Friday 11 April 2008

Ex - Bangalored!!!!

I used to think, I, being a true ‘Mumbaite’, one who eats, sleeps, talks and even breathes Mumbai; often hung over by the premonition that I will never be able to dig my nest in any foreign land, other than ‘Amchi Mumbai’….but to no avail, I was proved wrong, as I recount my days spent in Bangalore, which is sometimes rightly believed to be a “Bachelors’ Paradise”

And especially, it being my first time away from home and that too with the added responsibility of work and the abundance of liberty made it more exciting for a super lethargic moron who hated responsibilities n considered sincerity as a sinister or ugly disease.

We can often speak about “been there, done that” but what I want to recount in this post is some of the small yet wonderful instances of our lives in Bangalore which made it quite fun filled and memorable….

The ten things which used to make my day!!!!

1) Wee hours…cacophony!
Well getting up was the most dreadful part of the life back then. Wrapped up in a shell of blankets n what so ever available to make up for the bitter cold winter mornings, the alarm bell used to give the most distraught feeling, as the dreamily subconscious mind was aware, somewhere in its deep corner, that the bloody clock is gona ring any minute!!
Alas, sleep was always so welcoming just after u’ve slammed the alarm down. To somehow beat the early morning desperation for sleep, we placed the alarm clock high up the shelf, thinking that it would require enough effort to shut it down, that I can manage to resist my good old soft bed and the beautiful sleep, but to no avail, one very fine day, as I rose to shut the alarm….”Whaam!!!”…….. I turned around and answered to my other half awake room mates…”Well…great!, no more clock!!!” and……we headed back to sleep….Luckily, Himanshu never came to know how d ruddy hell did his clock break when he came back from his home visit :P

2) Say, ‘Rise n Shine’ to your partner!
Goarn!....Have to give up sleep and make up my bed… :(
Now comes the pearl of the day!....Finding an occasional cockroach idling under your bed covers….yawning, and probably gaping at you….annoyed by the sudden exposure to light…cursing u with all his might!, to have woken him up so early. . . .
Whoa!......and people talk about human encroachment!


3) Gay time with the Geyser!
Well…no body actually fancied getting up early in the morning and running straight down to bath, much to the likes of the crazy geyser. The first person used to be in for a boiling steamy prickle, so that half of the hot water used to get wasted only to avoid the heat and the other half while gingerly trying to adjust it with the cold water tap…
And for others…..well what d’u know?!!! No more hot water for anybody else!!!!......as the stupid geyser took an eternity to heat up the fresh water again! Crap!!! All you can do is muter curses under your shivered breath while the running water sends a chill through your spines…. :)

4) A wise guy! Aye???.......U shout up at the sky.
As the time carries on and you bathroom sing, the 9Xm is running in the background, things are looking cool. After a few banging on the door by fellow room mates, crying for the paucity of time, feared that it will eventually burst open, you come out. You check out for the clothes drying outside only to realize your shitty luck and bizarre amazement that they are much wetter than how you had left them after wrenching them hard the previous day! You wonder…
“Shit happens, but this is holy shit!!” on some occasions it is followed by ‘deep shit’, when you realize that a friendly pigeon or crow had a nice time cozying up on your shirt with its droppings nicely patterned on your precious clothes…….doesn’t matter you concentrate harder on the song that is being played on the 9Xm. :)

5) Fire in the mountain Run! Run! Run!
While Harpreet has pleaded someone to iron his shirt which generally mercifully accepted by Varun, Kedar hits d panic button giving us a fake alarm in the form of a miss call that the cab has arrived! Varun responds for the call and makes a beeline to it. While I and Harpreet, both born with the exceptional skill for time calculation and manipulation, force that we may still make it, even if the crooked watch is made faster. A couple of miss calls and then a final call which makes the Clock Tower in our minds strike hard!!!
…Next moment……
We are panting! With bag in one hand, and belt, I-card, watch and mobile dangling from the other, the shoe laces, playing with the wind, precariously avoiding your feet, while they are pumping and your eyes are fixed on the cab!!!(Discreet, yet I am aware honey is running along close by, this thought butters your burnt toast adding taste to your life:))

6) Being the ‘Apple of the Eye’
No sooner do we hop in the bus…all eyes scathingly X-ray us…with an occasional look of disgust and snort they used to be withdrawn, as sleazily as they had groped us before. Finding ol’George (our mate) and wish him good morning was the easiest way of avoiding discomfort :D But mind you a lot goes in for our poor friend Varun…as, he took in a lot of rubbish for always making the bus wait for us! Kudos to him, we saved our asses a lot of times :)

7) Oh...dear me!....I got a wrinkle!!!
Aah…Now as our dear friend honey was having a merry time with Mindtree’s pretty ladies…we all got into the habit of having a maquillage done in the bus. Alas, it used to be a 45 minutes journey, so why not a lil tidying up?? ;) lol….seated in the last so as to avoid surprised gazes, we used to have our make up done quite discreetly….completing the unfinished stuff while we left from home till applying moisturizer and hair gel. Finally emerging out of the bus as ‘Dudes’….
Make way MindTree, cuz Here we Come!! :D


8) Daze…..at the office
The day used to be full of new things….new people and new encounters. Altough there was a slight discouragement in the use of the phrase “Kannada Baralla or Gothilla” yet things used to be welcoming as soon we realized we could get almost everything done by the use of one simple word – “madi”. :) We felt a new freedom, freedom to enjoy eating what ever we want to eat! For the first time in my life I was eating so many chocolates in a day!!! :D :D The free time spent used to be simply awesome! Playing scrabble, pictionary or taboo was fun and if not then we would just team up and combat against each other with gritted teeth and vehement concentration on a CZ clan, never to relinquish or accept defeat. No wonder in a couple of months’ time we all made hundreds of friends, departing from them was agonizingly dolorous :(


9) The awesome ‘Bum Massage’
While this was an extra feature that we were esteemed with, courtesy- MindTree’s Swaraj Mazda shuttle service. The 40 seater mini buses had a pathetic rear suspension; more worse was the fact that the Bangalore roads were deprived of speed breakers; instead you could find rumblers (a series mini speed breakers placed closed to each other). The road, withered because of the heavy traffic, used to take a wavy form n any one sitting at the back was in for a bumpy ride. The driver, vaguely aware of the distant ramblings at the back, carries on but you are skeptical whether your insides have been disembodied and rolled over and your stomach gets churned to make up lasagna of the food u had last eaten!

10) Nighttime Tranquility
As the birds serenade their way back, the day draws to an end, our innocent minds used to be filled with exuberant thoughts about the new experiences and events of the day. I, Honey and Varun (room mates) then set along to have sum nice homely dinner complemented with a juice or a chai form the usual roadside tappri, not giving each other a moment to speak while we all recount the happenings of our day. Being too judgmental in nature was an inbred disease so that gossiping came natural to me and honey ;) and our frequencies matched to such an amazing extent that things used to be better understood without spoken words. Cribbing about gals at office was one thing, but suddenly gossiping about them the very next instant was rather usual. At night, gazing the starry sky, cuddled atop the roof, daring the chilly wind, having the conversation of the life time, four friends, who all had a recent transformation in their lives – distantly aware about the insecurities of this new world and the fact that life now demanded more responsibility – yet engrossed with teenage ‘cakes and ale’, very raw, yet accepting :)


TV and carom used to be the best remedy to swarm out the nostalgia and hurtle us back to enjoy the present! Apart from that, we all used to be game, for pulling each others legs, clicking weird snaps, bemusing over kannada names….which all, I rather enjoyed as I used to loose pathetically at carom...


Things did not change much, even when we moved to our new rented house at ‘Jayanagar’. Out of the initial ten days when we used the shuttle service, we (I and Harpreet) were only able to catch it twice. The daily agenda was grabbing an auto till ‘Devegauda petrol pump’ where we would hurriedly catch some Mindtree shuttle awaiting at the signal, which being the longest running signal. The occasional hunt for a new place to dine and party out on Thursdays had become habitual. Soon we were joined by Rohit and Sunil to live along with us, as my departure to Chennai was confirmed. The remaining days were spent blissfully, enjoying the maximum possible. We used to reach office comfortably at 9 30, neatly dressed, very relaxed albeit lethargically numbed, when we used to get out of Sunil’s car, rather appearing as if each one of us owned an IT company for himself :P

I will surely miss having spent quality time there in Bangalore, having made so many friends and having enjoyed life with them, for all the trips we went to, for all the parties or hangouts….Alas! Some one great has rightly said-

“With good ol’ friends to the valley of joy, these days will never last.
For, life is to move ahead, with lingering reminisces of the past! “

- De’ Varshi Code

Ah! Well…who cares????? I find Chennai as rocking too! :P

P.S. – “Bakki theek Hai”

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey awesome post :)....u have a great sense of humor and a way of describing things in a way that make them so interesting :P infact i am kinda inspired to write stuff about our grad life here :D though i dont think i can ever write it as well as u! :) keep rolling out the posts, it wud bring a breath of fresh air for over worked, zomibied grads like me :D

RicochetRabbit said...

Hey thanx!!! :) It was actually more of a reality than a nice description...

Hey do write...we'll be pleased to hear about ur American Desi life style :P

Kp in tch...
Ciao

decorr said...

Hi,
Training is always better than posting.
Reason: Birds of a feather flock together.

My training was in Mysore. So currently "we" like Mysore more than Bangalore.

The Unpaid Analyst said...

I was gonna write something abt my life in pune...but guess what i think i will just copy paste ur post and replace bangalore with pune :D