Shifting

Six months back, seeing me busy in a flurry of signing agreements & making fresh post-dated rental cheques, someone had remarked, “Oh, you are changing house?” I had laughed it off, “No, I am changing my landlord!” It was a good joke then, but it backfired quite soon. Looking back, I regret not making my own offer to the owner. The property prices were relatively low, and the house went off in what now retrospectively everyone sagely tells me in an unbelievably superb deal’. I was a fool. And more than that, scared. Buying a house in Mumbai is a Herculean task, and the thought of all those exorbitant installments & paperwork paralyzed me.

Ever since the house I lived in sold off, it was just a matter of counting days. While the new owner was magnanimous to allow lease extension, he had categorically stated that he ‘would need it back shortly’. The countdown had begun. But as the days went by, I slipped into a comfort zone.

But the clock was ticking, and the gong hit sometime January month-end when I received a call from my new landlord stating that he would need the house vacated by end-Feb. Last time, it took four long and intensive months to find a suitable place. This time round, I had to squeeze it within a month, and that too a month with less days! When I told this to my broker, I could almost hear him groan.

Thus began my grand search all over again. On weekends & on evenings I pillion-rode the broker’s Man Friday’s motorbike and searched empty flats, all in this area as I had stubbornly resolved not to leave Andheri. By the third or fourth one the guy’s conversation would begin on apologetic note: Probably, this one you will not like, but will you still prefer to see it, he’d ask timidly. Other than the house per se, I didn’t want any numerological mismatch. Due to this, I let go of a lovely flat, in the heart of Lokhandwala Complex.

Anyways, to cut a long story short, I zeroed in on a much smaller flat, but superbly done up, though with one caveat. The gentlemen (a very decent elderly person, who resembles my dad in demeanor & personality) didn’t wish to shift his entire furniture – which left me to dispose off my almirah & somehow squeeze in the cot he left behind. When I went to finalize the deal, mentally I was trying to place my stuff, especially my precious music system. I hope I didn’t come across too lost or absent-minded.

The gargantuan task of packing & shifting loomed large, and I tried to go about it as clinically & professionally as possible as my impatient & worrisome nature allowed ( I can almost visualize a few friends smirk as they read this line). Hired a packers-and-movers, who over the weekend prior to the D-day, came to do a small survey of the stuff, and on the appointed day (taken a day off), they charged in early morning, and by noon they had efficiently transposed off all my material possessions to the new house.

It sounds effortless when one packs it up in one sentence, but fact is packing is easy, unpacking & sorting it back is not. Despite a dollop of help from my maid, by the time the sun set, I was desperately still eying one large unopened carton, while tiredly rummaging through another – trying to dispose off any unwanted item ( an exercise, a friend advised, I should have done before leaving the place, and not after!)

Then came the related activities (which I postponed to Sunday) – finding a newspaper boy, knowing timings of the garbage-guy, employing a car-cleaner, locating a nearby press-wallah, discovering the nearest super-market, setting up the washing machine, calling the pest-control fellows, affixing clothesline (my eternal question: how do Bombayiites sensibly dry their clothes in flats that have no balconies) & the biggest of them all – installing the air conditioner. Phew!

The last consumed an entire Sunday as the windows didn’t have provision to affix one, hence I had to get them modified in a manner which wouldn’t be permanent, and yet serve the purpose. Mercifully, the carpenter I had hired had enough skills & brains to proffer workable solutions (and with a promise to restore it back to the original once I move out – when he said that, I literally shivered at the thought of going through this entire marathon exercise all over again!). Finally, when the damn machine got into that window, it made a horrible sound, and my heart sank further. (And thus began my trials and fights with Samsung, which I will leave it for another day, though suffice to say their service left a bitter after-taste).

Well, for now I seem settled (albeit I haven’t yet mastered the art of drying clothes without a balcony), and slowly on the road towards liking the house. Today was the first full-day I didn’t move out, and I think I will have the same feeling when I will leave this one after some time. A few close friends have been subject to my incessant grumbling about the small space & the unrelenting comparison to my previous pad, which undoubtedly was much better. But one has to move on. And move on I have.

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