So after 3 years of liv­ing in the same apart­ment, it was finally time to say good­bye yes­ter­day. I’ve been rel­a­tively lucky, I would say. When I came to Ban­ga­lore, this was the first place I found. And I had no rea­son to move out since the owner has been over­seas. Away from the main road, with 2 large veran­dahs and a large util­ity, it had ample space for Kit Kit to roam around too. It was a nice com­fort­able place.

The major advan­tage was that it was a lit­tle away from the main road, thus spar­ing us of the traf­fic noise and honk­ing cars and trucks. Inside the house, it was like a serene lit­tle world for the both of us. And just out­side the 2 veran­dahs, there was a lot of green­ery, trees and birds that would keep Kit Kit occu­pied through the day. She would either be sleep­ing in her cosy cush­ion, sun­ning her­self and snooz­ing. Or chas­ing birds or get­ting teased by them.

Last month, the owner said he was com­ing back. Thus began my month long search for a new place. Finally, I zeroed in on a new apart­ment, close to my cur­rent res­i­dence, but unfor­tu­nately really close to the main road.

I began pack­ing early morn­ing. Look­ing around at the moun­tain of boxes all around I realised how much stuff I had accu­mu­lated in the 3 years. Mov­ing is stress­ful busi­ness. And I was so glad when Sil appeared in the morn­ing to offer a help­ing hand. It was a wel­come relief as he han­dled the pack­ers, made sure they were doing their job well and made sure every­thing was loaded (and unloaded) prop­erly into (from) the truck.

Gee appeared after lunch with Chi­nese food and we lit­er­ally pounced on it as we were really hun­gry after the morn­ing of pack­ing and mov­ing stuff. I had man­aged to miss break­fast, so I ate for two meals! She then expertly nego­ti­ated with a few bais to get the house cleaned so I’d have some sort of a live­able place.

The pack­ers left in the evening. Leav­ing me with a lot of stuff scat­tered all over the place. Boxes of books, CDs, odds and ends and gen­eral stuff I have no idea where to keep (which I am going to open later). The kitchen looks like a hur­ri­cane hit it with pots, pans, glasses, cut­lery, cook­ing ves­sels all look­ing rather lost and out of place. Clothes are over­flow­ing out of the cup­boards and suit­cases are still unopened (do I really have so much stuff?!).

Kit Kit spent a trau­matic night in the cup­board send­ing me very hurt looks from inside. She hates being dis­placed and it takes her a week or so to get adjusted to a new place. She went out sniff­ing a few times and looked sus­pi­ciously every­where and then retreated into the warmth and safety of the cupboard.

I wan­dered around the place think­ing that I should sort every­thing out. And then I took the easy way out and left every­thing as it was. Another day, I thought! What’s the hurry?

I lis­tened to the traf­fic sounds for a long time in the evening before finally falling asleep out of exhaus­tion, my limbs and back aching from the stress of the whole day. And it’s def­i­nitely going to take me some time to get used to the new house too.

And the noise. Def­i­nitely the noise.