Nobody had really stayed in our house in Santiniketan before I relocated here from Mumbai. It was a holiday home for family and friends. For the time when we chose not to holiday or probably contribute towards its upkeep, my parents would rent out a portion of the house in order to keep it from wearing a desolate look.
Since the Visva Bharati University traditionally attracted many foreign students, most house owners preferred these finite visa holders. So did my parents. I do recollect young German or Korean or Japanese students asking my mother whether it would be possible to get a bed or a chair with the apartment and my mother saying a stern “no”. Renting completely barren apartments was the tradition in Santiniketan.
Little had I realised then that someday I would be in a predicament the same as that of those students. Having moved to Santiniketan to set up a crafts shop and a restaurant, we have had to rent four apartments to house retailing and production.
When we began by renting two houses, we called in our electrician and plumber to fix whatever needed to be fixed. They came and grinned with approval. Didn’t quite get what the grin meant till our plumber asked, “So didi, have you bought the houses?” “Good heavens, no,” I said, alarmed to think that we wore the Mumbai moneyed look, “We have rented them.”
He looked a trifle sheepish as he explained that since we were getting overhead water tanks put in, the wiring fixed, the sanitary fittings changed, he assumed we were the owners.
Time has not stood completely still. There have been some changes since my mother’s time. While renting was done completely on faith earlier, house owners now draft rent agreements on stamp paper. It is, of course, another matter that small-town lawyers who draft them often end up with contradictory paragraphs.
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And in the past, most houses had what were called “caretakers”, who stayed in the house, ran around to get utilities fixed when the need arose and generally made the tenants’ stay comfortable. With time, as caretakers have become both scarce and expensive, house owners have decided to combine the two roles: of the caretaker and the tenant. Now the tenant basically pays monthly rent to take care of a house for an absentee owner!
- Please ensure that you engage someone to sleep over at night, as the house would be completely unattended at night.
- I hope at least one light will be left on at night.
- Do not forget to switch on the pump daily because if air gets into the water pipe, we will have a real problem.
- The electricity meter is inside, so someone will have to be around when the meter-reader arrives.
- I have complained to the electricity board about my faulty meter, please follow up the matter with the office.
These are only a few instructions that owners leave us with before they leave for Kolkata after brief visits. But appreciating the difficulties of remote overseeing of property, we are normally sympathetic. We pride ourselves in taking care of our rented properties and feel these instructions also keep our interests in mind.
But recently, I thought I had too many instructions. One of the houses we occupy had a problem with the water pump. The plumber was visiting often to set it right and had to work on the pipe that ran to the house from the well. The landlady had covered the well with a section of a torn mosquito net. “Please ensure he puts the net back,” she said, “It was a very expensive net”!