Analogikal

I am leaving the place i called home for three years. The beautiful penthouse perched on top of a dust filled apartment building in a slow and silent neighborhood. With the dilapidated wood work and the smell of curry masala that rises every morning, this place has a charm like none other. But more than anything else, this place had been the setting for countless tomfoolery! The time had come to say goodbye to the place i called home. Bah! This is all too dramatic. More than the place i had started missing the people who made it what it was.

So I set out on a house hunt. My confidence was over the moon considering the tenant profile i boasted off! Non-drinker, Non-smoker, good stable job etc. etc. that my narcissist self, had jotted down on the yellow pad in my head. I figured that the red carpets would be rolled out and the duplexes would be wide open! Rental agreements would shower from the heavens and deposits shall be a thing of the past.

But alas! House hunting isn’t quite like swiping right on tinder. Which I soon realized. First you create a million profiles on multi-million websites which offer to find the “House of your dreams”. Just that the house of your dreams is meant for someone with a prettier pay package. Then there is the flooding of e-mail inbox and spam calls offering anything from properties for “Dirt cheap” to “Best deal of your life you will never make because it is a total hoax”.

You survive all of this and find some decent places online, which can be inhabited, without the fear of contracting multiple diseases or not having to live in the constant fear of being mugged or molested or both, you step into the net and nexus of the real estate agents. They will pick you up and show you a whole bunch of places between Mount doom of Mordor and the Gateway to Hell of Turkmenistan. They will convince you, that’s the best you can get and you slowly start accepting the reality that you are not good enough. Much like the quintessential nosy aunt/family friend who convinces you to agree to a really shitty arranged marriage proposal because she clearly has an ulterior motive.

It was not just the agents and the websites. There was something clearly wrong with me. To which I was completely blind. Here is what i didn’t see on my profile. I’m single, I’m a Muslim, I work late nights, I travel a lot etc. Well that’s not a problem right? WRONG!

Welcome to house hunting in Bangalore. I shall be your guide. Here is a bunch of things i said and what prospective landlords possibly heard.

Me: I am not married. I am still a bachelor. But my parents would be visiting me often.

What they hear: The whole family story is bull shit. I’ll be using your place for hosting drug infused orgies and shooting pornos

Me: I work late night shift

What they hear: I work at a call center and make very little or no money. Also don’t forget that this is a sure sign of hosting orgies.

Me: My name is Ramees Mohammed

What they hear: I am a secret operative of ISIS, LeT, ISI, Salman Khan, and Nawazuddeen Siddiqui. I will use your place for making pipe bombs and sacrificing goats when i am not hosting orgies or making pornos.

Me: I am from Kerala

What they hear: I am a Madrasi. I will be bathing in coconut oil while frying fish in that same coconut oil which i will later on feed to the participants of orgies.

In short it has been as easy as selling Nirvana t-shirts to a hipster. But the best of the moments come when the real estate agents take you house hunting. They will take you to what they describe as “Absolute most amazing apartment ever in the history of apartments. EVER!”. This usually turns out to be where Norman Bates co-wrote “The Shining” with Alfred Hitchcock. There has been a lot of dialogue on tolerance in this country and I am not going to join that bandwagon. Even though I have been marginalized based on religion, community and job profile and I would like to consider those people to be illiterate mule brains, I will not choose to bad mouth them. No matter how irrational, paranoid, pea-brained, blood-sucking or shamelessly obnoxious they are I will not resort to name calling. Because I have principles and values, which are up for sale/rent for a commission/brokerage free apartment at this point in time. Common Floor/Housing.com, if you are listening, you can feature your ad and a testimony here for said apartment details.

I am still optimistic. With all the glaring flaws as a tenant i still wish to rent an apartment which is not the pet cemetery. If any of you guys who are reading this is a landlord or anyone who knows a landlord, i swear to god, or not, depending on your religious inclinations, i won’t host drug infused orgies. Not very often at least.