Real(i)ty Check!

In the last six months, I have had the most trying time to find a job. But what I didn’t know was finding a job was a cakewalk compared to the nearly impossible task of finding a house for rent in Mumbai: by house, I mean a decent house with decent furnishing in a decent area within a decent budget. Thanks to recession, I had the luxury of a perfect house at a very reasonable rent, and since the PPO already took care of a job, I kind of enjoyed the benefits of recession, as selfish as it may sound.

But this year, real estate rates reached its peak which made it impossible to enjoy the same lifestyle in the same budget as last year. To top it all, my loser flatmate and friend decided to get married (more on it later) ruining our perfect lives. So while she shelled out an obscene amount of money to enjoy marital bliss, I was also forced to do the same, sans marital bliss, simply because I couldn’t imagine myself living with a random girl after I was so used to living with one of my best friends.

Hence began my house hunting spree immediately after my job hunting spree. So placement consultants were replaced by brokers and real estate agents, my “sophisticated and accented” angrezi was replaced by broken Hindi, and negotiations for CTC were replaced by negotiations for rent and deposit: the rest remained the same. After two months of diligently looking through ads on the net, frantic phone calls (my phone bill crossed the one grand mark for the first time), bike rides with strange men (brokers) at odd hours and contributing to the pockets of auto drivers, finally I can sit back and relax, as I smile to myself thinking about my own little apartment, all to myself, not too far from work, not too expensive, and not too obnoxious. Yes, if you have managed to find a satisfactory house in Mumbai, you have reasons to feel proud, in fact more proud than cracking an interview in a multinational.

I made a new beginning last year, I am about to make another this year. I can only hope this turns out better than the last one!