Parathas, Pool Tables and Power Cuts- life in a PG (Article in New Indian Express by Shubhanan Shukla)

Parathas, Pool Tables and Power Cuts- life in a PG 

( https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/delhi/2025/Jun/20/parathas-pool-tables-powercuts )

Moving to Delhi for college, I had my fears in order - unfamiliar subjects, unfamiliar people, and unfamiliar metro exits. But what I didn’t factor in was how one year in a PG - could give me a crash course in the many layers of adult life.

Unfamiliar city, pestering agents and, alluring pictures on the online websites vis-a-vis the dingy realities on site-visits were quiet an experience in our search for a PG. I ultimately landed a top-floor room which seemed a sweet deal- spacious, breezy, with a balcony overlooking a silent, unused park and, an unobstructed view of the Indian flag fluttering at the Shakti Nagar crossroads.

The first few months were deceivingly smooth. The bathroom was clean, the bed comfy, and we had an air conditioner of some brand I’d never heard of – Hercules.  

We’d start our days with an 8 a.m. breakfast - piping hot parathas or the omnipresent bread-omelette, made on the fourth floor, transported to the ground floor via lift - a mystery of logistics I gave up trying to understand. Sometimes chhole-kulche and pav bhaji joined the menu - the former much-hyped by Delhiites, the latter something I mentally crossed out after my first taste. Lunch was hit-or-miss since college usually extended beyond lunch hours, but it always was one of these - rajma-chawal, kadhi-chawal, chhole-chawal, or dal-chawal. Evenings were reserved for snacks - self-serve pani puri (with a potato filling that deeply offended my chickpea-loving Allahabadi heart), aloo tikki, or the occasional Chinese platter. Dinner was basic - dal, roti, and some revolving door of vegetables. Sundays brought excitement - chicken curry for meat lovers, butter paneer for vegetarians, and deserts like gulab jamun or gajar ka halwa. The day would end with rounds of pool or UNO. At that point, it truly felt like a home away from home.

But then, as the lyrics go ‘the times they are a-changin’, it began with the bed first. The initial cosiness soon turned into a war between our backs and spines - prompting us to swap the mattress for a thinner one our bodies were more accustomed to. As the months went by the CCTV stopped working, biometric entries ceased, and the 24/7 guard developed a habit of disappearing for his “scheduled cigarette moments.” One morning, I met a stray dog descending the staircase from the rooftop like a paying resident - I hope it left a review!

The food? A complete character arc. The beloved egg curry became extinct, sweet dishes faded from memory, pavs started arriving half-baked, and bhajis transformed into liquids. The vegetables, bought once a week and left to rot on the kitchen counter, would turn an ominous shade of black before being generously served at dinner. Paneer, once the Sunday hero, now floated in a mysterious gravy that deepened in colour week by week. I found myself surviving mostly on dal and chapatis. Breakfast was skipped, lunch was taken care of by the college cafeteria, and evenings involved three or four boiled eggs bought from a kind old uncle nearby. As a post-dinner reward, we’d stroll to the local Havmor stall and buy ourselves a Mango or Raspberry Dolly – sweet rebellion against a bitter kitchen.

Laundry? Initially, a luxury - clean, ironed clothes twice a week; but with time clothes began disappearing for days. Some never returned.

Power cuts joined the PG chaos soon after - sometimes stretching across entire days, offering no inverter-backed salvation. Summer in Delhi became a survival test. The one refrigerator either froze things to ice sculptures or melted them into puddles. The Hercules ACs finally surrendered, the bathroom drains began revolting, and the lift started trapping people regularly.

The common room - once our pride - crumbled literally and figuratively. Walls chipped, posters peeled, the smell turned repulsive, and worst of all - rats arrived. Massive ones. Confident ones. I once witnessed a WWE-style brawl between two rodents in broad daylight, with a pav as the championship belt!

Our beloved pool table, once the centrepiece of social life, also saw its demise. Balls disappeared mysteriously, sticks lost tips or grew hair from constant abuse, and the marble table grew holes like battle wounds. Eventually, we improvised and turned it into a makeshift table tennis setup - using our TT bats and a net made of books.

As the building decayed, so did the management. One of the guards famously sold off the electricity meter to fund his New Year’s celebration and was carted off the next morning by the PG owner’s men. A manager fled with three months’ worth of rent. The staff - mostly overworked, underpaid, and sometimes even minors - stopped showing up.

The PG as an institution revealed itself - profit-first, care-never.

The people! When everyone’s new, everyone’s nice. But then personalities emerge. There were the rebels who raised their voice at every injustice, the quiet ones who spoke only when it mattered, the stoics who endured silently, and the emotional ones who gave too much of themselves. There were givers and takers, hoarders and sharers, comedians and philosophers. The diversity of behaviour in that one building was enough to qualify as a human psychology thesis. I made friends. I unmade some too.

Eventually, most wanted out; and one fine day, so did I to a sharing flat- a better place, in several ways. The PG refunded my security deposit months later - minus Rs 2,000..

But what it gave me - beyond parathas, pool rats, and power cuts - was something else – an experience. A year in a PG is not just a stay. It’s a rite of passage. A little mad, a little sad, but all very real.

And somewhere in my drawer, I still have one of those TT balls, a small memento of resilience and jugaad. 

Shubhanan Shukla

B.A (Hons.)

St. Stephen’s College, D.U.