While doing his
trawls through the beyond and the back of the beyond, Bob landed up in Biryani
Land for a month with two colleagues who will hereafter be called Veeru and
Jai.
Now, while most
things were good about the La La Spirits training program, providing accommodation
to the trainees was not one of the high points. Therefore, even though most of
the stints were 30-45 days long, accommodation was provided only for 15 days
leaving the blessed souls to do jugaad for the rest of the duration of their
stay.
Herein lay the
problem. Who in their right mind would want to rent out their place to three
bachelor boys for 15 days when there were far better options available. So,
Bob, Veeru and Jai put their heads together and came up with a plan. They would
go through all the listings in the major newspapers and con an owner into a
sweet deal (yes you guessed right, magicbricks, nestaway, 99acres et all had
not made their advent then)
After a futile
couple of hours where they realized that the house owners were not as dumb as
they had thought (and conversely, they too were not as smart as they had
imagined) they chanced upon an advertisement which spoke about letting out a
room in a furnished apartment in a prime locality in Biryani Land. The asking
rate was 50 smackers a month. Very quickly the trio got into overdrive and
called up the owner who was very keen to discuss financials with them and invited
them to his house in the evening.
Scarcely believing
their good fortune and very confident in their negotiation skills (two Madu’s
and a Mangalorean make a lethal combo when you think about it) they met up with
the owner. The owner said he was a phillum producer and also had quite a few
properties which he let out on rent for some additional moolah. After a long
duel they managed to bring down the rent to 20 smackers for a month and got breakfast
and dinner included as well. Very proud of their smart work, they immediately
shifted into their one room in the 4 BHK house that the owner used to let out.
Now, the house was
splendidly built. There was a posh sofa set in the hall with a 40-inch TV and
the one bedroom that the three of them were to share had an AC and comfortable
beds. There was a servant who brought them their breakfast and dinner and there
was quite a big kitchen to heat up stuff etc. One thing however
that puzzled them was that the other three bedrooms in the house were locked.
They had been told that these were occupied by individuals who travelled quite
a lot across the State/ Country. But when none of them had made an appearance
even after a week, the boys found it a little strange but didn’t pay any
further attention to it.
And so, it had
been a week, things were good, life was chugging along and Bob, Veeru and Jai had
gotten quite comfortable with their routine of getting up in the morning, the
servant bringing their breakfast, getting ready and going to work and then
having dinner post coming back from work. Many days they would step out after
office for a few chugs of the good stuff and thus reach back quite late, have
dinner and crash. In fact they were so happy with the brilliant arrangements
they had jugadofied that they had even boasted to the rest of the trainees that
they need not search for accommodation and could continue the lease once they
left.
Then, as always,
came the twist in the tale. One fine day, Jai made a startling discovery. It
all began with a headache. Jai, being from one of those old, aristocratic
families from Bongland was not used to the gallivanting all day in the hot sun
that his trainee sales profile called for. Hence after about a week, he was
quite fed up of it, had a mild headache which he magnified appropriately and
came back early from work with happy notions of lounging on the aforementioned
comfy sofa, sipping on some chilled beer and watching a movie on the telly.
So as soon as he
got home he got into his burgundy pajamas (yes, you read that right) opened a
couple of cans of the frothy stuff and put on the idiot box on full volume and
gave a loud sigh of relief. It felt so good to get away from selling those
stuffy spirits in the strong mid-afternoon sun. But after a bit of the
enjoyment, he heard some noises emanating from one of the rooms. Thinking that
the servant might be around, he went to check but the other three rooms still
appeared to be locked. Cursing himself for his overactive imagination he got
back to his Bollywood Beats. But, a few moments later, he again thought he
heard some noises in one of the bedrooms. Determined to get to the bottom of
it, he went and knocked on the door of the room which had caught his attention.
Whatever noises had been coming suddenly went silent. Shrugging to himself he got
back to his entertainment but much to his shock a few minutes later, the door
of the room under question opened and out walked a couple and quickly left the
house without so much as giving him a second look.
This sudden appearance
of the strange couple startled Jai no end and he messaged Veeru and Bob to come
back early from work. When the duo got back after a couple of hours, he
narrated the entire incident to them only leaving out the severity of the
headache which was not pertinent to the narrative.
While all three
had led sheltered lives and would probably go on to have blameless futures, phillum
producers and strange couples in bedrooms was not something to be taken
lightly. This seemed like a Hotel Decent kind of a situation (aka the hindi
movie Jab We Met). After strategizing, mitigation theories and all those kind
of things, they finally decided that the best way to get to the bottom of this
was to get hold of the servant and get the truth out of him. So that evening
when he came with their dinner, they cornered him and harangued him till he spilled
the beans. Their Hotel Decent suspicions were indeed true!!!
The next two weeks
turned out to be quite uncomfortable for the trio as having paid the monthly
rent in advance they were in a fix. Getting alternative accommodation as they
knew was not the easiest of tasks in the city. So, they started leaving early
for work and coming back late to ensure that they spent the minimum amount of
time in the house. For the last week of their stay they managed to plead with
the Admin guy in office and got accommodation in their company guesthouse and thus
got out of the rented flat in double quick time and then heaved a sigh of relief!!!
Hotel Decent’s and
strange couples could be quite trying on the nerves and they were happy to
escape unscathed.
Note:
1. All characters are fictional. Resemblance, if any, is purely coincidental.
2. Kindly refer the opening post on Buffering Theories for any reference to the main characters.
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