Terrace and Tea

I was enjoying a cup of tea a few hours back, sitting on the porch, looking up at the sky and listening to 'Ninnai charan adaindhen'. Ah ! heaven (well, I know there is no such thing but you know what I mean). Between 1995-96 (oh my! that is a long time back!), I used to live in Nungambakkam. My favorite part of the day was running off to the terrace in the evenings with a cup of tea and think about life (hehe). We lived on the third floor of an apartment building that was real close to Nugambakkam High Road(fondly referred to henceforth as NH). I could see Valluvar Kottam, Loyola college, a lot of tall buildings, kites, birds, clothes hanging in neighboring terraces, planes taking off and landing at a distance..... Later, when we moved to the AWHO colony in Vadapalani/Saligramam , my terrace and tea pleasures continued. Here, in addition, I would also see many people in the neighboring terraces and vadams/vathals/appalams being dried and lots of kids....And by this time, I had also moved up in life to be able to afford a walkman. It was usually Enigma/Deep Forest/Robert Miles because back then I had not learnt to appreciate Maestro Illayaraja's (older) music yet.
Fast forwarding back to the present, I had to do without the terrace and so, there was/is no unobstructed view of the sky. But it wasn't bad, not bad at all.