We’d like to dedicate this to you and me – the people who live in fancy, tiny houses. You know, the kind that is less fancy, much tiny. With landlords and their malevolent eyes – made much more malevolent at the beginning of a month when you know your door must rattle but your purse, unfortunately, doesn’t. With that maid who never shows and that occasional pigeon who (bless her soul) thinks your house is candy.
Living on rent in the big, bad city ain’t funny. We’ve spoken to/heard of/read about innumerable would-be-tenants turned away daily for issues of race, religion (and dare we forget, gender?). But sometimes, just sometimes, dear people who live in fancy, tiny houses (less fancy, much tiny) – you can make it funny. The troubles you and I face just become – for lack of a better word – ridiculously, outrageously funny.
So, for a moment peeps, forget the house you didn’t get because you had a boyfriend or weren’t married or a vegetarian. Think instead about the faucet that didn’t turn and the roof that almost fell on your head. About the monkey that opened your fridge and the landlord who never figured out what your job was for a year.
Because into every tenant’s house, dear-person-who-lives-in-a-fancy-tiny-house, a little bizarre must fall.
Take a look at our list and see if you fit into any of these?
The Bua Who Stares
Yours truly has quite the bua of a problem. My roommate and I currently live in a place that’s ‘all that’ (it’s a vast improvement over our last where we lived on a roof and were occasionally visited by monkeys and dogs). However, we do have that bua. This dear old lady (our landlord’s sister who lives a floor above) finds the two of us entertaining enough to devote whole hours of nothingness to just stare at us. At what we’re wearing. At when we leave. Enter. Leave. Slam door in faces. Repeat.
She also gives our guests a once-over when they enter or exit our place – on certain occasions, having had truly delightful staring contests. We’re happy to note our guests always win.
“You’re Too Tall”
This one’s truly bizarre. A 29-year-old colleague, Namita, tells this really strange tale of how she was turned away from a house in Bandra for being – wait for it – too tall. “I was told that my height would attract ‘trouble’,” she grimaces. Tall order, Bandra.
The Landlord and the Dishwasher
Delhi-based Shoumini did much of her post graduation in Ahmedabad. What she didn’t sign up for, though, was the jack-in-box-landlord. “Our landlord had an extra key,” she explains, still scratching her head in bewilderment at the story. “So he’d often make use of it. And by ‘making use’, I mean he’d come in anytime he wished to, even when we were asleep.” The story doesn’t end there. “He would walk around our room while we were fast asleep and calmly fold our clothes if he saw them lying around. Sometimes he’d wash our dishes too if there was a mess in the kitchen. If we ever woke up and asked him what he was doing, he’d just pronounce solemnly he hated a mess!”
The Landlady and the Peeping Tom
Amrita Karmakar, now working in Bombay, has many a hilarious tale to tell – products of a cosmopolitan life in many an Indian city. In one of her living situations in Bombay, she still recoils in horror at the memory of the landlady’s ‘young baby’ son – aged 32.
“The landlady lived separately – thank God – but her son’s only job seemed to be to ‘take care’ of the girls in the flat. He’d drop in unannounced, ask after ill health, stare at hanging lingerie, find out if we have BFs, find out if we have better looking BFFs… and so on. Once when we had a kleptomaniac living with us who was pinching our stuff, ‘young baby’ son insisted he instill a spycam inside our apartment to keep a ‘safe’ watch over us.”
Needless to say, Amrita and her gang left skid marks.
So there you have it, dear would-be-tenant/ person-who-lives-in-a-fancy-tiny-house. If you thought you had it bad, you know now you are in much-esteemed company.
As my friend rather sagely tells me (he lives with his parents), “when you’re living on your own, you can never have it all.” Possibly. But you do at least, have the bizarre.
We’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg, we know – so why don’t you share your own house-of-horrors story with us in the comments section below?
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