Day 7

Saturday. My first day of independent freedom in Bangalore. I decided to spend it with my cousin Sushil and caught the G-2 bus to Adugodi. Sushil’s brother Sunil will be moving to Bangalore with his wife in July so the two of us decided to go house hunting for them. The first inkling that I had that this wouldn’t be like house hunting in America was our search for something called an AdMag which had all the listings of houses. They weren’t listed online and these magazines weren’t sold in any particular store – not that India is a land of chain stores anyway, every shop here is unique and most probably owned by a local family. I’ve seen three big chains around here which are the Big Bazaar, Corner House Ice Cream Shoppes, and McDonald’s.     

After finding the AdMag in a random shop, we paged through to find listings in Marathalli (this is closer to a borough). After calling the few places that had listings and turning up empty-handed we started walking along the main road to find any apartment complexes that had sprung up along the way. Two complexes later I had learned that the two most important things to look for in an Indian apartment are 24x7 security and back-up power generators for when government-run power shuts off; a pretty regular occurrence, especially at night. I overheard an entire conversation waiting in line at a shop about how when the power shuts off, it’s the lack of noise rather than the lack of  a fan that kept one man up at night.    

The next issue of relevance is price. Your price range will obviously be up to you but things you have to look out for are how much of an advance you have to give (usually about ten month’s worth), and how much the brokerage is (the amount you have to pay the “realtor” or guy in charge of selling the house – usually about 10%).

After those two complexes we met up with my cousin’s friend and had a great Punjabi lunch and set back out on the hunt. At the end of the day we took a bus back to Adugodi where we went to Forum Mall – the second biggest one in Bangalore. This mall was arguably nicer than any mall I’ve been to in America and had stores for anything you could possible want. The difference in the type of people in the mall as compared to the people I had seen outside the mall was striking and a little jarring to say the least. The class distinction was obvious and I felt that the majority of people shopping in that mall would be more at home in a New York city penthouse rather than any  residence in Bangalore. With the immense size of this city though, I’m sure that I just haven’t seen the posh areas yet. 

We ate at Corner House Shoppes (a specialty ice cream parlor chain) that night and I was once again amazed at how much great food could be found in Bangalore. Variety is this city and India’s greatest asset and food is the place where it manifests itself most effectively. If you want to find a particular kind of food in Bangalore, you will. Furthermore you’ll find another kind of food which you never knew existed and is absolutely delectable.