Just a General Tip – Don’t Move House With a Hangover. It Sucks.

Our 'Apartment'

Moving house is never a straight- forward task where ever you are in the world so I held out little hope that in India it would be any different; so in preparation for the weekend’s operation I cleared my mind of any expectations, standards and desires and conditioned my mind to believe that the move would be a complete and utter disaster, and India you did not disappoint.

The good point first, for the equivalent of thirty pounds we hired a van and an army of men to do the manual labour, which freed us up to nurse our hangovers and randomly shout directions from the comfort of the sofa.  At one stage I tried to count how many people we had hired but I kept on losing track, a bit like when you were little and you used to try and count the number of tad poles you had in your jar once they had hatched, but its impossible because they are swimming around so fast. In the end I reckon there was about one thousand (helpers not tad poles).

Ramesh moving our stuff out of our 'apartment' in to our
actual apartment

Once we arrived at the new apartment (after being stopped by the Police on the way because one of the helpers had fell out the back of the truck) we left Ramesh in charge of unloading all of our possessions into our new home whilst we took a well deserved break (from doing basically nothing) and went to get some food. When we returned the apartment was still empty; concerned that we had been robbed we telephoned Ramesh, ‘Ramesh, where is our stuff? The apartment is empty?’ ‘It is all in your apartment maam’ he replied ‘No, no Ramesh, we are in the apartment now and there is no stuff’ I replied slightly cacking myself ‘Maaam I am in your apartment now’ (Paul at this stage grabs the phone off me because he doesn’t believe that anyone outside of Birmingham understands my accent) and shouted ‘Ramesh, where are you???’ ‘’Sir I am on 12 floor at your apartment, by lift’  he replied probably thinking we were both insane!

We walked outside the apartment, there was the lift but no Ramesh and certainly no furniture, so we carried on through a set of double doors, which led to the service lift and maids entrance area… low and behold what did we find???? The army of men, a proud looking Ramesh and all of our belongings! ‘Very nice apartment Maaam’ Ramesh said with a large smile on his face. ‘Ramesh?? This is a corridor??? ! I blurted, struggling to control my laughter ‘Not apartment Maam?‘ he replied, obviously confused at my reaction ‘No Ramesh, this is our apartment’, Paul chuckled whilst walking Ramesh into our actual apartment where his little eyes nearly popped out of his little head. ‘So sorry Sir’ Ramesh replied before shouting to the men to get back to work. It was a long day.