None of us wanted to come to Hyderabad leaving Bangalore, but we had to. By us, I meant Arvind, Giri, Praveen, me and Aditya (that’s the order in which the city got us in).
It was October '08, when we all started staying together in this flat called F10. It’s a 2 BHK flat with little or no sophistication. Our work place was very near to our flat. Except Aditya, we worked for the same company. Aditya was my junior from college.
Our conversations at flat were in a polite fashion, when we just started staying together. However that was very short lived. Soon after we started dealing with sharing of resources and money, internal feud creped in. Some of the major issues were on cable TV, internet sharing, house hold shopping, house rent, need of house maid etc. Not just that leaving Bangalore was depressing living in that flat became pretty pathetic. Small talk became a basic essence of our conversation.
"World is in a mess" that was the statement from the CEO our company. Economic recession had pretty much started the same time when we all got our jobs or in that time duration. Aditya's company was in deep shit. Our mailbox started getting hit by forwards on lay offs and bankruptcy. These scary thoughts started becoming our primary discussion during dinner. There was hoax on Aditya not getting salary for 2 months. And yeah, we or rather Giri and Praveen prepared dinner. Arvind, Aditya and me were like ' kam chore' supporting staff.
Pulling each other’s leg became an ultimate source of entertainment after staying for few months. Praveen has this ability to sharply observe and imitate people. His skills started spreading amongst us. Best irritated dialogues came out when one of us was provoked like hell and the unstopping laughter from rest made it look like frying a chicken, with burning smell all over.
I derived extreme sadistic pleasure in sabotaging one's image in the friend’s circle. Let me give you an instance. Every morning after getting up I go to the bath room (which has an attached toilet). In many occasions, Aditya used to go for the bath during that time. I had to control my self, if you understand what I mean. I always thought he took more time than what is required to take bath, at least the state at which I was made me feel that way. After experiencing this for some days I started telling a story to my other room mates that Aditya was a noble person who hand cleans our toilet when ever he goes to bath, with best of my sarcastic abilities. Aditya was not even spared to defend any of his points since the story of him staying in bathroom for that reason was far far better than other stories that I could have created.
As months passed by we started indulging in many group activities, like for example playing cricket, going to movies, mid-night Ice-cream pursuits and dinner in some good restaurant. We shared our good, bad and ugly experiences of our office. Some of the most obviously interesting talks were about the girls in our respective work places. Pulling each other on some arbitrary girl was like an initiator for some of the most hilarious conversations. Giri was always in spotlight for some of the classified reasons. Arvind used get victimized by some of the nastiest verbal encounters with Praveen and me. Aditya came to his rescue whenever he was around. In that way Aditya and Arvind became close friends. During the course of time, F10 actually became our home.
Last month Aditya learnt that the business unit in which he was working was sold to some other company, in effect he would be moving in to a different organization. Two weeks back he learnt that he would be relocated to Bangalore. Yesterday was his treat. Today, he will be leaving. Tomorrow, we will be looking for a new flat mate.
Let me tell you what happened yesterday. Aditya agreed to treat us in one of the most sophisticated family restaurant in the city. When we went to office in the morning, luckily, giving a gift came into our mind. Arvind became very keen soon after I talked about it. All of a sudden maniac in me woke up, I got this idea of giving him a toilet utility (with all the history attached to it). HARPIC - the toilet cleaning lotion was the winner. When I told it to rest, they could not control their laughter. We also decided to give a leaflet with all our classic dialogues that were the basic contents of our sarcastic imitation. By evening we did that list and called "F10 classics" (typed in kannada script and printed it). Arvind and myself went to a departmental store and got a Harpic – the toilet cleaner, we also got a scrubber as free. We asked for the presentation cover to the same shopkeeper, he shyly said no, laughing on our idea. We finally found a gift shop that was ready to pack. The price was 20Rs; I told the shopkeeper that we would pay him 30Rs with a condition of making it shine like hell on a big box with all newspaper stuffed along with the toilet cleaning lotion and scrubber. So was it done, solidly wrapped with golden colour presentation cover and all. Arvind and me laughed like hell each and every second thinking about the whole idea.
At eight, we met in that over priced restaurant. The deal was any thing in the menu except ice cream. We consciously dint have much food during lunch to take the best advantage of the treat. We had so much food with so many snaps taken by Giri while batting. By the time we were done, Aditya knew that this treat would remain as one of the costliest affair for long time. We gave him the leaf let which had all our dialogues typed in Kannada. When he read each dialogue in the leaf let we laughed like hell. When we gave him the gold wrapped gift box, he was glad and told us that this was like the Vaseline to the entire cracks in a foot. We insisted him to open the gift before the waiter could get the bill. He did open it gracefully in the midst of many families sitting around us, who by the way were noticing our loud laughter.
Let me ask you one thing, do you want to be our new roommate?
17 -04 -09
( http://picasaweb.google.com/isiganesh/Aditya_harpic# )
