Each day in this city is like a scene from a suspense thriller movie, where you never know who’s the killer.. Welcome to Gandhinagar.. a city which is set in a forceful but planned manner and beautiful outside only.
Gandhinagar is a brief settlement of an assorted type. There are people of three categories here; government servants, IT industry employees and college students. Our first day of trial started on 2nd April 2018, when we first met this city.. the biggest accident of our lives. Me and my companion and friend ; Kalpana who lived this treacherous journey with me are thankful to this city for offering us our first job and many important life learnings.
So, here I’m narrating the most thrilling and worst ever experience we had at Gandhinagar. ..
It was the evening of 31st July 2018. Me and Kalpana were hurriedly climbing the stairs of our rented room on 2nd floor. We were already fucked up mentally to the core in the existing rented place so we had seen another room in a much better area. Our story so far had been like the typical daughter-in-laws of a socially dominating and crushing family where male members are absent. So from being to typical middle aged house makers we were going to become like other girls of our age.
We started packing up our luggage. There was a flood of small and medium sized bags because we never realised that we’d gathered so much of unwanted things. The other two roommates were staring at us in silence; their silent eyes showing witchy happiness clearly. Soon, after we were done we booked cab and in two rounds we could shift our luggage to our new place.
Our new room was located in a area established specially for the IT public in the city. It is called Infocity Township. The residents of the township are all employees of TCS. The area appears lively with youth all around. Infocity was a sweet dream in the night to us, which we wanted to live everyday. But only after we went inside the covers of it, we discovered the murkiness it hid beneath its shiny atmosphere.
Infocity had all kinds of eateries, quite a few brands of clothing and footwear, and assorted shops. Each shop considered itself as Café Coffee Day there. And the youth there considered themselves as the only ones to be present in the city. We were waiting for the broker to take us to our new room and for taking the keys from him.
Soon the broker was there. He was a rapist in disguise of a local gujarati businessman. He looked at us with his extra cheesy smile which felt suffocating to me. First malfunction there was that the lift won’t work and we had to take up all the luggage right up to the 4th floor. Still, ignoring that we went upstairs with our luggage unguarded. On reaching upstairs we came to know that the room he had booked for us had been booked by him for another girl since a month. That girl had been staying in the hall of the flat compromising with her privacy only on the hope of getting that room once the girls occupying it vacate on 1st of the next month.
We had a huge round of fight and arguments… The broker was called and a tournament took place between all the girls of the flat and the broker. But it was of no use, as we were the ones who lost in the tournament because he forced us to vacate the flat.
We screamed at him and said that he was at fault and now due to him we were on the streets with no shelter. He promised us another room in neighbouring block in the same price. The girls were humane enough to let us spend the night there. Exhausted and terrified, we went outside to have something to keep us just alive. Soon, we were reminded of the second half of our luggage lying unguarded near the lift on ground floor.
After an hour or two or tremendous amount of efforts we could transport the luggage on 4th floor like the coolies on any typical Indian Railway station, without any charge ofcourse. We fell on nude beds and collapsed to the situation. We had no idea what tomorrow was going to bring for us.
Next morning, we went to office after managing to get ready in the most meagre means available. We came back till afternoon to have a look at the flat the broker was going to show us. To our shock, it was a rotting place. There were ants and termites and all kind of fauna in the house. The walls were wet, the paint worn out. Electrical switches carried live current. The house smelled of rotten garbage. The kitchen sink had utensils floating since millennium. Fridge had frozen items and their contents had spilled in the fridge making it a smelly place altogether.
We were terrified at the sight. We’d asked the broker to get this mess cleaned up but to our vain. When we complained for the same, the broker threatened to throw us out and that he had plenty contacts in police. We’d to pay him 12000 Rs. Kalpana was leaving for home that night, and I had to spend 3 dreadful nights in that scary and dirty flat.
Next afternoon, the broker broke in the flat with the interlock key he had. That thing had scared me to death as he already resembled to a rapist and I was alone in the flat. Meanwhile, Kalpana was worried about me and we constantly searched for home. Finally, she managed to convince a person from her contacts to rent us a room. I went to see that room in evening. While returning, I had to stop at a church nearby to save myself from heavy rain.
I’d literally cried at the prayer because of the emotional turmoil the situation had brought. I had to proceed to the jail like flat anyways and I got completely drenched. The road was flooded and I could barely manage to see anything on the road given to the heavy downpour. Back at the flat, I had to suffer an electric shock due to the wet walls and switches.
Exhausted, I went to sleep to wait for Kalpana to return back. Once she arrived, we sneaked out of the dreadful place early in the morning. It felt like a prison breakout. Nevertheless, the broker had our money and we had to still manage to get it. After many months of futile efforts, we had finally managed to get ₹9000 out of the whole amount we gave him, only with the help of police.
But the tragedy doesn’t end there, the police officer was a creep and started asking sexual favours indirectly which started a new chapter in our treacherous journey at Gandhinagar.
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