Chennai #2: Crossing the hurdles

My joining had been postponed by a day so I utilised the extra break looking around Egmore. Whenever my father took me to a new place, he'd scout the locality for utilities like bank/atm, post office, bus stop/stand, laundry & general store and draw me a map. Now that he wasn't here, I copied google map and scouted the locality.

My office is located in Mylapore, and has quite a view from the 6th floor. On the first day itself I had trouble focussing on what my guide had to say as I kept looking at the mesmerizing deep blue waters beyond the Marina beach. I could see the caterpillar-like local train crawling amidst the tightly packed buildings, the indifferent sea and an idle ship or twobreaking the horizon.

As I mentioned earlier, commutation is one major problem in Chennai, but I think autowallas in big cities are all the same. One could spend one's whole month's salary on autowallahs, it was the same in Pune, its the same here. Only problem is, there aren't many running autos in Chennai, unlike Pune. The caretaker at the guesthouse had told me I should pay no more than Rs. 40. Easier said than done! The first day I shed Rs.80 eitherways for a mere 15 ride to the office. Add to it the 100 odd bucks I was forced to spend on food. At this rate I'd end up spending more than I was going to earn. That was the first and only time I felt depressed in Chennai.

After a couple of days, my desperation and anger pushed me into the ultimate step - bargaining and finally taking the bus. I didn't care my being an outsider, I didn't care about the harsh sounding language, I just stood my ground and said that single figure I thought was just. Result: I managed to bring down the rate by 25%.

Bus ride:

I love bus rides, so much that I actually hate short bus rides. I loved the 1hr rides in Bangalore. Bus rides in Bangalore had taught me a lot of things: how to find the right stop in a new locality, how to snatch seats in a crowded bus, the intricacies of bus routes and sub-routes etc etc etc. I put all this gyan back into practice in Chennai. After a few strayed trips, I had now solved my problem of commutation. The only hurdle to be crossed was food.

The final hurdle:

My colleague from IIMC had found this PG in a place with a strange name. She was all praises for the PG: acco, food, laundry, net, cable - all included in the 6kpm rent! Plus the friend thrown in for free, what else could I want? I went to check out the place, to my shock she hadn't mentioned that the room was to be shared by 4! I was too old for this, I felt. But again, desperation and loneliness forced me to shift to this PG. The cable TV in my room, the net + torrent combo and confirmed long bus rides had taken away the last bit of my inhibitions about the 4 bed sharing. The final hurdle had thus been crossed.

P.S.: Trying to learn a few keywords and this comes as a nice reading :) - http://sunshinenjoy.blogspot.com/2010/02/language-of-andre-pandre.html