Chronicles

I had moved to Chennai on the 16th of July 2006, as my new job demanded my presence there. Man, I miss Kerala. The weather in Trivandrum is heaven compared to the Chennai steampot.

The first thing that we noticed about Chennai was its heat. I think I had mentioned in the earlier post that Chennai has three climates - Hot, hotter and hottest. I think we are in the Hot mode now, since the weather is pretty agreeable now. It had rained here yesterday. I am usually an anti rain person, but yesterday, the rains made everyone a bit happy, even though it was for a short spell.

Our apartment is located in a pretty affluent area of town. This means that we have to walk quite a bit away from our pad to get anything that's affordable. None of us know whether we are going to be staying at this city for a long time, since thats the way things are here. Effects of competition and globalisation, I guess. Keeps one pretty much on the edge. Talking about our apartment, there's a small story behind our being in this particular place.

We are total newbies to Chennai. In our gang of four, only one person can speak and understand the Tamil language. He is our default HR person, since the rest of us are useless when it comes to communication in Tamil. Coming back to the story, we were holed up in a hotel for two weeks, after we arrived in Chennai. Our schedules were usually fulled to the brim during weekdays and we were truly free only during the weekends.

We had to secure a place to stay after leaving the hotel on the 30th of July. The normal route would be to get hold of the Classifieds and scout around the city. Chennai is a pretty big place to tackle without a vehicle of your own. And during the daytime its so hot that you get tired just by travelling the metro buses. It might be that we are not accustomed to the weather here. Anyways, we tried scouting for a house and we faced the typical responses - only vegetarians, or no bachelors. Man, its hard for men here. There are so many working women's hostels around. For bachelors its a tad harder to get a rented house, from what I think. Lodges are an alternative, which we didn't consider(we should have considered moving into some lodge). So we decided to invoke the B word.

Brokers are doing big business here I believe. The first one we met told us that he had a very nice house available..with TV, sofas, the works. It also had a very low advance amount. We fell in love with this house that this guy was painting in our imagination. So, with high hopes we went to the place and saw that he hadn't lied a bit. It was all true, except for one fact..One guy was already staying at that place and all these stuff belonged to him. :-D

This broker didn't have any other suitable houses for us bachelors. Another houseowner slammed his door at our faces shrieking, "No bachelors!"

One of our friends knew the number of a Malayali real estate broker(MREB). We rang up the dude and he was very happy to help us out. He had a house which was ready to be rented out. We went to the place with him and saw that the place was ok, though a bit far from the office. The advance too was a bit high. Still we liked the place. The broker took us away from the landlord and asked us to give him six thousand rupees for giving a five thousand rupees advance to the landlord. We gave our MREB the cash and went away. The next day we couldn't contact him. He didn't have a mobile and his wife told us that he hadn't turned up at his house. We were getting slightly concerned over the issue.

Two days later, our MREB turned up at the hotel we were staying at. He was drunk. Our drunk MREB was pretty loud in the lobby. Lots of eyebrows were getting raised. He said that he wanted the rest of his brokerage right then since he had some pressing needs that day... We adopted a stern stance and sent the guy packing. It was pathetic to see a man reduced to zilch via the booze route. Our apartment plans were also in jeopardy now.

Two of my friends went to the apartment and found out the contact address and number of the house owner. The address that the broker had given us was a wrong one. We got in touch with the landlord and got to know that he had received just two thousand rupees so far, from the six thousand that we had given the broker. He asked whether we wanted the house.

One more day passed and we met the house owner and the sober MREB, who had tried to cheat us. The deal was fixed and we have been installed in a nice apartment in a nice location. The only downside is that it is unfurnished..no chairs, no cots, no tables, no TV, no PC, nothing much at all. But at least we have a place to stay. Everyday as I walk through the streets I see a lot of destitute people sleeping on the sidewalk.

From what I have seen so far, I think I like Chennai inspite of its nuances... :-)