house hunt to house warming to 1st Anniversary

just summarzing my small little journey from house hunt to house warming to the first anniversary ...enjoy the ride

house hunting was a daunting task...believe me i never searched for anything so much, not even for my second wife. surprised ??? dont worry my wife is both my second and first wife, first is a rajasthani and second is a tamilian. i go to my first wife when i am tired of idli sambar and the minute my rajasthani girl starts the dal-batti thing i run back to my madrasi wife. jokes apart i dont hate dal-batti as much as i sound :-) anyways coming back to house hunting, the hunt had begun in mangalore and my property agent was the best man for the job. you call him anytime in the day/night and he would be ready to show a property but the only problem was he would show the worst possible apartment and still not hesitate to praise !

Well, the first one was on the top of chilimbi hills, my santro took a long time to climb and to top it all they had put zillions of speed breakers which were like small mountains themselves. The view was lovely, but the house was lousy. The next one was on the 8th floor of a 15 storey building. Lovely complex with a sea view, but the moment I entered the flat, I bounced back because of the stench but agent seemed unaffected... "Sir value for money ! i am not sure who would want to buy a cattle-shed at that rate? The third house was really nice, 11th floor, good view but alas way beyond my budget. We saw few more houses before we moved out of Mangalore for reasons which we didnot have control over.

the hunt re-started in bangalore and we probably saw about 100+ properties in the form of villas, gated villas, budget flats, luxury apt, independent houses. I saw so many houses, flats with the tagged per sq.ft rates that the I would ask a vegetable vendor to give me 1 sq.ft potato and tomato :-). Ok bad joke ..lets get back to the house hunt .. finally we saw Ajmera and it was the only one i knew i wanted to buy the moment i entered it. thankfully all in the family liked it, appa to approved our choice by smiling from his photograph in my wallet. We ran through some quick checks about the apt, negotiated the price to a level we were comfortable with and the deal was sealed !

the customary and the basic woodwork was being done in the apt. and before we could finalise the bed, bed's location, pooja room, etc the vaastu bug hit me. Somebody told me there should not be much open space in the south and it is better to close the windows which are facing south as Mr. Yama supposedly resides in the south (as per Hindu Mythology, Yama is a well built guy who travels on a buffalo to take away people's life !!!) though i never believe in such things i surely didnot want to risk an encounter with Mr. Yama. There were loads of other things told so I thought I should atleast get the basics right and so bought a magnetic compass to help me. Me and my wifey scanned through hundreds of websites, brochures to get the right interiors for house with the minimal budget we had. There were cases were we would start with something really extraordinary and finally settle for something that suited our budget. We did go overbudget on few things, one of them was the little temple to make my mother happy. Most of the ladies in India turn to God as they start getting older, not 100% sure why? may be because people on earth stop giving them time just like the way they didnot have time during their younger days !

House warming happened last Year November with only close family members and was ok, we could have planned better but the presence of people who matter to us the most made our day special

It is just about 1 year in our new house (is it still new ?) and these days i am tempted to look at property ads yet again !!

Mr. X in Bangalore ..

today I met Mr. X after about a year and half. We exchanged grievances about the company we work for, ogled at a beautiful lady passing by, i think all guys are biologically programmed to check out potential mates even if they have a lifetime mate. Any ways, we had some good laughs and then were back to our own ways

Before this I had met Mr.X only once during an offsite program. During the offsite program, one of the tasks given to us was to blow up balloons and to make something innovative out of it. The whole group was divided into 4 teams of 8 members each. Me and Mr.X were in the same team, and our team was surprised by the speed in which Mr.X was inflating the balloons (with his mouth). Needless to say we won because of Mr.X who not only inflated so many balloons but also made a unique castle out of it (it was an innovation task remember). During the task, I was teasing Mr.X saying - looks like blowing and selling balloons is your part time job and that is why you are efficient at it. Whole group started laughing, some added saying why don't you come and setup a counter during my kids birthday. To all this Mr. X replied - "actually my father was a balloon seller in my village and i used to accompany him at times when I was a kid" and then Mr.X continued with his job of inflating the balloons. Silence followed his statement, the whole team was embarrassed for making fun of balloon sellers, I too was ashamed for my insensitive comment, in my mind thousand hands slapped me one after other non-stop. I felt so guilty that I could not speak to him during the whole task. I kept cursing myself for speaking low of any profession. I thought I should walk up and say sorry, but I could not.

After the end of the task, Mr. X came up to me and said, don't worry and don't feel bad. He said - "I am what I am because of my father, my father was not educated so he had little options, his only aim was to educate me and he did everything for that, he sold balloons, worked as a driver, watchman, cleaner, waiter, infact he did everything that he could do, to pay for my education. I am proud of everything my father did, don't you think we won this task today because my father also sold balloons". His little pep talk got me over my guilt and we spent some good time during the program.

I do feel like meeting Mr. X's father, Mr. X's father must be so proud to see his son working in an MNC, the result of the education that he gave by probably selling 1 Rupee (~ 2 cents) balloons !