Weekend of House hunting and a gorgeous movie

The utter irony of life much ironic than being head butted twice like Materazzi is to be awakened again bang at 8 in the morning by the maid again on Saturday. This time I could not resist myself from shreiking a few obscenities which I guess she never did understand becuase of the communication barriers. Couple it up with the mission that I had on Sunday and I finally realised that the entire weekend was spent in waking up early after sleeping late thus missing out on cruical sleeping time. The only time I remember myself getting up early on a Sunday was in Class 11 and 12 when I had to go to this chemistry tution coz my parents and near relatives and the neighbours and their relatives and anyone in the ecosystem in which I survived and thrived never gave up on convincing me about how much an engineering degree would help me acheive a plush job, a good looking wife and much more. What they never told me was what being Bangalored was, about the ten month rent advance which is never negotiable or about what damages one's taste buds undertakes when it is subjected to a regular dose of Idli and Sambhar. Much to my parents and relatives and neighbours and their relatives displeasure I never did become an engineer of any kind but I still landed up in this southern part of Bangalore in a company that has more than 90% engineers.

So Sunday was mission day for the sake of a tortured soul who was sick and tired of staying in a rat hole sophsitcatedly called a PG and eating blobs of red and green mass which was called food. She wanted an accomodation in a rented appartment in which she could sleep, cook and call her parents to stay and invite us without getting the customary stares and comments which are so common in a PG. The first phase of the house hunt was to find the broker who had successfully made us walk across almost all lanes and bylanes of Indiranagar in a kind of a wild goose chase. Finally he showed up at the designated place close to one and half hours later than the designated time without even an apology for the late arrival. Then started a round of house hunting which took us into narrow alleys that led to dark and shady houses without cupboards and horrible sanitation facilites. And the charges for these prized accomodations never seemed to reach anywhere below 5k per month accompanied with a statutory 10 month advance. So we saw small house with no cupboards, large house with lots of cupboards but disgraceful toilets, shady house with no light, house with a big bore well in the vicinity to fall into and the exploaration continued. Even the broker gave up after some time handing us onto some other broker guy who was supposed to show us his assortment of appartments to be rented. Now this guy no doubt had his marketing fundas in place. He tried using phrases like safety, security, affordable, good neighbourhood etc which did impress us and finally he showed some really good and affordable places at Domlur. And finally one was selected alas the bliss of finding a "mahal ho sapno ka" was cut short when the broker called in the evening to give us the bad news that the stuff had already been taken. So an entire day of running around, auto hopping, visiting all sorts of shady places didnt do any kind of good.

The best part of the day was the lunch we had at the rather special Bengali restaurant called 6 Ballygunge Place at Indiranagar. Being a Sunday afternoon every one of those pampered Bengali wives who do not like to waste their Sunday in the confines of the kitchen had decided to throng the place. The place was teeming with all sorts of happy Bengali faces and Bengali music and lots of bulky looking pretty females mostly married in their best of attires. Me and house hunter looked in our horrific worst with all the running around that we had subjected ourselves to on that day. No doubt the Bengaliness (if there is any such term as outrageous as this) of the place made me a fan of the restaurant. Even the unfriendly "Excuse Me" at the entrance of the restaurant by a pretty and loaded with attitude thing nor the bulky body of a self righteous female draped in a jeans that could have fitted two like me gave me the jitters and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. The feeling of being a Bengali at heart and specifically a Bangal overwhelmed me when I saw that they also surved a dish called shutki. It is usually a preperation of dried up Bombayduck in lots of spice and the pungent smell is definitely not for the faint hearted. If in Japan Sushi rocks then in Bangladesh Shutki is very near to that. Food that day consisted of Pabda mach and Mutton which I dug into with my hands. After all it was not one of the etiqutte training courses in my organisation. After all Bengali food was best enjoyed with hands and there was no need to feign any of the table sophistication I was so unused to. The family on the next table to us was seen throwing ugly glances at us as they struggled to have Bengali food with a fork and spoon.

And finally because of a very decent caress of lady luck on me I found myself sitting in a movie hall watching the Leonardo Di Caprio starrer Blood Diamond with a bunch of very talkative Delhites, the house hunter and a lady who was very badly bitten by the shopping bug. Actually another guy who was supposed to come had incidentally dropped out after he got too many calls from mother nature. The movie was really worthwhile for the 200 bucks I spent on it and I was not seeing cribbing about the price that I had paid for the same. The movie was one of the very best that I had seen and for the very first time Leonardo seemed to have left his kiddo looks and acting style to really do a great job as a diamond smuggler. The movie was about man's greed, the effect that capitalism does, about lives that were lost in the unknown, about how precariously the balance of life and death exists in some countries torn apart by civil war and finally about the love for a family that can make a person do anything, even change the way the world things and take a stand against what is wrong. And finally the movie is about starry eyed people who dream of diamond rings who know nothing about the immense amount of innocent blood that is lost to give the pure crystallized carbon its sparkle. Please do not buy Conflict Diamonds is my earnest request to everyone after seeing this movie.