Bangalore: Butterflies, Bars & Buddies.

This is for my memories. So that when I’m 80 and all alone, I can remember Blore, and my time there for what it was. Its lengthy, a recap of the exact 3 months, and took me over a week to complete.

I landed there on the 11th of March 2010, unsure, uncertain and unhappy. I was being pulled away from Bombay – my favoritest (yes, that’s a word. In my dictionary.) city in the world – with no idea when I’d be back (for good. I knew when I’d be back to Bombay – it was exactly after 15 days!) I still remember my drive from the airport to EC. I drank in the sights of the city, comparing every tiny detail to Bombay, and at the same time trying to familiarize myself with the place. When I saw the “Mojdi & Joothi” shop on Brigade Road Junction, I remember feeling slightly better: they had road-side shoes; it wasn’t as backward, remote and isolated a place as I’d thought it to be – I could shop for cheap shoes when I got really depressed (yes, I am a strong believer in the concept of Retail Therapy, and my friends in Bangalore will vouch for that!)

Friends in Bangalore.

Never thought I’d say those 3 words, together, in a sentence like that. When I came here, I was all prepared to be one of those hoity-toity-I’m-from-bombay-cold-bitch, prepared even to run up a huge phone bill talking to all my friends scattered all over the world. For me, a friend is someone who I can crib to endlessly (Cribbing, for me is a way of life now. Bad, I know. Should stop, I know. Am working on it? No! : P), one who I can talk to, endlessly, one who I can listen to, endlessly, one who I can fight with, one who I can call an asshole, and still not offend, one who I can sit in comfortable silence with (I cant do that with most of the people I know. I need to have a very, very strong comfort level with that person), one who I can eat with (sloppily), one who can call me fat- and not offend me, one who actually counts my calories for me – for everything I eat, and then shamelessly tells me, every time that I shouldn’t be eating that, one who goes ahead and shares their dessert with me anyways, one who calls me an emotional fool – exactly what I am – on my face, one who I can shop with, literally, till we drop, one who I can giggle with on every damn thing (it seems), and one who actually agrees that Sagittarians are the best!

I found all this, and much more.

My first seven days here were spent in the Wipro Technologies Guest House, a well maintained, almost three-starish hotel type accommodation, within the EC Campus. For the fear of living with some unknown (May I, at the expense of sounding racist, add South Indian?) entity, I chose my roommate as a Batch mate from NMIMS, Nimmy, and arm-twisted the receptionist, Chandru to allot us a room together. I was verbosely appalled at the fact that such a simple request was met with so much resistance. She was a South-Indian, I knew that, but her hair didn’t smell of (jasmine?) oil all the time, and that was good enough for me. However, the first thing she said to me was, “Oh, I have to share a room with you. I wanted one to myself actually. Anyways. ” Appalled again, I was at the snooty Mallu who spoke immaculate English without any trace of an accent, had the most beautiful curly hair and a red hand bag that I fell in live with at first sight! However, I went on to have very strong relations with the both these appalling people during my time here. The first weekend was spent finding potential room-mates (considering her opening remark to me, I had figured that my current one didn’t seem to like me very much) and of course livable accommodation. After a lot of contemplation, uncertainty and irritation I still hadn’t found either. But as with life, suddenly things fell into place, and I moved into SRK Samrudhii Suites with Nimmy (turns out, she did like me, after all!) as a roommate. Rather house mate, for it was a 1 bedroom, hall-kitchenette studio with a balcony overlooking, well, nothing much. But it had beds, a T.V with cable, a couch, a fridge, an AC, a swimming pool, a gym and was close to office. The fact that it was smack in the middle of no-where didn’t bother us too much after looking at all these things. And did I mention, it also had free, unlimited, internet, wi-fi enabled? Thus started my affair with Samrudhii that lasted for 2 month and 1 week and 1 day. And this period I feel I lived two different lives.

The first was when it was me Shveta, Geetanjali, and of course Nimmy. The four of us were like the power-puff girls, snooty, giggly, inseparable and totally unaware of the others around us. The numerous shopping expeditions, with Shveta, the late night chats about the right way of dieting with Nimmy , the boy-bashing sessions with Geetanjali (rather, Geethanjali!!) and one month passed in a blur that was fun all the time. I got to know more people during this period, but none was as close to me as these girls. There was Sanjeev the chef, Kabir, the kid, Punit the even bigger-kid, Raka (Rahul Kumar Aggarwal) the tourist, Amol - party hila denge!!, Adi (sigh), Divya the awesome dancer, Muthu, Archana, Arpita, Aabha… and the list is endless. We went partying to Fuga – fun time as it was Bombay Night! I danced late into the night, much to my heart’s content, and my parent’s distress. Got high on a single breezer( yes, I did!) and haven’t heard the end of it till date. We went for the Bombay versus Bangalore IPL Semi-final match to Extreme Sports Bar, and hooted an entire bar full of bangaloreans down, and finally, we went to Hint, the disco that on Fridays had a free entry for girls, and a 1000 buck eat-drink-all-you-want for guys. Let’s just sum that night up by saying that I had to get two very drunk guys home, I was soaking wet in water and vodka (some drunken asshole threw it on me) and there wasn’t Nimmy to get back home to.

These girls had moved out by now, all scattered, and I was left all alone. It was by sheer luck, absolute shamelessness, loads of chewing Kabir’s brains out and 4 nights of living “alone” and fighting the ghosts that I found Mansi: my next roommate. The last night that we four girls were together, we wanted to make it a night to remember, and so Nimmy and I went and sat by the pool, dipping our feet in the cold water, and reminiscing about the time gone by. Kabir joined us, and the three of us sat there for the longest time, chatting about random nonsense and giggling and just talking crap. These two tried, very unsuccessfully, to push me into the pool and I was so proud about the fact that I resisted them all the time! Whether it was by physical strength, or because of all the screaming and pleading and puppy-face making that I did every time they tried, I’ll never know, but I like to think it was the sheer physical strength. We were joined by Shveta, Sanjeev, Geetanjali, Amol and Abhinav soon after and we sat there like 8 year olds who dared only to dip their feet in a pool, and not jump in and swim. Everyone was daring the other one, promising that if one person jumped in, all would follow suit. Suddenly I realized that
A. I was the only one talking &
B. there was no one to my left or right.
A little too late I realized that all of them had crowded up behind me, and before I could do anything, I was unceremoniously pushed into the water.
Freezing cold water.
At 11-fucking-o’clock in the night.
It was so cold I could not breathe for two minutes and warmed up only after I swam two laps. I was, needless to say furious, until Abhinav jumped in, and suddenly everyone was in swimming, tryint to swim, shouting, splashing water and doing what not! The great ones like me who knew swimming gave swimming lessons to the lesser mortals who didn’t. In freezing cold water. At 11-fucking-thirty in the night. And boy, was it a fun night! Loads of splashing water at each other’s face (kabir, you loser, you lost miserably: P) and swimming competitions later I headed to my room, soaking wet but very, very content.
I guess Nimmy finally got her (pseudo) revenge for the April Fools Gag that i played on her by making her run un-necessarily for a flight that was 2 hours late!

The second life was a mix of living alone, testing my strength, Kabir's & Punit's patience and then living with Mansi and Archana. In the four days that I was alone, it came to a point, where if I mentioned that there were ghosts in the room, Sanjeev would say, “okay give the phone to the ghost, I’ll scare it away from my room only!” Then after 4 long days (and even longer nights) came Mansi, my second roommate. The first day she moved in was the day we had planned to go to Hint. She came along, and god, was she scandalized! The whole bar and their uncle was swooning over her, and poor girl didn’t know what to do. I had to physically fight off Sankalp and a 100 others and like literally protect her. To their defense, the whole bar and their uncle were highly drunk. Anyways.

By now at Wipro, we had moved into a smaller training batch, and I was making a new friend: our 60 year old trainer. We called him Daddu fondly, and he is a sweet eccentric 60 year old man, like a child who wants to have fun, but is scared of the system. Weekdays consisted of training (read: sleeping in the training room, surfing the net, finding bus routes to new local markets, blogging, giving tests randomly without studying and a little bit of trying to understand what was being taught), followed by power yoga, walking all the way to SRK with Kabir, dinner at the dhabha and talking to Mansi and watching Indian Idol on TV. I think the part that I minded most about living alone was that I had only myself for company, and that meant that I had to talk to myself, and I am not a listener, I’m a talker. So in short that meant that I didn’t have anyone to listen to my non-stop blabber. Well, not anyone. Kabir was there and so was Punit but they weren’t there all the time as they weren’t my roommates, and I didn’t want to be in their room all the time for the fear of over staying my welcome. With Mansi it was a classic case of two Saggis getting along instantly. In fact, sometimes we both had so much to talk about that we would actually be competing with each other so as to who will talk first!

The weekends during this period, at least the ones when I was in Bangalore, were spent almost always, and completely, with Nimmy, shopping, hanging out at Blossoms, Café Matteo, going to the Clarins Spa, lunching at Ebony and doing all other girly things. Nimmy, as I have already mentioned, is this super-uber-cool Mallu who perennially has a don’t-mess-with-me, rather don’t-even-talk-to-me-you-lowly-creature look. We did have a shaky start, but went on to build a real strong friendship discussing boyfriends and sex and weddings and calories and appetite and food and weight loss and god-knows-what. Once you get past her snooty attitude, she is this loveable girl who giggles at every damn thing, is a world-class negotiator and has the best curls in the whole wide world! Not to mention she gives good, practical, grounding advice. My time with her was fun, refreshing and uplifting. I don’t think she ever realized how much the weekends meant to me. I remember when she, Roshin (her sister) and I went shopping for salwaar kammez and sarees and I was stuck on i-want-something-that-is-south-indian so bad that the two of them had pretty much branded me as a racist by the end of that day. And that other time (my last time out shopping with her, infact my last time shopping in B’lore) when she and I went to Mysore Silk Palace (where I blew up 15k in 3 hours) she actually told her dad over the phone, “Dad, I’m shopping for suits and sarees with Lehar… no she’s not getting married… she’s just having an I’m-leaving-south-india-forver-panic-attack. I’d better go and stop her now, she’s buying the entire shop, it seems!” And there was this one weekend I couldn’t meet her at all, even though I was in B’lore, but I know she completely understands why! ;)

Towards the fag end of my and Mansi’s time at SRK ,Archana (Archie) joined us. Initially, she was wary of me (can you imagine, poor harmless me?) but as she understood my loveable, affable, adorable (ok I shall stop now) self, we bonded like petrol and fire. The day I was leaving, after I had said my good-bye to her, the penny dropped on why she was so wary of me! During training, very initially, we had a role play and were asked to play the personality type that we were. I was naturally a
Driver, someone who gets things done, and during the role play which consisted of me and her, I may have taken it too far. But by the end of it we were awesome buddies having our own code languge (hiss...) . In fact she even gifted me this awesome Pashmina Shawl as a good-bye gift for i was always feeling cold!

My last night there (the night of 11th June 2010) was exactly what I wanted it to be – wild, fun and crazy! Well, at least by my standards. My flight to Pune was at 6AM on the morning of 12th June which meant that I’d had to leave from EC (Electronic City) by 3 AM. We planned a cookout at Punit, Kabir and Natoo’s place, and I made aloo jeera, salad, masala papad & dessert (Jelly, milk maid, jujubes & bananas – yumm!)and Mansi made rice, and Punit made kadhii and dal. Suhas, Mansi and Nimmy were the only ones who ate as soon as the food was prepared. We finished making dinner by 11 o’clock but ate only around 2 as these guys started drinking (Green Apple Vodka with sprite) and then Kabir insisted that I have 1, chotu, really chotu, drink, and well, against all practical reasoning I agreed! Soon, I was just giggling non-stop and having the time of my life! We went to drop Mansi to her Villa and in the car Aabha was going on about some non sense on the phone and we were giggling. I don’t think I have giggled so much in my entire life, as much I did that night.
Some losers who couldn't hold their alchohol dozed off around 1 ish beacuse of which i couldn't say bye properly, but nevertheless, the night was definitely one of those once-in-a-lifetime-thigis for me.

Nimmy, thanks for coming to drop me all the way to the airport; I wouldn’t have liked to be alone in my last few minutes… And will always remember the Mind Over Matter Lesson that you gave me at 4 AM on that freezing morning! Will miss you, babe. (I was so damn late for my flight, and I had to run through the entire process, but girl, spending that one more hour with you - it was worth it!)

Kabir, thanks for listening to all my cribbing, for being my soundboard for most of the time. And yeah, thanks for finally, finally, getting me drunk.

Life's too long for good-bye's Archie... we shall meet agin and take our saggis-are-the-best conversation to another level altogether!


Today, on the 12th of june, exactly 3 months (1 quarter) later, I sit at Bombay Airport (the Pune flight got re-routed to Bombay as it couldn’t land there due to bad weather; can you believe my luck!) waiting for clearance etc leave, and I thank my stars, for giving me this opportunity to get out of Bombay, see Bangalore, hate it, fall in love with it and last but not the least, meet these awesome people, and make them a part of my life.

I had a picture of you in my mind...
never knew it could be so wrong...
why did it take me so long just to find,
the friend that I had all along...

Until next time…