Wednesday 11 March 2015

Starting A New Life

Ever since the end of school,the one motive in life for me had been "to be on my own". No, I wasn't subject to tyranny at home, not at all! When eight years later the opportunity presented itself in the form of moving cities for a job opportunity, I jumped at the offer like the fox lunged at its sweet-looking-grapes on the tree!

Now, I have been moving since childhood considering my parents worked for the Government of India; so, in my head, having watched from the sidelines, looking at the way my parents handled everything with utmost efficiency, moving was easy! I was going to be proved wrong in so many different ways!

I moved to Bangalore from the hustle and bustle of Bombay. What I expected was a quaint little town, tucked away with amazing weather and fashionable tech-people-spotting everywhere. What I have realized since landing here is that Bangalore is not a quaint little town. On the other hand, it is a mega IT city which is bursting to its seams with all this overcrowding!

Who better to guide me in Bangalore as far as accommodation goes than Housing.com? Having scoured through a bunch of websites with no satisfactory results, yes, Facebook groups included, I landed on Housing.com and lo and behold, look at my options! The most positive side of things was that I could go through real estate listings that had been verified by the Housing.com team leaving me with just having to give a cursory glance at the property before shouting out a big yes!

I had an image of an evil landlord built in my head (I blame Bollywood movies)- you know, the ones that literally throw the tenants and their belongings out when they have defaulted in paying rent by a day. I was surprised to hear a decent, sweet sounding woman on the other end of the phone call. (So, Housing.com takes its verification seriously!) Lesson learned- don’t raise your kids on a diet of Bollywood movies.

Believe me when I say this, life is no F.R.I.E.N.D.S TV show when you live alone and start making friends in a new city. A Joey Tribbiani is not going to just move in next door and neither is your old school friend going to turn up and share a room with you. Real life is much more scary and plain and much less exciting. My bungalow is shared by four girls, yours truly included. We are indeed a motley crew! From the finicky, picky, petite girl from up North to the utterly messy, mature albeit fun girl from the East to a relatively regular girl from up North again to me- the girl who is always one step away from a disaster. Always. Lesson learned- don’t let your teenage self be fooled by watching American TV shows.

Living alone is not uber exciting or difficult. It is rather fun when you are expected to do all those things that you have only watched your family do from the sidelines. You discover yourself in ways you wouldn’t fathom while performing mundane tasks, you learn to take care of yourself and those around you, you learn to live and adjust with people who are so different from you that about 70% of the time, all you can think about is how nicely you’d prefer smacking them! But then all is good when chilled bottles of beer are clinked and worries are drowned away in the blissful fizz!

Thank you Housing.com, you helped me move one step closer to my dream! True story.

Let's watch you #StartANewLife

Still not convinced? Watch this:


 PS: Hey, Housing.com, I take my referral fees in cash only :D

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