The rescue operation!

A quiet Wednesday morning, breakfast time for Dr. A (7:15am), as i take the slices of wheat bread from the toaster to the dining table, "wong wong wong" goes the lift alarm. "Oh no, not again!" So, i just throw the slices onto his plate and rush outdoors yelling for the security, on the way i noticed the diplay was stuck at 7 (th floor). Remember its 7:15am in the morning, the sleepy jugheads come and switch off the lift immediately not even noticing where the lift was stuck. I had to tell them it was on the 7th floor! It was school time and i could only hear some kid's voices in the lift. I was trying to tell them, men are there and would rescue them soon, but i was totally unaudible to them. Few other parents' way back home after leaving their kids on their respective school buses stopped by our block - thanks to mobile phones, understanding the situation, they started calling for contacts who-so-ever they had on their phone, Johnson's lifts, House Keeping supervisor etc . All calls in vain, since none of them had the keys - some Mr. Ashok had them and he was to come to the site only at 9am. I started calling all the CRM folks and woke them all up! I bet, none of these men(electrician, security et all) on site can handle a crisis situation - no drills were conducted and they were totally illeterate about this whole lift thing and how to go about it! Dr. A with an other security fellow, who seemed 'promisingly' awake and a bit healthy & fit, rushed to the 7th floor, thanks to A's gymming efforts - he could pull apart the lift door open/off and found an old lady with her daughter-in-law and her 2 (ready to school) grand children. They almost had a panic attack. They pulled them out somehow and we women downstairs for once put off our cell phones and heaved a sigh of relief @ 7:50am.

The kids missed their school bus, the old lady started blabbering - inspite of our earlier introductions, she had forgotten who A was and started questions like" Neenga tamil-a ? Inga daan irukkela, nalla vela vandel, nalaiku engalapathi paper-la vandurukumnu nenaichen..blah blah...". We can imagine her plight, at her age, she isnt ready for all these adventures.

Guess what - this Johnson's lift installed here, has no intercom and the emergency alarm rings only in the ground floor of that block - there's absolutely no means of contacting the security directly since there's no phone/intercom in the lift. No emergency mobile number or electrician's number or the lift operator's number is stuck inside.

So, moral of the story - dont buy Sobha homes! If at all you get to buy one, get them on the ground, 1st or 2nd or even 3rd where you can survive without a lift, else, be ready for adventures everyday! I really felt like waking up Menon and his wife Sobha for delivering such houses - i really do not know - how on earth does Narayana Murthy trust Sobha developers for all of his Infy campuses. I know the question on minds your now - then why did we choose Sobha - ha ha, thats the whole point, we trusted them by hearing to what people said in Bangalore as we moved here. This being our first home, as said earlier we didnt know much about the dos and donts of real estate here and chose Sobha since he seemed to the best of the worst around - mistakes do happen - we have learnt a lot - so, our 2nd one will definitely not be from these guys!