I’d no idea that finding a place to stay would be so difficult in Delhi,” Ramesh said gloomily, as he once again asked his employer for some extra time off. He had brought his wife, mother and two children from their village in Kumaon recently, but had been unable to find a place to stay. “The schools in my village are just not good enough, so we decided to bring the children here to study. But I’d not realised that in this crazy city, getting a decent room at a decent price would be so difficult!” he said. It wasn’t that his needs were unrealistic. “We’re a family of five, all I wanted was a clean room with a bathroom,” he said, “I thought that for a monthly rent of about Rs 2,500, I’d be able to find something suitable.” Ramesh got his first shock when he went house-hunting in the unauthorised settlement near Hauz Khas Village.
“It was stinking, filthy and inundated with water,” he said, “even the stray dogs there looked sick!” The floor of the tiny room he was shown was slippery with seepage. And although its rental was Rs 2,500, it had a shared bathroom. “I thought of my little cottage in the village, flowers and peach trees nearby,” he sighed, “and rejected it.” Next he went to Madangir. “The rooms were reasonable, but the place was far from everywhere. My wife wouldn’t have been able to get a good job there and God knows we needed her supplementary income,” he said. So Madangir fell through. He decided to stick to areas closer to South Delhi colonies. “Everyday, I’d take time off and look at rooms in Yusuf Sarai, Green Park, Khirki Village and more… but found that either one settled for a room not even fit for animals, or one raised one’s budget. And I could do neither!” he said.
A friend suggested he contacted a Bihari acquaintance in Garhi. Ramesh went. “Don’t take a room,” the acquaintance advised, “take just a bed and send your family home to the village! That’s what many of us do here.” He explained that sharing a room (watchmen and guards made the best roommates for obvious reasons, he said) was the best way to minimise expenses. Ramesh was desperate enough to see the rooms in question and discovered they had up to 10 rickety, narrow bunks all the way to the low ceiling. “Aren’t they suffocating?” he asked. The friend shrugged: “They’re not luxurious,” he agreed, “but think of the money you’ll save to send home!” he said.
Back to square one, Ramesh went house-hunting in Arjun Nagar, Humayunpur and places further South on the metro line. “The further I went, the more I could get for my money…but how would my family travel from such a distance?” he agonised.
By now, the relatives they were staying with were making it loud and clear that they’d overstayed their welcome. Pushed into a corner, he reluctantly decided to send his family back to the village. “My six-year-old son is very bright, and I really wanted him to study in Delhi. And I could have accessed good medical facilities for my aging mother too,” he said sadly, “but just didn’t realise how difficult it is for migrants to live here…”
Now Ramesh has a job as a live-in cook (“although they’ve given me a room, my employers weren’t willing to let me have my family stay,” he said sadly). He sends most of his salary to the family, but is still unhappy. “I’d hoped for them to enjoy the opportunities Delhi offered, but that was before it showed me what an inhospitable city it is,” he said.