It was the last day of the lease contract and all of 7 friends who were living together at Classic Palace at Satellite were asked to leave the place. We were already looking for new place to live with the help of a real estate broker named Bharatbhai. I still remember his name and i met him incidentally after 9 years, few days back.
The new house where we were shifting was not much far, it was within 1 km. We shifted everything in first 2-3 hours of early morning. Hardly four-five bags and some furniture were left to be shifted. We got a call from one of our friend who was at that location. There was panic in his voice. When we rushed to the place, we found him struck in a lift, near the 3rd floor and some people were standing at the ground floor. They had switched off the lift intentionally. They said they have seen some girl and boy going in the house where we were going to stay. According to them they were clear that they don't want any nuisance like bachelor's coming in the flat and girls coming to meet them. The accusation was not only absurd, but gave the glimpse of their mindset. On the pretext of something which had never happened, as we were not having any girlfriend at that time, we were being asked to leave that place. We argued as we had not done anything wrong, but all failed to change their decision. Finally, we were forced to leave that place and Bharat Bhai meantime fixed new house for us, which was hardly at stone throw distance.
But, here again as soon as we had completed shifting our stuffs, the neighbor came to us and said, "I am Dr and as i know that you all are bachelors, i can't allow you to stay here. We told him that we have legally signed the contract to rent that place. He was adamant. He was the secretary of the society. No one came to our help. We had been moving things throughout the day. We were physically and mentally very exhausted. Whatever happened at the first location was probably not enough and the Dr made the matter worst. I pleaded him a lot and even said that we all are like your children and we are just here to pursue MBA from ICFAI. There was no reason to do any harm to that man. To utter disgust of all of us, that man was not ready to agree. Bharatbhai was of no use in such matter. He was ignored like anything.
Finally, at around 9pm we moved back. Back to Pavillion!
The old owner had heard the complete story and as he knew us well from last 9 months, he asked us to come back for another 9 months.
Till such thing happened, we never ever though that Ahmedabadi can be so unfriendly to bachelors who are from out of state. This thing has happened with many others. This should not happen.
Obviously this can be debated for many hours. But, i am just stating what happened with us on that unfortunate day. There are other incidents which suggest that bachelors are not invited to rent, unless broker finds some secluded house or he is a politically strong man.
I have read similar thing happening with others in TOI and i could relate my story. I hope the agony we had to go through don't get repeated. Ahmedabad is not Thakre's Mumbai and should never be.
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2 comments:
I can totally relate to this story Vishal. I have lived a bachelor's life outside home for more than a decade. The fact that we come from respectable families and are now leading respectable lives is a proof to how wrong a series of landlords and society secretaries have been. I swear when I get a chance to be a landlord, I shall first prefer young boys as tenants.
This reminds me of nagpur days...and our broker kitty singh...Bisu ..you will rem him..
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