A Moving Story!!

This weekend was exciting!! “We” had to help Mr. ST and his wife Mrs. SD move homes and it was an eventful gathering. It was the least I could do for the couple as I generally run through their monthly ration of rice in 15 days (and blame ST and SD’s fantastic cooking skills)!!!

America is different Ladies and Gentlemen. Now I know the reason why books like “—- for dummies” are so famous here. It is so, because people generally do things on their own here. In our case, we had to pack everything, move the furniture and even drive the rented truck ourselves and for the daring mission, ST had enlisted a bright group of innovative guys including yours truly and a couple of other interesting blokes!!!

The members of the “keleaning” committee included a quintessential Indorian, code named “buyaa” and a street smart Gorakpurian with back pain, code named “langda” apart from me, ST and SD.

Why langda wanted to help was beyond us, especially with his bad back, but he seemed determined to put his 101 % into the job. Buyaa always seemed to be the responsible type and he told us that he was vastly experienced in anything remotely related to packing and moving and we were all happy that we had him to help us. By what he told us, it seemed that he must have been a coolie in his previous birth and due to bad karma, ended up as a software engineer in this.

And so, the plan (as decided by Buyaa and ST) was:

 

1. Pack everything into boxes by Friday night in the old house while SD cleaned the new house.
2. Move all the furniture Saturday morning, and then clean the old house by Saturday evening before giving the keys to the apartment manager.
3. Have “milk boiling and overflowing thus ruining kitchen” ceremony at the new place followed by party.

Funnily it seemed easy enough when we went thru this plan on Friday morning and especially when we heard buyaa take up responsibility for everything with his disdainful one liner, “Abe, kaam hogaya samaj“.

So as per plan, Langda and I reached ST’s house by 8 PM on Friday but there were no signs of buyaa or ST. So we had to wait for them by playing countless tennis games on the Nintendo Wii. Finally by around 9, buyaa and ST walked in with a couple of bottles consisting of:

• One bottle 409 cleaning liquid and a bottle of Jack Daniels whisky and a case of beer

I could certainly understand the cleaning liquid bottle but definitely not the whisky and the beer.

SD was (and still is) a smart lady and she knew her husband better than all of us and she left for the new house to get things ready there and that was when the fun started.

When buyaa was on his very healthy third swig and ST on his second beer, we gently reminded them of our mission and buyaa seemed hurt by our suggestion.

 

“Energy chahiye dost“, was all he said and ST also piped in, “Give us 15 more minutes guys“!!!! And we had to wait for an hour for them to get started and finally we did, by around 10!!

Buyaa was assigned to the kitchen.

The very first thing buyaa did was break a glass by placing a mixer over it. He did it with a nonchalant ease, as if he did such things every single day and ST had no other option but to forgive him.  Without going into the details, I can tell you that things went downhill from there on; almost everything including the whisky level in the bottle. The only thing that did not go down was the level of the cleaning liquid in the 409 bottle!! By around 2 AM in the morning, we were done.

The packing was atrociously bad and the cleaning even worse. The house probably got dirtier, by the time we were done…..

The next day, we got up early and shifted everything to the new house. It was a long day and I did survive with just a few scratches to remind me of the episode.

Buyaa was in it all. One moment, he was arranging the furniture, the next moment he was carrying the furniture followed by lavish advice on vaastushastra and it was hilarious to see SD manage us “grown up Kids” in the new house!!

The highlight of the day was the party that followed!!! An eventful weekend!!

I learnt the first chapter in the book, “Packing and Moving for dummies“!! A chapter I will never forget in my life and that chapter would be called, “How not to pack and move“!!!!