Finally decided on a location. First it was Calcutta, then Hyderabad and then back to Calcutta. Have to thank tulip and anand for forcing us (read Lokesh) here
. But that is a different story altogether.
Its been around 50hrs since we reached this place.
One week, and we are here. I had to make a couple of trips to Calcutta last week to finalize this place. Got a decent place. Actually a good place. Just if we could keep things clean and nice
. The locality is ok.. Our building is a small one.. about 15 odd flats, just constructed. Actually, we havent met any of our neighbors yet! I hope we will be good ones
. Our flat, a 650 sq ft 2BHK. The K here is nominal! You could say, a 2BH(k silent)
The flat is just near the South City Mall, if any of you know of the place, that claims to be the largest(and probably is) in Calcutta. Actually, a 1-2 minute walk!
The first two days were bad. To say the least.
(Day 0)
The first night was short. There’s a no entry into calcutta, like in all major cities on small lorries! We brought our luggage by a very small lorry (dont know what it is called!). So, we reached our flat at 2330 hrs! took us about an hour to shift the luggage to our flat! I had to had to take a shower!!! Within half an hour, we were all sleeping. Without a fan. (This is a fully-unfurnished flat) But there was enough breeze. Actually we din need a fan at all.
(Day 1)
(aside) I had found this flat with Goel (whom I havent thanked, bcos i feel all this thanking business is very formal). But then we used a broker. The deal was done 7-8 days back.
8 a m. We are all up!!! We do some unpacking. We need everything. Literally!
10 am. Here comes the broker to our flat. He thinks we owe him a 2 month’s rent! Surprised (more shocked than surprised!) We do some negotiations and bargaining to get it down to a month’s rent!
11 am We leave the flat in search of everything! Go to the places nearby to get Tubelights, fans, table, chairs and every small house hold stuff you can think of! Two hours had passed, We did not find any single thing that we needed (to be true, bcos of our constrained budget.)
1 pm We get some milk! (This is all we have had since the morning!) Goel and Savi call up saying that they were coming to the South City Mall. Goel needed to upgrade himself from a Marwari Seth to a Cool Indian Dude. So he got himself some branded stuff from Levi’s, Adidas (probably) etc. It is matter of India’s reputation abroad more than Goel’s
.We stayed with him and Savi in the mall till something like 4:30. We, have some puchkas just outside the Mall. And we leave for the heart of Calcutta for some purchasing (of course, bcos we cant afford buying stuff from this Mall at this point in time
). Goel and Savi left us somewhere on the Metro Route.
5 pm We got down at the Chandni metro, Manish and Lokesh used the metro for the first time in their life. We move around for 2-3 hrs without much knowlege trying to find all the stuff that exists without finding any. Finally, we reached a place where we got decent and cheap talbes (for the comps) and chairs to sit. All this with the bargaining took around 2 hrs. We took a taxi and reached our place. Put the comps etc in place. Had our shower.
9 pm Did you notice that we hadn’t had our food yet!! and that we were walking since 11 am! We leave the flat searching for some food. Ask a shopkeeper nearby for a eatery (We still cant afford a Rs 150 meal at the mall). We get one. One that is damn bad. The chappati sucked. But we are very very hungry. Very very very hungry. We just had the food. Din we love eating! Oh! and we got water!
We had lost all hope of getting the 20l bottles in the locality but we finally got it! Shell out some money and the bottle is at our home
Again, did you notice we dont have a fan yet!! We slept without the fan!! But again it was not at all an issue (believe me!)
11 pm All of us are sleeping! btw we did some rearranging. But only a little.
I am late by 1 day but that was bcos the Cable guy din turn up to install the net connection! . I will keep posting this for you a few more days.. may be a couple of posts..