Chp 415. Moving in to a new chapter

Life can be tough sometimes. And I am not talking about the recent North East incidents or communal riots and rumours. Those are depressing and I’ve already talked a lot about them. This post, is a happy happy post :-) For my happy happy readers :-)

Shifting house is a big pain. Staying as a guest at a friend’s place is not a very comfortable feeling either. But sometimes, one needs to go the extra mile to accomplish bigger dreams.

Yeah I’ve been literally “living out of a box” for the past three months now as a guest at the house of the CEO of the company where I work, because I took the drastic step of coming out of my comfort zone and changing my career in search of greener pastures a few months ago.

[My stuff]

Those boxes you see are mine. Unpacked. For three months now. Because I was supposed to work on something else (in Delhi) which eventually didn’t see the light of the day. Long story…

As much as I find the clichéd term “YOLO” stupid, I do believe sometimes we need to take certain risks to find our true calling. So when I got the golden opportunity to switch from advertising to head my own gaming team at our Delhi office, I left my home of 7 years (End of an ERA) to pursue that new career. Regular readers of my blog will know how passionate and crazy I am about gaming. Although I still can’t talk about what exactly happened, let’s just say I flew to Delhi and back like more than 20 times to seal the deal, until a better opportunity came up right here in Mumbai. I took that one instead, and it’s been an awesome rollercoaster ride so far…

And of course, like I mentioned before, shifting is a bitch. I ended up missing our “Class of ‘99” school reunion held at Bangalore because of this. Stephen even flew down all the way from Mizoram to make it for the 13th reunion, but I sadly had to miss it. And then I even ended up missing our “Mumbai Mizo Association Fresher’s Day” because we were busy fixing up our new house.

Here are some photos of the 2BHK duplex apartment where I was staying for the past 3 months, which we aptly named “King’s Landing”. (I know, Game of Thrones much we are)

One of the two bedrooms upstairs…

The staircase that connects the two floors. Dangerous it is! We used to joke about who among us would be the first one to fall, considering how we love our liquor, but ironically, the first person to tumble down the steps was completely sober! Fortunately she was alright, save for a bruised ankle and elbow.

Downstairs, the living room. This is where visitors are entertained; from company CEOs and COOs to a very cute dog named Marley.

This is where I play Mortal Kombat and other games on the PlayStation.

And if you think I don’t move my butt, oh you are so mistaken. 10 minutes of intense table tennis game or gladiator on the “PlayStation Move” and you’ll end up sweating like a pig, completely exhausted.

To show you how intense this game really is, this is me from the front side!

But of course I cannot be a guest forever. And all the happening pubs and discs in Bandra may be just a minimum auto-fare away, but it’s just not a proper apartment, by Mumbai standards (the entrance is quite shady compared to the interiors), and it’s not meant for three people to live in comfortably.

And so we searched for a new 3BHK apartment. Since I was the reason I was “breaking up the home”, I took up the responsibility of looking for such a place. Many places I looked with this broker and that broker, roaming all over Bandra & Khar, until I found the one place I fell in love with. 

My two future roomies then saw the place and they too fell in love with it immediately.

And then the drama began.

We agreed to the initial 90K monthly rental and 4 lakhs deposit, until another interested party came in the picture!

After that, it was like an auction war. Two parties trying to outbid each other, increasing the rental and deposit amount (while suffering a minor heart attack every time we bid). Eventually, we all agreed to a particular amount (which cannot be disclosed for the obvious reason), and so it was up to the landlord to decide who he wants to lease out his apartment to…

And so guess what?

He asked all six of us for out resumes!

Can you believe that? It’s like going for a job interview…

And so we mailed him our resumes, keeping our fingers crossed…

Lady Luck smiled on us! He was more impressed with our three resumes than the other three!

He flew down from Kuwait (where he’s running his own private company) a few days ago and we met him, laughed to his jokes, and sealed the agreement with his lawyers at the Mumbai Family Court. He was a really sweet guy, and we could understand how he was so concerned about leasing his apartment out to the right set of bachelors, keeping in mind how skeptical most apartment societies are about bachelors here in Mumbai.

[Below: The day we sealed the deal at the Family Court]

And so now, a new chapter has begun. Let’s hope our future will be as bright as our new apartment.

Last but not the least, here is me mentioning my friend Anant Rangaswamy in this blog post. lolz, hope Google catches this “mention” and alerts him. In fact I think I should do this every time I make a new post, hehehe…

G’nite and peace out.