A Bangalore Bachelorhood

I had strange ideas when I left for Bangalore. I imagined it as an incredibly distinct metropolis that would grab my senses and punch them with violence. It’s what I think of every place I visit and it is the surest mark of the novice traveller  We, uninitiated wanderers, expect miracles and wonders at every turn and get awfully confused when things turn out to be not so different after all. That was what Bangalore was like for me.

I don’t know what makes Bangalore tick, what is at the nub of it’s being – apart from IT companies, of course – I saw too little of it and for far too less a time to make any real judgement that doesn't involve the words ‘IT Company’. It seemed to me that Bangalore could be condensed to one road (MG Rd) with lots of shops (expensive), good food (also expensive), good beer (UB) and you guessed it, IT companies. I saw the sights and smelt the smells and travelled the metro which was pretty neat but the real essence of the trip was Bachelorhood.

A small caveat before going further: I’m sure a lot of you, who have lived on your own, without parents and with a lot of success too will find the following lines to be of a “been there done that” variety but believe me, this was an eye-opener for me to your condition.

I come from a cocoon that is cleaned regularly, there are hot meals and used clothes are not rolled and dumped in a heap on the floor. I live in a place called home. My trip was, in part, done to meet my school friend, Aman, who works in a Pharmaceutical company in Bangalore. I’m kidding; he works in an IT company. Aman, lives in a suburb in Bangalore that looks suspiciously like a village, along with three other people. They live/wallow in a 2 bedroom apartment in Pai Layout. All four of them are boys and that’s what accounts for the widespread devastation in the 2000 sq feet which they’ve rented out.

These guys had clearly worked very hard on getting that perfect hurricane hit look that all bachelor pads long to have. The floors were littered with small mounds which served almost as a way of cataloguing where things were kept. There was a pile for wires (Mobile chargers, Laptop Chargers, Wifi connection, Havell’s wires that don’t catch fire) one for Books and papers and one for clothes, which seemed almost to touch the ceiling. If you needed anything all you had to do was identify the correct pile and rummage through it.

The maid came once a week, every Sunday. That meant that she had to clear dust and trash equivalent to the amount of ash that spews out when TWO medium sized volcanoes erupt. I pitied the poor soul. In the kitchen, the situation was worse. Of the 4 of them, 2 of them could cook something that didn’t taste like the wrong end of a broom and of those 2 none were willing to do it. So food was ordered in, or you sauntered down to one of the cheap messes that gave you a roti for 7 rupees and sabji free. Alternatively, you could starve. The fridge was almost naked except for one cup of yogurt that had been placed there somewhere in the late Cretaceous period. Dishes were washed if and when they were needed and weren’t washed at all if you could make do with using a newspaper and/or the floor as a plate.

Freedom was absolute or as absolute as it could be without the neighbours complaining. There was a shelf in the kitchen which was lined with empty bottles of rum and beer as if they were academy awards. A solitary ash tray, stolen from a restaurant, sat solemnly in the corner.  You could do anything you wanted in that apartment and everything that you couldn’t do in a house with parents but after a while the freedom tires. The forbidden becomes commonplace and loses its allure and so you are reduced to selling the bottles for 2 rupees a piece and finding the joy of earning scrap money instead.

It’s a cruel life, the one that’s bachelors lead. An empty house is great for a day but lonesome for a life. The constant struggle for food, for a clean place to sleep, of ensuring that your friends don’t rip your blanket to shreds because they didn’t have anything better to do is an epic struggle. I salute the brave bachelors who undertake it every day. Bachelorhood is tough and no job in an IT company in Bangalore can change that fact.