Days at Vista Magnolia

Most remarkable days of my stay at USC were perhaps from Vista Magnolia on 1207 and 1/2, 27th and Magnolia, about 1o minutes from USC. Abhimanyu, Debo, Narayanan and me moved in 2001. Later the same place also housed Mahindra, Girish, Siddhu and Amit Jain. One thing was common to all occupants, every one rocked!!!

But it was not just the occupants of 1207 and 1/2 that made living here so much fun - it was the extended family comprising all the neighboring houses. It was like a small indian joint family community.

The two neighboring houses 1207 and 1209 housed over the years a number of girls - Deepa, Meeta, Prachi, Arati, Manisha, Meghana, Shreemoyee, Rupal, Ramya, Shweta, Seema, Pranjali, Sameera ... each one of them a ton of fun to be around.

Every other day we used have common potluk dinners and a party once a month.
We just needed an excuse for a party - every indian festival was celebrated.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable times were when each saturday mornings and evenings all of us would sit around in the front proch having tea, coffee etc and just chat for hours. The houses were so close that we could even hear each other singing in the bathrooms and smell the food being cooked in the other houses. In fact we could not only communicate through each others open windows acoustically, we even had ethernet cables running into each others houses.
Each time something went wrong with the connection deepa would tell me through her window and I would reset the router in my house!!

Our houses also being very large in size housed several newcomers to USC from India until they found accomodation - better known as temp-accos.

That' s seema, Deepa's roomate popping out of the window to say hi. I have never seen Seema without a happy smile during my entire stay. We had crossword sessions each evening, me, seema and sandeep. Solving the crossword together was enormous fun.

Ofcourse with so many people there would be atleast one birthday a month. These would be deemed surprise birthday parties but most often the birthday boy/girl would expect it. Each one of us would cook something and there would ofcourse be a cake. The compulsory cake application ritual followed by bumps were never missed. There you can see arati nagarkar being caked.

With almost everyone cooking the amount of delicious food would be mind boggling. It would often last the entire next day for all the residents.
Then there would be games - like dumb charades followed by dancing especially if Girish and/or Manasi were around.

That smily face is Nara in front of the computer - my roomate - perhaps the sweetest guy I have met - too good to be true actually. He never complained no matter what I did - short of burning down the house.

A regular feature on several sundays was to go to the malibu temple. All of us would in our cars - mine and Nara drive up to the Malibu temple. Pray and then stop by the beach on the way back. Come back to have lunch together. Those were fun sundays.

Thats the ever enthusiastic pranjali sitting on my car seat which due to purely sentimental reasons had occupied a place in my heart. She had a new fun story to tell every day.

Thats shweta another girl who loves to have fun and laugh all the time. There was a piano in their house (already came with the house) and we started to dabble with it. Eventually, Nara now plays the Piano!! How many apartments these days come with a Piano?

Each time it rained, eveything would smell fresh and look bright. I loved sitting on the steps and watching the rain. I still remember all of us had lunch on the steps watching the rain. Each time it rained we used to make hot pakodas!!! Then all of us woudl sit and eat them chatting and watching the rain. Can you beat that? After the rain there would several tens of snails marching across the path - there are two. I loved to check inter-snail interaction by putting them close to each other and see what they do. Well they simply passed by, sometimes over each other.

Another thing I loved about the place was its variety if flowers in the compl. My mom being a painter, when she visited, loved them too. Aren't they beautiful.

Everything has to end.... alas... vista was bought over by a new management, which I guess wanted to increase rents and we were all coerced to leave. They offered us money if we left before a certain date, took away washers and dryers... stopped doing maintenance etc. While initially we resisted, soon enough we each figured we could each use the money and move out to other apartments - why live in a place where the landlord dosen't want you in there. It was time to explore new places. Each of us signed that we were willfully leaving the place and got our checks and left the place.

While it lasted, everyday was a fun day filled with laughter. These four years were the best days of my life at USC. It is only because of you that I manaed to complete my PhD and managed to maintain my sanity. I miss those days and all of you.