7/7-23, 4th Main link road, Bangalore 68

“Buddy this is the best deal, I don’t think we could get a house this cheap anywhere else in this locality” – that was Sujith, and I would not have dared to question him on that statement of his. Not because he is a 6 footer with a broader biceps than mine, but he is damn good in cost estimation. I still wonder how he ended up with computers. Had he not been here, Ambanis would have had a run for their money. (What’s life without a bit of exaggeration…? lol). He was our leader in the hunt for a new abode. Arguably, the leader of our group.

The 3 storied concrete structure at 7/7-23, 4th Main link road, Bangalore 68 was a newly constructed 2 BHK (the acronym used to ponder my brains until I figured it out from a real estate guy as Bedroom – Hall - Kitchen). We were eying the 1st n 2nd floors of this unbelievable structure. Unbelievable??? Yup indeed… I can’t find any other word to describe the way the building was built. Common geometric sense would fail to accept the existence of a double bedroom house (on each floor, except the 1BHK ground floor) with a hall, kitchen and two bathrooms, in a space hardly enough for a car park.
But still it was heaven for us. Not because we were so close to salvation. But 2 month’s stay at Rajanna’s stable was like being in hell. This place is better in all possible ways.

I was waiting for a different opinion from Thad (that’s how we call him out of love.. :-D). The only thing I had in common with Thad was the first name Arun. I would say the most matured (our differences start here… lol) one in our gang of 8+1. (Explanation for +1 is somewhere down the passage… I’m yet to write about it so can’t be precise about the line number.) He has this uncanny ability to give different opinions, but to my surprise, he too agreed with Sujith on our prospective dwell. It was later that I learned the new house was co-founded by Thad.

“It is much closer to the main road”, that observation was made by Sree (aka Sreejith :-P). This is the guy whom I had met on the day I went to write my test in Wipro. We became friends in a matter of seconds (I’m sure he will have a different story to tell…). But little did I know at that moment how much he was going to influence my life. Man…. This guy never gets angry at all... probably for the first time he would get angry on me for writing about him… (mission accomplished… lol). He is another chatter box, though he still claims to be the best listener in this world.

I think I should make the confession that staying near to main road didn’t help us to be on time for the company shuttle. The closer you stay to the main road, the later u get ready for office… I wish if Einstein was still alive to explain this super special relative phenomenon.

I guess plentiful browsing centres in the close vicinity would have lobbied Kiran’s thoughts to make a favourable decision on going for this new domicile. Kiran is a mini Sree, mini only in size though… the cuteest one among us (girls beware… it’s just a disguise… who listens... huh). I always wonder if there is some kinda cold war between Kiran n Sree on making most number of friends. We all are known to outside world as Kiran’s n Sree’s roommates.

“Yo man... Four bathrooms!!!”, what more can a bathroom singer ask for… Trust me he’s much more than a bathroom singer… but the only thing is he’s more comfortable singing there… the day he comes out to his audiences it will be Yesudas’s turn for the run… the run for his money… Uff... I forgot... All this time I was talking about Rajeesh. If you ask me to describe him in one word I would choose the word ‘Unpredictable’. It would be easier to pick the swing in Patan’s bowling than the swing in his mood. And at that moment the swing was joyful... “Yo man… four bathrooms!!!” that echoed as his acceptance for Baitul Karam (name of the house... don’t ask me what it means)

Rajanna’s place was just hell for us... but for Sreenath it was “THE HELL”…you will know why when you have to manage two girl friends at a time… That was the asset he took back from hardly 3 months study (???) at some college in Coimbatore. Do you require something else to get jealous on him? But I knew there was no point in being jealous, since I had no illusions about my incompetencies in dealing with girls… (One thing I like about myself is that I admit the things that I am not good at… keep it up dude… :-D) Let’s focus on the topic now… The new house offered the much needed privacy for our “in house” cupid. (He still occupies one bedroom completely… lol) So that was an immediate consent from his side.

‘Major Saab’ Anup and I were left out… we didn’t have a choice… others had already made the decision… and even if we said ‘No’ it would not have changed the inevitable destiny. Hey let me introduce our Major Saab. He had created a huge impression when I first met him. Now here is a Man among guys. He was christened ‘Major Saab’ purely based on this impression he had created on us. But to my surprise, the man didn’t stay man for long. Soon we discovered the real Anup. Till date he’s the most childish one among us. A complete movie and computer games buff. I was not sure what had Anup found interesting about the new place. Probably he too was forced to follow others, just like I did, handicapped of choices.

That’s it!!! Now we have a new den. By late evening we had completed the transition from Hell to Paradise… So do they party out there in Paradise??? No one waited for the answer… The party had already begun… Let’s sing… dance... celebrate…. Let’s Party all night… We had become Comfortably Numb (Courtesy Pink Floyd… :-D)..........................“THUD THUD THUD !!!!”....................it took just a second for us to realise we had guests… Un-comfortably Un-numb guests… Major Saab was the first one to smell the trouble. Fraction of a second… that’s what it took him to reach the farthest possible distance from our front door. We all stood still… silent…. but only we were silent…. our neighbours outside were teaching us raw Kannada. Thad (Arun) showed courage to open the door. That’s the first time I thanked god for my incompetency in Kannada. Till date I don’t know what they said (rather shouted). But from their body language I made out they had not come to join our party. In the end, Thad managed to pacify our ‘one day old’ neighbours.
They left murmuring… Thad closed the door softly… We looked each other… What a perfect first day…. Tensed faces give way to laughter when Major Saab reappeared…..

Epilogue: - Explanation for +1. One additional member joined our gang later… We call him KC (sorry I can’t expand this acronym…lol), his real name is Rakesh. It would take one full page to write something about him. So I’m sparing him for the time being. Initially KC was just a visitor in our house. He had taken another house for rent with his friends. Day by day the frequency of his visits increased, amazingly the wave length of stay also increased (you wouldn’t find an explanation for such a phenomenon in any physics book… :-D) And later when Sujith moved on to Chennai he became the Non Performing Asset of Baitul Karam (let the explanation for non performing asset remain secret among we roomies).