The Hunchbacks of Malaprabha

So there I was, tired, weary and bleary-eyed from the lack of sleep (you can hardly catch a wink on those darn flights) - the door of of my apartment never looked quite as inviting as it did that day. Little did I know that what I was about to enter was to become my dungeon for the next three days.

It all began with a phone call (which turned out to be a wrong number - grrr), which jerked me out of the peaceful numb slumber that I'd managed to drown myself in. I got up, stretched my limbs and took a general look around the house, hoping to find a good place to start packing. What I saw, instead, for the first time, was the amount of junk that we had surrounded ourselves with. There seemed to be no end to the amount of stuff that had to be shifted. So disoriented was I that I even forgot to fortify my jolted senses with a generous measure of the fiery stuff.

The next 72 hours passed in a shimmering haze of tiredness, sweat, dust and the occasional thunk of something falling off an overburdened shoulder or the tinkle of a glass slipping out of reach to shatter to smithereens on the floor. Anyone glancing out of their windows on those afternoons would have seen a strange sight - two dogs, a rat scampering around, and the hunchbacks of Malaprabha, bent over double with more than weight of the world on their aching shoulders (aka DC 'n Mel).

And although the smile on the faces of Mon 'n Biku on seeing such a clean house more than made up for the tiredness, there still lies the fact that our new digs (A4 510) resembles more a dirty unwashed pigsty than a house right now.

A word of advice for all those planning to set up house - watch what you buy and what you keep in your house ; these things have a tendency to become unwanted and entirely avoidable luggage if not nipped in the bud...hang loose, fly light !