The business of Home Hunting in Chennai

For the last week, my husband and I have split hairs in an exercise we should have ideally enjoyed. It has drained us out in a way though.

At the moment, as I mentioned in my previous post, we live in a matchbox of a house. It's not its area that bothers me, but the callousness with which the builder has put boxes called the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen together to give it the name - 2BHK.

It also bothers me, that of all the fixtures and fittings, the wash-basin tap in the bathroom leaks enough to fill up my 20 liters' bucket in the day. As for the kitchen sink that occupies a third of the kitchen work table, my maid has a tough time washing utensils. The pipe underneath it cannot take water gushing down. It simply gives way. As a result, that water spills on to the kitchen floor. Obviously, the home owner gave no thought to the plumbing aspect of it!

My workstation is a room that thankfully has breeze from the ocean flowing in. At times that there is no breeze, I can switch the fan on. For five minutes. The fan will stop rotating beyond that.

The all magical solution to our problems at the moment is about finding a better rental home to live in, so that we waste no time in the fixtures and fittings mess, and get on with other important things in life.

The house hunt bit has thrown up some interesting revelations about Chennai and houses here, in the last week.

Rental homes are up for grabs and move `faster than hot cakes', as an acquaintance put it. With the economic slowdown slowing down and IT firms on a recruiting spree, the settlers are here, and grabbing anything in the name of four walls that comes their way. Most of this workforce looks like bachelors. And that, has translated into an illogical hike up of rents in the suburb and nearby ones that I live in. These suburbs, are the closest to the IT Corridor that lies outside of the city limits.

Our trouble. We look for a home with a deposit anything under 13k, only to discover things amusing about how these home owners indulge in daylight looting! It is exactly what happened in Bangalore through the IT boom.

A home owner my husband contacted, spoke with ease about how he was choosy with his prospective tenants. ``I need people of my wavelength and am happy you match it,'' he said. The points mentioned in the internet ad were good too - accessibility to bus terminus, beach, shops and hospitals...the predictable sale punchlines.

A roller-coaster ride through the neighbouring suburb later, we discovered the directions pointed to a place hardly a few streets away from our current home. That was not what made us laugh.

Something eerie about the building we stared at, while the woman who had to walk us through the flat came by. The gate opposite that independent house was shut and so were the windows. There were inmates within but we had no clue who they were. Our guide led us through the compound's edge, into the two feet wide backyard that traditionally housed the toilets and wash area of that building. There, through a staircase, we were led into a 1 BHK that this clever guy passed off as a 2BHK.

I must admit the kitchen was `awesome' as my husband put it. I quickly opened another door to look into the wash area-cum-balcony. It opened into a common stairway, the door of another home staring at me on the face. We heard girly giggles and chatter from that room. What could this quite be?

``It must be a hostel,'' my hubby concluded. He was scared outright. We hastened out. On our way out, my husband looked at a notice pasted on the door at the entrance, that proved him right. Women's hostel!

``I don't want to get accused of leching at women,'' he panicked, and we rode away in hurry. To think of, the guy did not hesitate one bit in converting one of those hostel portions into a rent-worthy flat, instead of making the life of other inmates more comfortable!

We have still not been lucky on the home hunt after that, but discovered, that if you do not want to pay up a princely one month rent to the broker, you could try local tailors and watchmen who man apartments. They double up as part-time brokers, because they, after all, are in the know about vacant apartments more than neighbours.