I am now a resident member of IISER Pune. I’ve been longing for this day
ever since I first stepped into IISER Pune and saw the construction site of the
faculty housing. For the last two and a
half years, I have looked at it wistfully while driving into campus every day and imagined the good life
post-moving-in.
Just imagine the possibilities: I can walk to my office every day, work as late as I like without any safety concerns about returning
at night, my father will worry about me a little less, I will not have to
navigate painful Pune traffic every evening and my building residents will not
ask me if I can tutor their children (!!) in Mathematics. I can now enjoy life in two of India’s best
campuses and so can Abhishek (although something tells me that his enjoyment
will be mostly centered around the milk shakes at Shiv Sagar, our on-campus
food joint). Oh yes, one more thing: I
will not have trouble receiving Amazon packages.
I have already written
before about the smooth manner in
which house allocation was done.
The move today went off without any major glitches. The movers were polite and sincere: but the
supervisor tried to fool me in many ways. He had asked for a certain sum (higher than
what he quoted to my colleagues) with the assurance that he will bring good
packing material: but that did not happen. The electronic items were wrapped in
bubble wrap and the kitchen utensils, including coffee maker and other fragile
stuff were wrapped in newspaper (which I provided!) and brought in open plastic crates.
His justification: “the quality lies not in the packing material, but in
the handling.” Later, the household luggage did not fit into the vehicle
brought by him and the supervisor stayed back with
the remaining stuff while I followed the vehicle to IISER. The vehicle then returned for a second trip
and the guy very cleverly extracted some extra money saying that local
labourers had demanded “Mathadi.” I knew
he was lying (since this has not happened to anyone in my former residential
society), but I was alone and completely dependent on these people for
unpacking and unloading.
After unloading at IISER Pune, he told me that his boys
would be unpacking only major items like furniture and I would have to do the
rest myself. I requested him to empty
all the boxes and put the things in the appropriate rooms, and I can take care
of the arrangement later. He argued a
little, but gave in. Finally, he
demanded an extra two thousand rupees as tax.
Since this was not in the original quotation, I refused to pay. Another little argument, but he gave in.
This happens to me a lot: people assume that I am nice and
can be fooled easily. (They are right occasionally: I can’t believe I paid an extra three thousand
rupees for a handful of bubble wrap.)
Nonetheless, by the end of the day, everything was in the
apartment and in its proper place. No
glass items are broken, but I will only know in the next two days if there has
been any damage to the electronic items.
His boys were certainly very sincere and did all the packing and
unpacking as per my instructions. They
also did not damage any furniture.
My lesson from this is that if one really wants to be free
of worries and wants finesse in the handling of items, it is safest to go with
a reliable, big name mover (the movers who brought my items from Canada to
Mohanpur and later to Pune gave me no cause at all to worry). With local movers, one has to be really watchful
as they will try to cut corners. But,
they do the job eventually and the end product is not much different from what
a big mover would have done, at least for an intra city move!
During the unpacking, an agile, middle aged lady rang the doorbell and before I could respond, walked
right into the house, unpacked some of the boxes and arranged many items in the
kitchen and store room. She is now my
cook and domestic help, my very own Mrs Doubtfire.
Anyways, the reality is that I am on campus, tired, but very
happy. I wanted to take a long walk on
my first evening here, but could not do so as my feet are hurting a lot from
standing and carrying things all day (may be I need to make my strength
training routine a little more intensive!)
I hope to enjoy a nice walk tomorrow morning.
Meanwhile, here’s how I celebrated … on campus of course!
Finally, a picture of faculty housing as it looked at dinner
time:
