The Move

We have successfully moved house. It went perfectly. The end. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Lies. All lies. Here’s what actually went down. That I am writing this while pacing a basement carpark at 5pm on the day all our belongings were due to be installed, unpacked and reassembled in our new apartment before 6pm, will tell you a lot. 

First, some context. We are moving from what is known in Mumbai as a ‘society’ (an apartment compound) called Indiabulls, to another society called Lodha Park. The reason for this is that our landlord was trying to double our rent. 

To execute a house move between two such societies requires 3 things:

1. Approvals from each society for time, date and volume of moving.

2. A packing company 

3. Something that resembles a brain: switched on and ready to troubleshoot. 

We had about 1.5 of these things when we started our move and boy, are we paying the price for not pushing for the trifecta. Our new society has been responsive and organised. Our now soon-to-be-former society, has not. And our packing company? Downright dopey.

For the past 2 weeks (in between working and launching a book) I have been dutifully emailing the societies with all their requested information to ensure a smooth move with approved access to service lifts and loading bays at approved times and on the approved date. 

That date is today and those times were any time from about 8 hours ago. And yet, here I am, in the basement.

First off, the packing was slower than expected, and considerably less well managed than we hoped. They proposed a 2 day process to take place over the course of 3 days. A 3 day process, some might call it. 

On Day 1, they planned to dismantle IKEA furniture. This was beds and wardrobes. Both beds and wardrobes were full of things, as most tend to be, I imagine. But the moving company didn’t think to plan for box-packers to accompany the furniture dismantlers. I filled in that particular pothole by advising them to bring boxes and packers. Advice they took well and which only delayed them by 2 hours while they sat around waiting for the boxes. 

Day 2 was ‘packing day’. On packing day they arrived 2 hours after they should have, and packed about 80% of our things. 

I had watched the packers stacking boxes in the corner of the living room for a while, and thought back to our departure from Myanmar, a little over 2 years ago. Under extraordinary circumstances, the packing company was superb. One man fashioned a bespoke box for our misshapen tree trunk table in a matter of minutes, with Stanley knife skills I never knew existed. Another wrapped and packed an entire kitchen’s worth of crockery so fast I could barely see his hands moving. And while the action flurried, a still, spectre-like figure floated around documenting every, single package into a very detailed spreadsheet. 

Back in my living room, no such efficiency was apparent and so I asked: ‘How will the team know which room to put things into at the other end?’ 

‘We label everything,’ came the reply, and he went on to say that this labelling would happen at the point of loading and that the basic descriptions of ‘lady clothes’ was enough of a hint. I doubted him but let it go and let the team leave for the day. 

Day 3 was ‘shifting day’. They showed up on time (30 minutes late but that’s on time for India) and set to work packing. I know, it was meant to be shifting day but they had to clear the backlog. And this is when the real fun started. 

At around 1pm on shifting day, they still didn’t seem to have shifted anything. Some of them were, however, hanging around near the lifts looking shifty. I asked them what the issue was and was told that despite my many emails, the service lift appeared to be double-booked at this time and they were not allowed to use another lift. They had decided the best course of action was to wait. For what, I have no idea. 

I spun up a small hurricane of rage and we were quickly given access to a second lift which seemed to do the job, and things started to disappear from the apartment. I sat in my corner of the floor and watched as big boxes and small boxes made their way out into the corridor and off into the lift. I chatted to my neighbour for a while and said some goodbyes. By the time I returned to the apartment it was almost empty. Save for my boxes of books and a chair that I had repeatedly refused to sit on and that was beginning to look more and more lonely as its family members were cellophaned and removed. 

Finally, the apartment was bare. Apart from the chair, of course. Almost all the packers had left too, as I started my final round, noticing as I did it that none of the screws had been removed from the walls, as promised by the manager. These screws were high up on the walls where we had hung our artwork. When I reminded him, the manager looked at the screws, and at their height, and at the one remaining packer. And then he looked at the chair. My nice, cream, wicker chair. 

‘Absolutely not.’ I said, shaking my head at the plan I could see forming in his head and which would have the packer’s dusty, dirty feet standing in my nice chair to reach the screws. The manager clearly did not have a problem-solving bone in his body, as evidenced by his long, hard stare at the lift earlier. A ladder was procured from next door (by me, of course), and the screw removal went quickly. 

At around 2:30pm I had eaten my picnic lunch, brought to me by Dylan on an earlier visit to check on progress (or lack, thereof) before he had set off for the new apartment for his own stakeout in anticipation of our belongings appearing. Their appearance was surely imminent, I thought, as I ate my sandwich, emptied a final bin bag and switched off all the aircon. After all, the boxes had been loaded over an hour ago. 

With a fond farewell to my first Mumbai home, I headed to the basement carpark, to our car, to set off to help Dylan direct box traffic at the new place. As I rounded the corner from lift lobby to parking space, I exploded into a hundred sharp-shooting expletives.

For there, in our parking spot, was our house. Piled high and packed tight between the pillars like a wall of cardboard and polythene. 

My appearance was met with mutters it ‘maam is here, maam is here’, as though I had just broken in on an elicit deal going down. The manager appeared from behind our fridge, and began the standard barrage of gibberish by way of explanation as to why the workers were all sitting around (one on the aforementioned chair which never did get wrapped properly) waiting. They had been waiting for 45 minutes, it turned out. Waiting, and doing nothing. Not calling me to tell me they were waiting. Not calling someone to request a new truck (which, it turns out, was the issue). Not calling the society management to ask for help. Just waiting and sweating their asses off into my chair. 

This time, I whipped up a full tornado. Not only had the other house move stolen our lift, but they had also taken the only ‘society approved’ truck for their use too. It was almost 3pm, 3 hours after the movers were permitted to enter our new society to unload our things and only 3 hours from 6pm when the approved moving hours would come to an unceremonious stop. And they hadn’t shifted diddly squat. I raged this way and that, much to the amusement and horror of the movers, and have spent the last 3 hours continuing to rampage every time progress slows and people start to glaze over. 

I have relocated the truck driver 3 times when he’s gone awol between the basement and the gate. I have demanded gate approvals for entry and exit of our belongings every time the security guards waste time throwing their weight around. I have offered to drive the truck, when the driver disappeared for a 3rd time. If I don’t watch, nothing gets done. And even if I do watch, fights break out between workers and our belongings get tossed into the back of a truck like they are nothing.

It is now 6pm. I have lost about 3kgs in water weight pacing up and down the basement carpark for 3 hours, pushing things forwards. Our time should be up at the new society but Dylan has managed to negotiate a 1 hour extension. I am hot. I am dusty. I am unbelievably thirsty. And I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention, I actually currently have shingles, so I am sweating through a rather painful torso rash. Our belongings are 1 load away from no longer being in the carpark. 

But, in brighter news, I have also written this blog. Well done me.