Shifting my house

4th Floor, Datchinamurthy Apartments has almost become a landmark in Chennai and most of the boys from PEC who started their career in Chennai would have made their first day to work from this place. To the knowledge of the owner of this 'such-a-big-house', we were five of us staying, but in reality the number was twelve at one point of time.

An incident to recount :
An interesting character was this gentleman who is the 'caretaker' of this apartment, 'fondly' referred to by us as 'third floor Meesaikaar'. One day during those crowded times; all of us (around 10?) were ready to leave to office. First a group of four took the lift to ground and then the next four. On the third trip me and another guy took the lift and as we were moving down we saw this man waiting at the third floor. We opened the door for him, but he turned back with irritation and took to the stairs. Stupid, we thought and continued to the ground floor. As we were just crossing the gate I heard his voice calling from back.

Mr.M: Excuse me
Me : Yeah?
Mr.M: How many of you are staying in the fourth floor?
Me : Five
Mr.M: FIVE?
Me : Actually we are six now. One of them is moving out in a couple of days.
Mr.M: But the house owner told me you are only five going to stay here.
Me : Yeah, we are only five staying in this house. (I wouldn't know why he was so irritated until the evening that day)
He said a dry O.K and turned back with a big frown.

I came to know in the evening that He had been waiting for the lift all the while when the group of ten had gone down and on the top of it I tried to convince him that we were just five. Poor man!

when I moved in to this house, there were rumors about this ghost that dwells in there; The incidents of doors locking up themselves and things disappearing from the house, the old watchman and the ambiance that mimicked the 'Booth' story - we even named this ghost: Kalyani! Crazy people we had been...

It's a Very comfortable house but the land is dry underneath and we haven't had regular supply of water for the last 12 months. We did get water for 20-mins a day basis. It did not matter much actually, but when the house owner asked for an increase in rent, we took note of all the problems and decided to look for another house. And now we are shifting to Vadapalani, to a place very near to office. We would miss the 6.5, the routine of filling water in the barrels, the ghost which steals things that went missing and the spacious hall... We would definitely miss the fourth floor of No.19, Datchinamurthy apartments..