A-HUNTING, WE GO!!

I remember when I first heard a mention of Murphy’s Laws- I’d spent twenty minutes standing in a line at the railway station for a ticket, only to finally have the window slam in my face (near the top of my head, actually. I was ridiculously short even at age 12, till I discovered the miraculous bull-worker). My mom had given up her place in a parallel line because I’d reached the window faster. She looked at the timing above to note that the guy had shut the window five minutes before lunch time, barked out something that sounded like "Gah!! Murphy's Law!!", and sought the shortest line.

Since then, I notice everything Murphy-esque. Hunting for houses in Bangalore was full of such incidents. As advised by the localites, my roommate and I would go pick up the papers that carried ads for rental houses. After an hour of laboriously pouring over tiny print and circling what looked even remotely interesting, we’d begin calling up numbers to schedule appointments. First, we’d end up continuously hitting brokers, mostly through ads that had blatantly announced, “Brokers Excuse Please”. After managing to find a house advertised by an owner (one out of every five), we’d find them asking, “You are family coming??”, to which we would reply, “No, we’re two girls.” “Oh, Bachelors!!!!” Eh?

After finally managing to talk to an owner who was okay with us bachelors, and scheduling an appointment, we’d take off to look at what might be our future house. Our enthusiasm was undaunted and unrepressed, despite a past that was full of terrifying houses- those that faced slums, blank walls a foot away, or had windows that opened into the landlord’s house.

On one of the days, we decided to visit one of the nicest areas in the city. Very happily, we looked around at lovely street we’d landed on, and skipped all the way to the correct lane. Looking around, eyes aglow, at the pretty houses with the lovely flowers and quaint gardens, we started counting house numbers. We realised, a little warily, that what we were staring at in the ad didn’t seem to figure anywhere on the street. Calling up the phone number got us a lady who sounded educated and courteous, who told us to walk straight down the lane to the STD booth and that it was the building next to it.

As we kept walking, the houses continued to look all rosy-cheeked and inviting. Things were going good. Maybe we’d finally find what we wanted. We spotted an STD booth… then thought that that couldn’t possibly be the building.. nobody could ask for 10 grand a month for that dump! And the house numbers didn’t add up anyway. As luck would have it, they did. We’d forgotten that there could suddenly be a No. 16A, a 16B and a 16C. Just before the desired No.17.

We now know how to find a house.
1. If there’s a long line of lovely houses and one miserable house at the very end, then that’s it.
2. If one side of the lane has great-looking cottages, then it is definitely not on that side.
3. If there are two neat looking houses and the third has dirty underwear hanging on the balcony, then that’s the one up on rent.
4. If you reach a nice looking residential lane, and there’s a creepy-looking guy pointing to a tiny by-lane, then he’s the broker.

And if you think you’ve finally found the house you want, then your boss thinks of posting you outside the city.