Just like starting Over...Love@Relocation

Prehistoric couples were hunters and gatherers. Today's twosomes spend a lot of time house-hunting, gathering information about homes to rent or buy.

Life with my partner has involved much house-hunting. From the Karamchari Quarters, JNU, Delhi, to a town house in KL, Malaysia, we've stayed in all kinds of housing over the course of more than 30 years. For I love a man who is fairly footloose, a proper rolling stone. 

We've shifted home some sixteen times. From Delhi to Noida to Gurgaon. With a five year Malaysian interlude. From KL back to Gurgaon. From Gurgaon to Pune. And, now, twice in Pune.

Each time, it's been love reaffirmed in a new setting: watching the seasons change athwart the open field seen from the Karamchari flat in the old down campus JNU, Delhi or the tree outside our

house in KL turning rainy evenings magical as droplets twinkled on its branches. 

With the passage of time, house hunting has evolved from tapping the grapevine to scanning newspaper ads to surfing cutting edge real estate web sites. 




Driving from address to address until we found a suitable flat in the 80's was rather tedious and one was just grateful to find a place. There was no room for a wish list. 

Even so, each place had its charms: the place near Buddha Vihar, opposite JNU, Delhi, was a small low roofed room with no attached toilet, nor a kitchen. But it had a large terrace where peacocks would dance of a morning and the nights were splendid with stars. 

Minus tawa, kadchi and chimta and other such kitchen utensils dear to an Indian woman, I had to reinvent myself anew in Malaysia in 2006 when I discovered the quaint concept of a wet and a dry kitchen, and got used to stoves designed for the stir fry genre where only I simmered while the food burned to a cinder. Having sworn to stick to Frost Free, I had to re-learn how to defrost a fridge as hubby’d bought a temporary fridge before I joined him but it was all good fun. 

I do not know where we’ll be living next but I do hope it has a bath tub or, at the very least, ample space in the bathroom for a makeshift bath tub for, high on my wish list, is a nice leisurely soak in warm water. Tathastu!

Today, it’s not an idle dream for I can simply log on to Housing.com and find my dream abode! It's pleasant to visit, very non-interfering and really well organised. What I love the most is that it takes you to a map of the place. This makes it very convenient to locate what you need quickly. And they have customer care which is responsive, intelligent and quick on the uptake. 

I'm sure I'll find my bath tub equipped home for nowadays most flats are furnished. In our most recent move, I’m beginning to appreciate the superior virtues of a semi automatic washing machine. And a rather ancient but solid as gold 4 burner gas stove which far surpasses the one I used in the previous flat-a 4 burner from a well advertised company which never worked well and always cost a fortune for the least repair.

With each move, the stage is set anew. The décor changes as does our relationship. Like newlyweds we set out on shopping sprees to feather our new nest. It's really romantic! 

 As of now, we have a little garden where the occasional mongoose undulates across the boundary wall furtively as many diverse birds enchant us with their melodious prattle.

This time round we're gardeners! In the previous place we felt like hotel guests. Each new setting implies new role play. 

Who will we be tomorrow when the love of my life decides once again to start a new life? Where will we find ourselves? Just up and shifting home and hearth does have its ups and downs. Each move implies something lost in transit but, on the other hand, shifting is just like starting over!

Veerdhaval Chorage and Ketaki Chorage's SEF FITNESS Fitness Gym, Aundh, Pune.

Having been gym goers for quite a few years now, my husband and I soon located a convenient gym after shifting to Pune a couple of years back. If I remember right it was called Arch Wellness Studio. We chose it because it offered us what we were looking for-a mix and match of fitness activities. Mondays was Bollywood Masti, Tuesdays and Thursdays had Power Yoga, Wednesday was Zumba and Friday was for aerobics. We drifted to the machines now and then and, except for the Yoga days, it was more or less half an hour at the most that we spent huffing and puffing. But even that did us a world of good.

The Yoga was splendid thanks to Devvrat Lele. He is a truly amazing Yoga instructor. Not one class was the same as the other and, for a restless person like me, it fit the bill well. I never felt like looking at the time which just flew as he took us through well designed moves. Quite tart of tongue, this young man has extensive knowledge which he does not flaunt but which is obvious in the design of his sessions. Alas, he seems not to have joined as part of the team which has taken over from Arch Wellness.

What was a bit annoying in that gym, though, was that the dance classes would get pretty crowded and it was no fun bumping into everybody especially if, like me, you have two left feet.

We took a break after our membership expired as I was hoping to construct my own fitness schedule for us which I'd dreamed would be a mix of yoga, a sport and a dance. We have dumbbells at home and, at a pinch, we pump iron when we feel like.

But most of the nearby gyms did not have any flexible schedule on offer and we thus gravitated back to the old gym only to find it'd changed hands.

And so here we are, well entrenched in a regular schedule and getting fit as a pair of fiddles!

It's all thanks to the young couple who now run the gym: SEF FITNESS Fitness.

Ketaki Chorge, a Sports Nutritionist with more than 6 years experience and lecturer at K11 Fitness Academy, has given us a wonderful diet sheet and we're both enjoying eating healthy. It's really made a difference to my otherwise troublesome digestive system.

Young and beautiful, Ketaki Chorge directs the gym shoulder to shoulder with her dashing husband. Always smiling, she balances motherhood with this work most delightfully. Their two kids grace the gym with their antics and make things merry for all of us. A big hats off to this young lady for showing the world that you can have your cake and eat it too.

We're in expert hands with the Director, Dhaval Chorge's exercise schedule. Mr. Chorge, a certified fitness trainer from the “American Council on Exercise”(ACE) with an MBA, has excellent leadership and management skills and one can always see him tirelessly motivating us all. And with all that hectic work, he also finds the time to attend to his two toddlers most patiently. We must add this quality of being an Ace dad to his huge list of accomplishments!

Last Sunday, he gave a talk at the gym. We were very impressed with how he wed functionality into the wider scheme of gym fitness activities.

I should also mention that the gym has some fine trainers. You can see one of them in the pictures here, looking super cool. There's also a terribly cute pair of twins. All of them work very hard to personally attend to all of us and make sure we workout safely and adequately.

We still mostly have the same routine as last year-two days of yoga and 3 of some fun jumping around. While nothing can match Lele's classes, Yoga is always worthwhile and I've begun to appreciate the present instructor's efforts. I've actually stood on my head!

As for the Bolly Masti and such, it's better than last year though I hope we'll be having a somewhat more spacious studio soon. As the gym is new, the crowd is still thin but in no time the dance floor will get congested and then it's chaos.

The instructors for the fitness dancing are more considerate than in the previous gym where some of them were mainly dancing for their pleasure. This time round we've instructors who keep an eye on us and design the moves so we can follow better.

All in all, I'm happy to work out at Veerdhaval Chorage and Ketaki Chorage's SEF FITNESS Fitness Gym in Aundh and wish them all the very best!

Watch Japanese today!

We are all inexorably programmed to be who we are. Mostly, that who is in total harmony with the greater majority of who’s around it. Sometimes, it’s like it is with me: I tend to effortlessly alienate myself from all common experience pools around me. I do not do it on purpose. I feel so lonely and wish I could like all the things which all of you around me do so we can meet and talk of shared interests.

In that vein, I find myself liking cinema from countries like Korea and Japan. While the infatuation with Korean dramas and films lasted it was relatively alright. Quite a few Indians also enjoy K dramas and films. However, I had to go and fall in love with J doramas and Japanese films.

It’s not as bad as all that because I do have a handsome hunk (my husband) with whom to share the joys of watching Japanese. There is another silver lining to the cloud: I get to bond aseptically with other weirdoes on line: random bloggers and others who share such exclusive likes.

Thus, I have begun to collect lists of Japanese films to watch based on blog and other reviews on the Net. Last week I hit on gold when I stumbled upon 

HamsapSukebe. Based on this blogger’s recommendations I've bookmarked the following:

1.        The SnowWhite Murder Case (2014) 

2.       The Longest Night in Shanghai (2007)-see how the Japanese and the Chinese see each other, untainted by “White” visions. It’s very romantic.

3.       An Encyclopedia Of Unconventional Women (2009) A set of 6 excellent films. An absolute must see.

Yesterday I did some more niggling of the Net and shook down another excellent bunch of films.

It's Me, It's Me (2013)

Instant Numa

 

Memories of Matsuko 

The Witch of the West is Dead

and

Key Of Life (2012) 

 Admittedly, it will be a little more difficult for you to find these films and watch them. But it will have been worth it.

Japanese cinema has the gift of taking human experience and abstracting it so that there are moments of absolute Zen. 

I started with watching Korean before bedtime and now I've drifted to Japanese: it builds for a beautiful night's sleep and dreams.