moving north

After spending a little over three years here I’m moving out of my current residence just off Bangalore South’s K R road. I’m moving to rajajinagar, to live in the house above my in-laws’ house. It will be the first time ever that I’ll be living in the north of bangalore, having spent my twenty five years here in jayanagar, banashankari, kr road and bilekahalli.

The packers and movers are here, and I write this sitting on this lone chair in my drawing room – everything else has been moved to the truck. I’ve just had a lunch of muesli and yoghurt, and it will take a while before we completely pack up from here.

I feel nothing, and am mostly blank, contrasting with my wife who has been crying over the last few days saying she’ll miss this house – our first marital home. Part by part the house becomes empty, but this feels nothing like the last three times I moved out of a house.

Since I’m blogging this from my phone I’m not able to put the link here, but I was indeed a broken man the day I left iimb. I simply didn’t want to leave, and I knew that I was leaving a part of me behind as I quietly moved out. I still feel weird when I visit iimb, which is not too rare nowadays.

It was similar when I moved out of ‘deepa’, our family home in kathriguppe (banashankari) in 2008, to move to gurgaon. I wasn’t there the day the packers and movers came there, but did quite a bit of the preliminary work as we prepared to leave the house. Though I’ve never gone back to live there (first my mother, and then my wife, expressed reservations about moving to kathriguppe so that house remains on rent), it is still ‘my house’ and I still feel sad having left it.

It probably has to do with the fact that I don’t remember the process of moving in (the house was constructed when I was a baby). So it was always ‘my house’ and the place to go to when I came home from college. It hurts when I’ve to go there to meet my tenants, to see someone else living in ‘my house’.

The last time I moved home was from gurgaon back to bangalore and that time I had ecstatic. I had endured a rather torrid 10 months in gurgaon, and has absolutely hated most of it. It was a day of excitement and relief when I finally moved back. It was a hectic day, though, as the packers packed through the day, the landlord arrived early evening to collect the keys and we caught a late evening flight back to bangalore to end my gurgaon stint with a bang.

This time, though, it’s hardly sunk in that I’m moving. I see the house mostly empty now, but had seen it in a similar state before I moved in. And having had the experience of personally observing a move in the past, I’m less concerned and worried about that also.

Most of the things are packed now. One chair isn’t and I’m perched on that, observing the men in green uniform.. I don’t know how I’ll take to north bangalore. I don’t know how it will be living so close to my in-laws. I work from home so there’s no commute, but then it does take me farther from Bangalore’s network of data scientists that is concentrated in the south and in the east. I’ll be away from jayanagar and basavanagudi but the new nearby malleswaram excites much. After four years in apartments I’m excited to be living in a ‘house’ again,

I hope this is a change for the better. I still feel indifferent about the move, though.

4 thoughts on “moving north”

  1. I did the reverse migration a few years ago, and while I didn’t like the transition, South Bangalore spoils you.

    Malleshwaram doesn’t have the same charm as Basavanagudi.. the linguistic profile is very different. But you’re closer to Veena Stores and CTR, so I suppose that helps.

    Happy moving!

  2. Malleshwaram and Sheshadripuram have some charm but yes, just the thought of moving out of south bangalore makes me feel very uncomfortable! Anyway you have new places to explore now, so happy moving 🙂

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