There’s been mayhem, stress, upsets and danger in the hunt for a flat. It’s been a better drama than an Eastenders Christmas Omnibus with more memorable storylines. But perhaps that’s an easy accomplishment.
N & I decided to share a flat as we’d shared a room for four weeks through the training and orientation period. No mean feat given that rooms were maybe 10 x 10 feet with a small en-suite bathroom. Sharing was a sensible move as one bed flats in Delhi are hard to come by and with an allowance of 8,000 rupees each per month (about £106 GBP) this doesn’t get you much here.
Potential VSOers should not be put off. Countries vary and even in India the situation of fellow volunteers in other parts of India are completely different. Delhi just happens to be more difficult. Much more difficult. We’d decided to look around ourselves for various reasons but in Delhi two Western women usually means an inflation of the rental price by about a third.
We went through many brokers. We’ve seen flats that felt like terrorist cells. We’ve been called so many times by one broker it was nearly harassment. Another we could not communicate with, our Hindi being so limited at this stage. One admitted he struggled finding anything in our price range as bigger flats were built for families who in Indian culture have less privacy. Two single Westerners like having doors on the bedrooms and not having to walk through them to get to the main bathroom. Flats just weren’t built for us.
But finally about a week into the search we found a place. A week sounds like nothing in Western time but you don’t see pictures or get to read blurb on a property. You get in an auto and go to see the place. We’d visited 16 in a week, 10 in the first weekend alone. ‘The Taj’ as we named her was the one. On our second visit we were invited to have chai with the landlord and his son. We chatted, were told we would be treated like his daughters and we negotiated a price. Two days later we hadn’t sorted out the finer details between our NGOs, VSO and us. The Taj went to someone else. So much for being family. Gutted we had to haul ourselves around Delhi once more.
We got into situations we shouldn’t have for the sake of getting somewhere quickly. Neither of us wanted to carry on living in hostels having been in them for four weeks. We got on the back of brokers’ motorbikes without helmets as we were repeatedly told, ‘another flat is around the corner, Madam’. Calling brokers from the internet and having to meet them at properties. The worst situation was the day of ‘broker wars’. One day a younger broker had shown us two flats. Neither suitable he offered to show us more the next day. He turned up with a friend in a car who thought he was Mr. Smooth. N got offered an invite to a Hindi wedding and a jacuzzi. The next day they repeatedly called us. We were with another broker and they showed up to try and get us to see the same flat. Whilst sitting in our broker’s car, we saw the younger brokers drive by with their tinted windows. They returned and Mr. Smooth got out. All pointed white leather shoes and black velvet jacket, on the pull. I cringed thinking an argument was about to occur. Whose patch were we on anyway? Our older broker got out shook their hands and introduced himself. We had to excuse ourselves and lied that we were about to sign a deal. All because we were Western women and the young broker had obviously got his friend along for some fun.
Contrary to the Hollywood stereotype that has permeated some of India, we’re not easy. We didn’t want to go to a club, just a flat. After all the drama, there’s no Eastenders ending thankfully. We got lucky and found a flat. We had more drama and nearly lost this one too. Eventually we got the deal done and moved in today. It’s Christmas Eve and after two weeks of nightmare stress; it’s been the best Christmas present I could have had this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment