Monday 20 July, 2009

Away from Home

I have been staying in Vile Parle for the whole of last year and I will be staying in Santacruz for the whole of next year till 2nd year of my MBA course is completed. Now what makes this seemingly unimportant thing a topic for a blog post is the fact that this was for the first time ever in my life that I stayed away from my home for more than two odd months (which happens to be in Thane – about an hour from my college).

Call it lack of infrastructure or whatever but NMiMS does not provide a residential MBA programme and those who stay in Mumbai are not allowed to stay in the hostel. Last year, around this time when I joined NMiMS all I wanted was a decent residential MBA programme. So, I decided to rent an apartment with a few of my classmates near college. To my surprise, my parents agreed to my proposition of staying away from home while I was still staying in Mumbai (I must admit here that I expected a more emotional farewell like the one that they show in most of those Star plus and Zee serials).

The first problem with renting an apartment in Mumbai is the astoundingly high rent. An advice for those who are hunting for a rented house in Mumbai here – You may at times experience emotions like sheer disbelief, extreme anger for your landlord and may hear numbers of unimaginatively gigantic sizes but get used to it as the homeowners here have been taught numbers beyond 25000 during their kindergarten days and that is where they start quoting from.

So, my pseudo hostel stay began in May last year. Staying with classmates was always fun as I could watch TV at any time of the day, drink gazillion cups of coffee and have other junk food at will, listen to loud music late at night, hang out in the college for most of the time. The direct impact of this liberalization in my life resulted into more frequent viewings of my Friends’ collection and addition of some other sitcoms like “How I Met Your Mother” and “The Big Bang Theory” to my collection.

The sad part of staying away from home is when it comes to washing your own clothes which had actually turned a 3 hour long Sunday afternoon grand ritual for me.

I can surely say one thing about staying away from home. You learn a hell lot. I have been seeing several improvements in me ever since I have shifted base. For starters, I realized that there are so many household things that need to be done that were virtually non-existent for me when I was staying at home. This includes taking Doodh from Doodhwalah in the morning, arranging and more importantly managing the maid, paying bills, buying routine household stuff from matchbox to mosquito repellents. I have changed from being a really pathetically lazy person to a more acceptable lazy person and I still continue to show progress. :-D

This post would be incomplete without mentioning my roomies.

Trying to study

Jigar aka Jigga, Saurabh aka Baldy (Ref: Barney from How I Met Your Mother) and Dhawal aka Kanta aka Horney Thorny (Don’t ask me why).

Jigga @ Hareesh's B'day Party

Jigga is the most sincere guy in the class and I had obvious advantages like getting assignments and notes from him. I also managed to read some stuff and study for sometime because of him (Peer pressure you see...). While he was busy in putting up an extraordinarily large family (Details can be obtained on special request ;-)) and challenging the existing rule of "One wife One family" ;-), he has been a true inspiration and pushed me every time from taking CFA to enrolling for different competitions.

Saurabh - Notice that developing spike

Saurabh is somewhat quiet and was like the big daddy of the house. Everyone feared him and we made it a point not to disturb him during his morning ritual of creating one large spike on his head ;-). A warning here - Though he is generally very calm and composed, he will stump you with his occasional one liners. He was the encyclopaedia of our lot and has helped me notice, understand and comprehend things beyond what is called “Mumbai”.

Dhawal on Holi day

Dhawal aka Kanta aka Horney is another being that belongs to the species called “Toppers”. He spent most of his time reading self-help books like The Secret and Vedanta Treatise. A Cricket fanatic and a former Satyamite (I’m sorry but I had to mention this), he was in search of true Gujarati love and tried to find it in many girls including some South Indian girls ;-). He thinks putting a couple of drops of Vodka in a glass full of Sprite is called “Drinking Vodka”.

Managing Household Chores - An attempt at Breakfast

Four of us always made it a point to waste time in trivial arguments, in house cricket matches and other discussions which cannot be mentioned here as this is a family blog ;-). However trivial, it all seems fun in the hindsight.

Diverging from the topic, among other things happening in my life, last month was one of the most hectic periods of my life... Managing my summer internship @ NSE and preparation of CFA Level 2 examination (Someone please let me know if I have violated the CFA Institute Code of Standards by this reference ;-)) was quite a task and kept me away from all the things which I otherwise like to do... Now that I have sucksessfully (No, it is not a typo) taken the seemingly difficult exam full of fictitious Balance Sheets and Income Statements, I have all the time in the world to get back to things I like the most... Reading, Writing and Imagining. So expect more of these from me...

4 comments:

  1. Since this is post about all the species that existed in Vile Parle's haunted house of C-10 Poonam baug ( it used to called haunted becos we did not exist in the day time and did not let neighbours exist during night....it will be not complete without the mention of the man himself the God of Knowledge, The Epitome of Wisdom...Mr. Prasad Shahane (Prasad....ok I wrote all the nice things you told me too...you owe me a pav bhaji dosa and chai in the nm canteen as agreed).
    Also I would like to add somethings that Prasad would not live without and we as roomies barely survived it....One was a sitcom named Shakuntala which we watched more religiously than the director of the serial himself ( for what reasons...well...prasad will be able to answer that better :-) )
    Another one was prevalent majorly 1 week before trim exams where he would sleep in naps of 10 mins each in 2 hrs and we had to remain awake to wake him up ( after all he is our class genius and u can't take panga with him) and the enormous amount of red bull he consumed.... finally Red Bull recognised that he was their most important customer and started giving him bulk discounts.

    Well this post will never end because his antics have being infinite so I will reserve some for other posts (frankly I m tired of typing)..... Meanwhile God bless ur new roomies dude :)

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  2. Thanks for all the nice things that you have written ;-). A post on my new roomies is in the making (including the maid that does the cleaning and cooking everyday, though technically she's not a roomie)...
    PS: All views and opinions mentioned by the commentators are their own and the author of the post has never influenced any commentators on the post.

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  3. This was indeed a hilarious piece which conveniently exposed ppl particularly their aspirations ;) n definitely some secrets of the green room esp the names..Still trying to figure out why Horney Thorny.

    Hey one suggestion for your next edition : Am i really a South Indian or a so called South Indian ..For all those who face an Identity Crisis

    P.S: what's with managing the maid?

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  4. Would have liked if you had revealed your identity, The Materialist - The South Indian Girl... :-) Anyway, managing the maid is a great skill that includes negotiating salary, noting the schedule of the maid, making sure that you are being a good employer to her, etc. I am still learning all these things from Chetan whose apparently very good at it....

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