Young, Single And Looking For A 1BHK
Good luck finding your dream flat if you're single.
He’s in his mid-30s, accomplished, wealthy, single and has come to Mumbai because of his job. When he went flat hunting in Mumbai, the rents amused him as they amuse someone for whom those stratospheric sums are little more than small change. What didn’t amuse him was the clause that every landlord insisted upon: unless they were family, members of the opposite sex were not allowed to stay overnight in the flat. “Mumbai, where bachelor pads are temples of celibacy,” he told me.
She’s in her mid-20s and a journalist. One evening, she made chicken stew to take to a friend’s party. At about 8.30pm, she stepped out of her apartment in Santa Cruz, carrying a pot of stew, when a drunk neighbour accosted her. Loudly, he told her that she had no business living in a polite housing society, that she shouldn’t think he was so stupid as to not know what’s going on with the hordes of men that come in and out of her flat at all times, that this was a respectable place and not the kind of building where women come home at strange hours of the night. Neighours could hear this man abusing the journalist and those who poked their heads out of their little apartments saw it happening before them. No one stepped out. This was in Mumbai, the city that prides itself for respecting women in general and working women in particular.
Hearing these stories, almost everyone shakes their head and laughs at his predicament. A few have observed, myopically, that if he’s gay then it shouldn’t bother him. Some didn’t find it funny but, in all seriousness, pointed out that he could pretend that the woman is a family member. “It might make him more discriminating if he needs to limit his ‘family members’ to a reasonable limit,” one person observed. However, whether or not they saw anything humorous in the clause that forbids random sleepovers, everyone was sympathetic and agreed that it was ridiculous for a landlord to behave like a dorm supervisor with their tenant.
Listening to her story, the first reaction is appalled surprise. Then in the ensuing conversation, these questions invariably surface:
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“Does she have late nights?”
“Is she ‘modern’?”
In case you were wondering, “modern” is a euphemism for “dresses provocatively, drinks, smokes and has sex”.
Despite the fact that her case is far more serious and menacing—what if he had attacked her physically as well?—most men and women I’ve spoken to are more cautious in extending their sympathetic support to her. The reason I haven’t mentioned either of their names is because I don’t want us distracted by specifics. It doesn’t matter what his name is, if he was in your school, in college with your brother, is friends with your friend etc.
Similarly, her relationship status, dress sense and working hours should be of no consequence. Knowing his identity is unlikely to change your response to his frustration at not being able to have women stay over. However, in her case, her answers are more likely to abet her case. If she has a boyfriend, then the immediate assumption is that the apartment is being used as a sex shack. If she is single, then she’s looking for a boyfriend who will help her turn the apartment into a sex shack.
She’s a journalist so the chances of her working late are extremely high but late nights, whether due to work or partying, make her morally objectionable. And yes, she’s modern, without the double quotes. That’s why she’s living on her own, financially independent and will, in all probability, go on to do fantastic things. On the premise that she finds a flat with a landlord who doesn’t mind a working woman as a tenant.
Finding a place to stay in Mumbai has been a challenge for decades. It isn’t just because of how expensive it is. Everyone who goes flat hunting ends up with a cache of stories that liven up conversations for months afterwards. If you show me a landlord who doesn’t rent to actors, I’ll raise you one who told me the last tenants “smoked so much that the airconditioner turned yellow” or introduce you to a broker who will tell you proudly, “There are no air hostesses and Muslims in this building.”
It doesn’t end with finding a flat. In the last few months, I’ve heard of an alarming number of stories in which tenants, all of them young and single, have been kicked out summarily. Almost every young woman journalist I know who rents in Mumbai has faced landlords who are disgruntled by her working hours. As if it wasn’t bad enough that such few salaries are in tune with the cost of living in Mumbai, the place that you get after all the haranguing and hunting is one that is less a home and more a ticking bomb.
Incidentally, the journalist I spoke about earlier told her landlord that she wanted to vacate the flat because she didn’t feel safe living there after that incident, especially since no action was taken against the drunkard. The landlord told her that she must have done something to provoke him and that if she provided the week’s rent, she could vacate the flat immediately. The journalist is now flat hunting. Hopefully, in a few weeks, I’ll meet her for a drink and she’ll add to my collection of flat hunting tales.
Deepanjana Pal is a journalist and the author of The Painter: A Life of Ravi Varma. She is currently the books editor at DNA.
Tags: Flats, Real Estate, The Definite ArticleComments (16)
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I came to Mumbai to work in an NGO. I was being paid less and finding a house which was safe for me as a girl, in my budget was supremely difficult. I shifted many houses in the span of 2 years and everytime I had to shift I added a few more grey hairs to my head. It was this pain that made me resolve that I would start something to help the bachelors. Its not a crime that we have given career a priority and are courageous enough to come on our own to these big cities. I am starting a company which will help bachelors find houses and roommates without paying any brokerage. Hope all you guys will support me and advertise about the company. The link to the website is http://www.grabhouse .com but the launch will happen around 30th May 2013. Till then please like the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Grabhouse?fref=ts Kindly share your experiences there so that we can reduce the woes of other people. Together, I believe, we can reduce the menace and have a peaceful life.
Hi all,
I am a film maker and we are making a documentary on the very same issue.
Thanks to the moral policing and judgemental views of many, about single women. Many of us have been subjected to unjustified questioning and emotional harassment. Many of us have to compromise on the quality of accommodation or pay very hefty price to procure one. Our options are limited and troubles are many. To address this issue on a serious note, we are making a documentary film that unravels the experience, sentiments, and struggle for finding a basic roof for oneself as a single independent woman in the city. If you have a story to tell, please do write into us at sana88ahmad@gmail.com. Thanks.
Just last month, I and my two friends went house-hunting in Andheri-Juhu zone..and my god! what a nightmare it has been..We finally settled on the 42nd house.. The major problem was “3 Bachelor Girls”, this is the term they used to refer to us!! My friends even fot to heaer stuff like, “pehle hi bata do, koi ulta seedha kaam to nahi karta na?” to which my friend had to say, “agar main bar girl oti to kya aapko natati??!”. Needless to say, we were kicked out! We finally got a house in 4 Bunglows..a beautiful apartment..the landlord is an absolute angel…there is no watchman..and yes, we party all the time!!
We deserved it after 41 futile searches!!
Their buildings. Their rules. Who are we to force them?
Just float around the concept of bachelors/alcoholics/non-veg only societies. Mumbai has so many bewdas that this concept is guaranteed to work.
Once bachelors, alcoholics and non-vegetarians have their own societies, they can prohibit married, non-drinkers and vegetarians from their buildings also.
Really stupid mentality in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in India. A couple of my friends who live in bandra have not had issues themselves (2 guys living in a single building) but they ve been harassed for having a dog. They were almost thrown out once cos of it, but thankfully theyre both lawyers so managed to find some legal thing to kick the secy ass. Sad that it has to come down to such things though.
This problem is not limited to Mumbai but any major city with sizeable amount of bachelors.. The bitter irony is that these a$$hole landlords / brokers dont realise that by harrasing bachelors , they are harassing their source of income..
Unfortunately IT sector ( where I am employed ) is the biggest contributor to this menace. A easy solution would have been decentralised development.. Why only Blore , Hyd , Gurgaon , Pune ? Why not tier 2 cities like Jaipur , Indore , ? This will also relieve the big cities of their infrastructure woes
House Hunting in Mumbai, always leaves me with new horrid experiences. Can totally relate to what people in the story went through..
My Horror story, 2 years ago.
http://mohitnanda.com/2010/01/bachelor-tenants-not-allowed/
It is crazy, nerve-wrecking & almost-inhuman.
It’s different for couples. The questions are as insulting, but different.
1. Where do you work? What is your annual income?
And a ‘much better than yours, mister broker/landlord’ in reply to the landlord sounding like an emigration officer – doesn’t help.
2. Last 3 years IT Documents, Employment letter from the Co.?
Again, how does one’s income matter to thy-holier-than-thou Landlord, since he is taking 11 month’s rent ALL in advance!!
3. What are your plans to start a family? Are you a Non-Vegetarian? Where does your family stay?
Why do you want to move to this city? Do you have friends who will come over or family who would visit?
Soon they would want to know what brand of undergarments one wears, and if that will be hung on display in the balcony after a wash – since that too might scandalize the ‘decent’ neighbors.
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At the same time, I have had great experiences with landlords/brokers.
In 2006 when I moved to Vile Parle in a multi-storey building owned by a Goan Catholic, bang in center in a Gujju neighborhood – His only concern was “When you party, please keep the volume low after 11pm. When you smoke, please make sure you don’t throw the buds down in the garden. And don’t waste water so that he can ensure we have it 24×7″
I wish there was ‘Like’ button for AP’s comment above.
Oh it’s ridiculous. I had the double worry of a self righteous room mate as well as landlord. As 2 single women, we had fewer problems finding a house compared to male friends (but this was more than 3 years back) And every time I visited my boyfriend I could see the leers of the watchmen and the disapproving stares of the residents.
House hunting in Mumbai can be challenging and frustrating but not that difficult also. I have learned a few tricks to get around this problem during my 6 years in Mumbai. I can’t say that they work universally, but they worked for me and many of my friends.
1. You usually get two types of options: those with one building and those with many buildings inside a complex.
Residents in the single-building complexes are usually better bonded. You will face more problems in such a place. The older the building, the better the original residents’ bonding and the more the hassle for you.
In multi-building complexes, less of a phack is given and the residents don’t know each other that well. The society administration too is not as tight.
2. Don’t waste time on apartments built around a single community, e.g. gujjus, marathis, punjabis, etc. You will feel constantly weighed under their sense of propriety.
3. Here’s how it works: a good broker keeps relations with good landlords.
You want a nice place in a respectable society whose landlord is a nice person who doesn’t finger your life as long as you play good by modern standards and don’t do something outrightly improper in his house (like have loud rave parties or bring hookers in). If you like the house, you want to stay there for a few years benefiting from the 5-10% escalation and not having to house-hunt every year.
You are less likely to find such a house-landlord combo if your broker is basically an asshole. Because good landlords don’t like to have relations with assholes. Use your best gut feeling to judge a broker after you spend a couple of days with him. The more the houses he shows you whose landlords he personally knows, the better. It means that he builds relationships and won’t screw you later by evicting you in favor of a higher-paying tenant.
Once you find a couple of such landlords, stick with them. Recommend them to your friends copiously and bring them business. Make sure they know that it was through your reference. The next time you want a house, they will sweat it out to your satisfaction.
Consequently, avoid asshole brokers if you are going to be in Mumbai for a sufficiently long time and unless you are a masochist.
The business of house leasing and sale is quite a free market enterprise, and so any unusual leaser/leasee relationship merely mirrors society and its biases as a whole. In as much as a housing society has the legal right to choose who they want living inside ( ideally, a vegetarian non-muslim family), I can’t seem to find fault in houseowners exercising their choices. One could argue that they need to be more openminded and question stereotypes. Well, I agree with that and good luck to you in your attempt to change deeply held beliefs.
Till that change takes place, you just need to go about accepting the fact that Mumbai is an extremely heterogeneous society and though in most cases we get along very well with one another, we draw our boundaries on who we would like to live with. And if we happen to be among those lucky ones who own land or property, we do our best to exercise our choice in the matter.
So, the only new thing I got out of this story is that Mumbai is still by and large a seller’s market. The question is, is this going to last forever?
I can’t agree more to this…having faced the problem myself. For landlords these days, every single is a careless alcoholic smoking sex maniac who will spoil the Hum Saath Saath Hain culture of their society.
My two friends and I had so much trouble looking for a flat a couple of years back. When we finally found a place, the watchmen would keep harassing us. We never met our landlord, although the agent kept promising us we would. And there were all these “messages” from the society committee which told us boys were not allowed, we couldn’t come in so late etc.. Again, these were delivered by the agent or by the security guard. Later we went and told the agent that we were paying good money as rent and this harassment had to stop and he told us – in a very oblique way – that if we bribed the watchmen, they would leave us alone. Of course, we never did, and so it remained a horrible experience.
Some builder needs to come up with the idea of one ‘singles only’ building in every area
I can completely empathize with the situation brought to light by Deepanjana here.
If you think this plight is suffered by single women only, then that’s just half the story. I have spent considerable time as a bachelor in Mumbai and have my set of horrors in finding a flat on rent and renewing it later as well.
For starters, if you are bachelors looking out for a house in an uptown or homely location, then you would be screened on the following grounds
: Whether you drink – as if I will confess yes even if i am one
: Whether you are a non vegetarian – might be you would cook humans at home
: Even to extent they ask if you have a girlfriend – their fears that she might deliver a baby at the neighbor’s doorstep
: And last but not the least , if you are a family. I mean how on earth can i be both – a bachelor and have a family too!
Even after we managed to spend an year at our pads, to renew the contract we had to get a permission letter signed by the society chairman who is a local goon serving as the good for nothing slogan raiser of a petty political party.
And these screening comes only after you pass the preliminary tests of not being a muslim, have a regular salary job and agree to open a Fixed deposit on their name in the pretext of security sum.