Moving

(Opening Caveat: This post is not related to Meera's woe. I am working on the concluding part right now. I will post that soon.)

I hate moving. I can completely relate to people stuck in dead-end apartments simply because they aren't able to summon up the energy and the drive to move into another place.

Here I was in the Nolita area of downtown Manhattan helping my cousin move from an apartment which was close to an amazing billiards bar, three fantastic coffee places and oodles of enticing pubs, not to mention three subway stations which pretty much gave access to all parts of Manhattan. He was moving to a place in Chinatown which has only Chinese restaurants all around, no subway stations at a stone's throw, and let's just say that the old place had refined his taste so much that the mud served in the name of coffee in the nearby restaurants was no longer passable.

So why was he moving? Was it to save on rent? Not really. He was gonna pay the same amount. The reason was that his old room was the size of a matchbox, and the new one was the size of a bigger matchbox. He could now have that printer he was so eager to have!

So, ten bags in all. One of them weighed around 50Kg. It had to be carried down six flights of stairs. (Believe it or not, this ultra-modern, capital of the world had some really old buildings with no elevators!) The last time I swore this much was when Zaheer Khan had got bitch-slapped by Matthew Hayden in the final of the 2003 World Cup. We had begun the day by discussing how both of us have turned into fat pigs, and need to hit the gym hard. We both swore to start an exercise schedule as the waitress was clearing out the plates which had the remnants of our tiramisu. Hypocrisy is fun!

Finally all the luggage was brought down to the waiting area, and I was guarding the bags while my cousin was getting a cab, a task which in NYC is only slightly easier than a BCom graduate performing a craniotomy.

I was getting dirty looks from the beautiful girls who had to jump over the bags to get to the stairs. Now, I am no good-looker, so while I would never expect a second look from these fine ladies, the last thing I needed was to be in their bad books. What if these hot women periodically met during their Amazingly Hot Women club meetings and blacklisted me as a potential date to the category called "Not even if he was made of money." Why would someone with no apparent cerebral deformities move from a place with such amazing talent to Chinatown, which, don't get me wrong, simply lacked the diversity of quality that was in ridiculous abundance here defying all notions of probability.

The cabbie kept asking annoying questions about where the new address was. You may consider me an ass for thinking this, but a cabbie needs only two skills, driving and direction. So, if you cannot find an address that is less than a mile away from the starting address, you are not exactly worthy of the tip that you so self-righteously demand while you are watching us unload our uber-heavy bags.

"Hey Maggie, can you please come down and open the door, we are here with the bags." My cousin was already on the phone to his new roomie. She came out of her fire-escape (which doubles as a balcony) and threw the keys down. Neither cuz nor I went for the catch. Why try, drop and then cut a sorry figure as the other berates you for your poor fielding skills?

This apartment was on the third floor (thankfully!) and we got the luggage up there quick thanks to our freshly built biceps from bringing the luggage down at the other place.


We opened the beer we had hauled all the way here, and drank it even though it was warm.