Our new roommate... Part 1

First time I met him during the Morgan Stanley campus interviews. We interacted during a group exercise, but other than that, nothing. After the results were announced (3 days later), 6 of us were selected (actually 7), 2 from COEP (Sujit and me), 2 from Cummins (Amruta and Anchal), 1 from VIT (Akshay) and 1 from MIT (Mihir). After the results were announced, we all met at Marz-O-Rin, to know each other well. Me and Amruta did most of the talking that day. We 4 guys were planning to stay together, but then probably Akshay's sixth sense alerted him, and he decided not to stay with us (he was gonna stay with his college mate)!

Mihir, Sujit and me were staying together during first few months. The food (tiffin) we used to get was not that great (Akshay loved it though!), and we used to eat daily at some restaurant (with Sujit almost always skipping dinner!). We lived modestly. We washed our own clothes (Mihir did not!), our own utensils (the only one being the tiffin, and we took turns to wash it) and cleaned our flat (once in a week, though Sujit did most of the cleaning). We used to meet daily in our training program, and we used to sit together, in the last corner seats. We went to Goa trip after our training program (thanks to Sweta), and there I got to know he is quite short tempered and impatient (The trip would be subject of yet another blog =)). Life was good, for three of us, and Akshay for few months. 

But honi ko kon taal sakta hai! Sujit decided to move back and commute daily from his place to work. We had to search a new roommate, and our surprise, Akshay was gonna be brave enough to shift with us. (Though this courage was nothing compared to the courage needed to live for 5 years with us =)). But Akshay refused to acknowledge our place a flat (our flat had one bedroom, one tubelight, 1 fan, 1 table fan and a playing cards deck (very important for us!)) and insisted on moving to new place. We moved to a new place, and the fun started.

While moving to new place, Akshay forgot his camera in rick (though rickwala returned it back later). Slowly, he started transforming our flat. First came cable (we did not even have TV then, he did sometimes do things on impulse, and think of consequences later), and then internet, but only Akshay had laptop then, we were yet to buy laptops! Then he hired a maid to do all the household works (cleaning, washing and utensils). I got my desktop from Pune, and we tried watching cable on my monitor, using the cable card Akshay got from his friend, but seems he got pretty bored of that soon, and went ahead to buy a new TV. I tried to persuade him to buy LCD, but then he was adamant not to spend over 8k. He asked both of us to chip in 8k for the new LCD TV, and we decided to be content with the normal one. Then came a few utensils (enough to cook decent food for few people). Akshay was the only cook in the house, and we did get a treat of his food once in a while. I used to cook once in a blue moon, or at least make tea occasionally, Mihir did not even know to make a cup of tea, but we managed to teach him that.

Interestingly, when we played cards, Akshay had the worst luck (we used to play tanni, game Mihir taught us), even though once in a blue moon, he did manage to get good cards, we could easily defeat him. He was most responsible person among us (we never thought so, but so many people ended up telling me and Mihir about how responsible and hard working he is, that we decided to believe them, so many people can't be wrong, or wait, can they be?). When I was to fly London, and I made sure he waited back and helped me with shopping and packing. But over the weekend, when I supposed to fly, he decided to buy almirahs on Saturday afternoon! We did all the shopping for trip on Saturday evening, and there was plenty for time for packing on Sunday.

We almost had everything in our flat, almost settled. But Akshay never ceased to surprise us with more...
to be continued...