Rain in my Room

Summers in Pilani are extremely and unbearably hot. It is pretty much dry and you don't sweat. Hence the heat really gets to your head. Post-lunch sessions and afternoon classes have considerably low attendance. The Redi-Wallah's (Small mobile shops) make good profits in their sales of "Shikhanjis" (Lemon Juice).

In the hostels, people who had rooms on the ground floors were quite lucky and they didn't experience that much heat. But the students in the first floor, who had the terrace above their rooms, had to bear the extreme heat.

The old stained fans in the rooms used to run 24x7 circulating hot air. But people did have ways of improving situations. There were people who sprinkled water and slept on the floor while it was cool.

I did have my own ways to cool off. I had a clothes line going across inside my room. I used to hang a porous wet dripping towel on it and tie it to the wall.
The hot air from the fan used to pass through this curtain of wet cloth and be cooled before it reached me.

Given my luck, I got a really ancient good-for-nothing fan in my room. The poor fan too used to feel the heat too, and used to stop when it got over-heated. One could make nice omlettes or dosas if the fan had rotated upside-down.
(you dont even have to spread the dough as they will automatically take shape due to the rotation of the fan).

To cope with this situation, I tried the "Sama" (Mild way) approach first.
I registered a complaint with the hostel chowki (watchman) to no avail.
When it did not help I devised my own way to cool myself and the fan. When the fan used to stop, I had a bucket of water ready. I used to splash water on the ceiling fan with a mug. The fan would slowly start rotating again, and I would enjoy the sensation of "Rain within my own room".