of Inzamam's son in 1995) :P…..