The old shoe

Lord Hanuman moved Mount Sanjeevini without breaking a sweat. Yes, he had to cleanup a few demons on the way, but thats another day at work for him. I just had to move from one apartment from another and I think I broke a few ribs.

The idea of a new beginning and all that rosy imagery was there. But what I had failed to count was for every rosy beginning, there usually was a lousy ending. With one room-mate having successfully waltzed his way back to India and busy distributing sweets to eligible women, it was upto the two of us to bring in any semblance of the house having had only human beings as inhabitants. Blessed with an older room-mate - which means a higher level of wisdom and a sense of keeping a half of the house clean - meant that there was only one room that needed intensive care. Mine.

The biggest war-torn province of any house is the Kitchen. Considering our adventurous spirits in the culinary area, there can be times when it can look like someone used the washing machine instead of the blender and spewed food all over, but not always. Gives a nice colorful look, but breaks your back when you have to wipe it off. The amount of eateries left uneaten would have made a grand banquet dinner in somalia. Sweet, sour, spicy, bitter. Snacks, bites, cereals and cakes. Juices, cordials, shakes and ice-creams. And I still havent gotten to the doughnuts and cookies. Gowrava prasadhams come second in stature.

After having two room-mates who singlehandedly (pun intended) revived the american economy and were indirectly responsible for a vault in the american GDP, all that we got was boxes. Big brown boxes. Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Sony Style - the whos who of american shopdom was lying belly-open in cardboard inside our apartment in astonishing numbers that I could actually ship myself back to India in them. Thankfully, banana skins and orange peels were disposed from time to time.

A few cut fingers courtesy the grill in the kitchen, some ripped off nails courtesy the surface of the hopelessly stained shower-room, an irritated eye with copious tears courtesy an overactive cleaning liquid which took its job a bit seriously, you would be forgiven if you think I was a disgruntled war vet. Equipped with tonnes of wisdom that will eventually be forgotten after this post, I stop for a minute and think of the people I know doing this for close to 60 years now without a single sigh. I think of myself complaining about the temperature control at work. I stop thinking because all this is too philosophical for a monday morning.