The Bangalore Climax

As i sit in the hall of my flat, I keep on looking at the stuff lying around and reminiscing about the story as to how it got here. I just made tea ,( and a very good one i should say) , and the mug in which i am sipping the tea belongs to a guy named Vineeth Zachariah. Zachary as we call him, got this mug as a gift on his birthday. The tag from hypercity mall can still be found underneath the cup. The straw mat on which I am sitting has a totally different story. As we were moving into our new flat from the pg , me and the zachmaster(same guy) went to a chinese goods shop and were buying buckets, mugs, dustbin and whatnot. I saw this straw mat lying and asked the rate. The grumpy shopkeeper said 40 bucks. The zachmaster was not at all interested in buying a mat which was 40 rupees. 'It is too costly', he said, 'it won't last,we will buy bean bags like you said'. I listened to his words very carefully and then decided to buy it, because as we all know , whatever Zachary says, the exact opposite should happen or else the apocalypse will begin.

9 months. 9 months in Bangalore city. I remember Dec 4 , 2012 , a chilly morning as we landed in the K R Puram railway station. There were 2 of us. Myself, Appu S , a fat dude from a city called Thiruvananthapuram and my classmate from college, a guy called Ashik Sharaf who was beefed up(for people who don't see hollywood movies, it means he went to gym) and from the same city. We were given an address supposedly written by a man who hated his job because the address was so complex that even google maps failed to find it. The taxi driver of a maruti omni seemed to know where to go so we hailed that cab. That cab was an Omni, but with no inside parts. The stereo, the fan and some parts of the dashboard were missing. We thought maybe the guy was poor and may have sold off the parts because he needed money. That was before he got a call on his mobile and we saw that it was a samsung galaxy note. Maybe he sold off the parts to buy the phone. By now we should have guessed that every 'andan and adangodan' meaning every other idiot in this city owned a smartphone.

As the 15 days of our company sponsored accomodation was about to get over, we went in search of a pg that could accomodate 8 malayalis. Our demands were as follows:-

1. It should be seimfurnished . Meaning, it should have a tv,washing machine, geyser, individual cupboards, beds, and cemented walls.
2. It  should be neat and food should be prepared in a good and safe environment.
3. The pg should be near to the road.
4. The pg should be near to the bus stand.
5. The rent should be less than 5k.

Except for the 5th demand we got nothing else. The rent was 5k . There was no tv. The pg owner, the most execrable man I have ever seen promised us that everything would be available, the next week. Apparently next week went on for about 3 months when he finally got us a tv .The washing machine worked fine for some time, then the tap near the washing machine stopped giving water and yours truly had to fill water in a bucket, pour it in the washing machine( 4 bucketfull make one wash) and then make it work. 

Soon 4 of the founding 8 members left for greener pastures in other parts of the city. Myself, zachmaster , ashik and a guy named Jithin were left. We were very skeptical about the 4 people who were going to be sharing the rooms with us. There were 2 toilets and 4 rooms each with the capacity of 2 beds. The hall was good enough to accomodate 2 beds. The nefarious dumbass pg owner whose name was Mahesh put 4 beds in the hall, 3 each in the remaining bedrooms and then suddenly one fine day, there were 13 HATTE KHATTE PUNJABIS sharing the pg with us. So, now it was - 17 people, 2 bathrooms. 13 punjabis, each of them twice my size except one guy chabbra who was small and thought himself to be funny, and 4 teeny weeny malayali dudes. Since we were staunch followers of Mahatma Gandhi we decided to let them use the bathrooms first and we would wait. 

Now Jithin had a brilliant idea. We started looking for flats. Ha ha. Beat that Mahesh. For more than a month, we searched every nook and cranny of Marathahalli and Kundalahalli only to find that unoccupied flats were aplenty in the area. Only problem was that none of them allowed bachelors. Finally with the help of a group of money hungry brokers, I found the flat that was going to be our home for the coming months. Owned by a thiick moustached man who couldn't talk English and his English speaking 4 foot tall, thick moustached son who I believe thought himself to be Siddharth Mallya with a moustache. 

So then we bid adieu to "Mahesh international spa and luxury pg" and moved into this 2bhk . The basic idea was to cook the food ourselves and except for Zachary ,everyone did just that. This was until we found out that Jithin who was the curry chef could make only one curry- Egg masala- I should say , he makes it very well and in different styles. Chapathi and egg curry became a norm and for me it became a tedious task . Hence i digressed onto sandwiches, maggi, corn flakes, empty stomach and so on. By the time we were accustomed to the living environment of the flat, we had decided we needed entertainment. I carried a TV from home and we bought TATA Sky. We watched the entire ipl on a 14 inch crt tv which would turn off automatically if used continuously for more than a 1.5 hours. Then exactly one week after the ipl had finished, the TV thought itself to be without a purpose and commited suicide. All the kings' men and all the kings horses could not put prima tv back together. It died in a shop called MS electricals which opens for one hour every week(I seriously believe that the electrician sitting inside has underworld connections). 

By this time, I have done so many things that even people living in bangalore for more than a decade haven't.

• Once I lost my way in Koramangala 6th block and walked about 5 kms before I found myself on a road with no vehicles and lots of cows. Yes, it was a tarred road. I walked back the same way I had come and went back to the flat without thinking too much about it. Btw my phone had no balance.
• The above one happened at 6 in the evening. One fine Saturday night at 8 30 , I started walking from a place called Queen's road in order to find a bus that would take me to civilisation . By 10 30 I had walked 7 kms, my phone had no charge because I was checking google maps, I called the cab guys who told me that they were overbooked , it was raining quite heavily and I found myself talking in Kannada to a traffic policeman who had no idea about what I wanted to say and I had no clue as to what he was saying. I was so tired that I caught an auto whose driver thankfully didn't ask me to  hand over my house deed papers as his taxi fare. 
• While going to watch the IPL, I walked around 3 kms from Corporation to Chinnaswamy stadium, and reached 15 minutes before my colleagues who had their own vehicle.

It is a fact that Bangalore is one of the most difficult cities to live in. Every other person is an IT engineer, the food is costly, the rent is exorbitant, the income is less, the people here believe the weekends are supposed to be spent in malls and pubs, almost everyone is narcissistic and if your morals and ideals are not strong, you are bound to become what i call- a Bangalore zombie. That is what the city does to you. It provides you with a pseudo image and because all the other zombies are doing it, you also join in lest you become am outcast. 

Still, as inquisitive as I am, I have travelled through the city , studied the people, made unusual friends, and I will miss Bangalore. Its noise, the skyscrapers, the office, the food, the aura, the naive people , the more naive and the most naive people. But most of all,  I would miss that set of people called friends whom I would not have met ever, if I hadn't come to the garden city. Thanks for that Bangalore, thanks a lot.