The Stay

We had a few imaginations about the place we were going to stay in. But the one we got surpassed our wildest imaginations. We were given the biggest apartment I have ever lived in. The entire floor was covered with a soft (I am not sure what to call this..) flooring which is the norm here for all apartments. I felt sleeping on the floor more comfortable than my bed back home:). The rooms were spacious and we had every home appliance that one could think of- Refrigerator, microwave oven, dish-washer, knife-set, washing machine and so on. Ofcourse for $100 a day which my company was paying them these were the least they could do:).

Ofcourse we left all the kitchen equipment almost untouched. The appliance we found the greatest use were indeed the TV and VCR (you read it right-here VCRs and video cassettes are are still immensely popular. We watched a movie almost every weekend. More about that in
another post.

I was feeling a bit eerie with the huge house and living all alone and decided to move in with Raghu (he had a two-bedroom apartment). Then began the party-time. Raghuram often became so sick with hotel-food that he used to cook at home and ofcourse I helped with him in the most crucial part-eating and certifying his cooking skills. He is so sweet that inspite of being enraged at my watching TV endlessly while he toiled with rice and puliyotharai mix (he became a specialist in making puliyotharai-tamarind rice) and making empty threats of cooking for him alone-always at the end of it there it was....I had steaming rice, watery, but tasty sambhar, sometimes curry, curd and to top it all-Puliyotharai:). You are a pleasure Raghu:):)

Towards the end we took detailed videos of the whole house. Here apartments are not stand-alone entities. They have a set of apartments forming a community kind of thing and they have facilities common to them. There was a small swimming pool for the place and we deigned on it only once during the whole stay. They had a tennis court as well.

We had the chance of watching the firemen in action twice during our stay. When there is smoke in one of the apartments there is an alarm that goes off for the entire building. Everyone in every apartment who hears that is supposed to leave everything and rush outside. The firemen are automatically alarmed and they arrive within few minutes. They are very professional. In full gear, a few of their men march inside the house and make sure there is nothing serious and declare "All Clear". People can go in only after that. Both the times thankfully only the fireplace had had some problems and was emanating too much of smoke.