It was suddenly cloudy in the afternoon and the smell of the Persian lilac flowers drifted into the garage, which I use as my office. I decided to take a break from the computer and strolled out on to the driveway. The cool breeze provided welcome relief from the summer. The guava tree was dancing in the breeze and I was happy to see that it was enjoying standing on its own... we had removed its support only last week. The chiku tree (which gives us one solitary chiku every year which is shared dutifully by four people), also seemed cheerful. I noticed that it had clusters of fresh leaves standing vertically at the edges of its branches. Just a fortnight back they had been brown and I had expected them to turn into pods, but evidently I was wrong.

Standing there, the cool breeze ruffling my hair, I thought that I should perhaps take a photograph of the garden and put it up on my blog. This year we’ve had flowers of fifteen kinds — blue, yellow, orange, red, lilac, mauve, pink, peach and white. My favourite is the petunia which has clawed its way through the tulsi shrub and peeks at us from its centre.

As I was admiring all this, I saw a bright red hamburger on the lawn. I went closer and saw that there were, in fact, eight giant hamburgers... some on the driveway and some that had been swept by the breeze on to the lawn. McDonald’s had visited our house, it seemed, and proud of their achievement at being the official restaurant at the Beijing Olympics, had generously dropped eight or so of these burger-shaped menus which were decorating our lawn. I felt happy about their achievement and wondered what would be a fitting reply to their courtesy. Perhaps I should congratulate them by driving up to their restaurants and chucking some grass and mud from the lawn as a mark of my appreciation?