Yeh Tera Ghar, Yeh Mera Ghar

"Do Deewane Ek Shahar mein, Ashiana Dhoondte Hein...". I cannot help humming this song these days, hunting for a house on rent. It's like finding a good job or a good spouse or a good......... the list is endless.

The quest for a decent house led to the realisation that finding a house on rent is serious business. Shortlisting a house that suits all your requirements and when you get to know the rent, the same house turns into an ugly hole, with all possible excuses one can think of for not taking it on rent. How imaginative and creative we all become justifying and explaining to others why we didn't finalize the deal, just because we don't want to say, it's the RENT that led to the RANT.

The story doesn't end here. You have the dealers in between who try to convince you that the shack they are showing,in the name of a house, is a bangalow and paint a picture rosier than the rouge that women apply on their cheeks to look pretty. When the meeting is fixed between the landowner and the beggars....oops the would-be tenants, the landowner stares, glares, gazes, and peers at the interested party shamelessly, trying to figure out anything crooked or vicious in the by-now exhausted, overstressed minds of the poor house hounters. Then starts the trauma, torture, torment, whatever you choose to call it, of listening to the landlord's tales of how he was duped, made a fool of, by the previous tenants who broke God knows what not in his Pyaara Ghar. When that ordeal is over, the deal is finally struck, hands are shaken, the booty is given in the form of a cheque, one to the Big Don (the landlord) and one to the petty thieves (the dealers).

At last the tenant can muster some courage of calling the house his own. Not really, but the feeling is no less than that. Ghar Ek Sapna, turns into, Ghar Ek Apna. The shifting begins with great enthusiasm and little money. Once you are settled in, and start feeling at home, make friends and aquaintances with neighbours, the landlord starts smelling a rat. "These people are getting too comfortable here...what if they don't leave the house.........". Bas, the summons come via the same crooked, slimy dealer (sorry for my language, but only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches) to vacate the house within a month, starting from that day itself, with immediate effect.

The singing starts again..."Do Deewane Ek Shahar mein.....ashiana dhoodte hein,". Like nomads, the search begins, but unlike nomads you cannot settle anywhere you want without paying hefty rents. Lucky nomads.

So all you aspiring house hunters, and the seasoned ones, like me, keep the spirits high. Looking for a house on rent is an expedition and an experience in itself. A piece of advice from a person from the same fraternity- enjoy hunting for a house, cherish the moments to mull over in your old age, when you'll have nothing else to do but become nostalgic at anything or everything under the sun, and when you'll own a house of your OWN and maybe rent it out to other poor souls.