“Ek Akela Is Shehar Mein
Raat Mein Aur Dopahar Mein
Aabodaana Dhoondta Hai
Aashiyana Dhoondta Hai”
(A single, solitary man seeks day and night for his fortune and a shelter in this city).

These lines by Gulzar — sung in the rich, deep voice of Bhupinder for the movie Gharonda (1977) and mouthed by Amol Palekar wearing a haggard, defeated look on screen — resonate among many youngsters in Mumbai even today, as they look for a sanctuary in the city, a space they can call home. 

Mumbai, with its charm and promises of a better future, draws people from all over the country. Yet finding a place to stay here is no short of a fortune in itself. According to the 2011 census, 43.02% of the population of Mumbai including Thane are people who have migrated from other places. The total population of  Mumbai in the metropolitan region was 18,394,912. Exorbitant rentals and ever-rising real estate rates, and the unreasonable and at times inhumane conditions that landlords impose, make house hunting a nightmare.

‘Cosmo’ societies

When Layal Ayoub was looking for a house in Goregaon west in 2018, she  was told  to look for a house in a “cosmo society”— a building with residents practising multiple religions. Brokers told her there are only six or seven buildings there that allow tenants following the Islamic faith, or even having names that sounded Muslim!

Layal who has been living in Mumbai for almost ten years now first faced such discrimination in 2016 while renting a house with two flatmates.

“Whenever it came to my name, there was always a confusion,” says Layal. With a Muslim father and a Hindu mother, if she told them she was an atheist herself, it would be unacceptable. “They would show interest initially, but after a while they would just not be willing to show any more houses, saying that people did not want Muslim tenants,” she recalls.

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Similarly, Nisam who tried renting a house in Girgaum with a Hindu friend was asked questions about his religion and then refused, but his friend was told he could rent a house without him.

Writer Farid Khan came to Mumbai from Bihar almost twelve years before Layal — at the end of 2002, he found accommodation with three others in a chawl in Goregaon. But the owner had a condition: no Muslim tenants. 

He was forced to give the name Shibbu— by which he is addressed by friends and family — to the owner of the house. As is common in chawls, members of the owner’s family would be sitting outside the house most of the time, requiring him to pass by them to reach home. This meant maintaining a constant state of alertness, watching his language to ensure no Urdu words would slip out revealing his Muslim identity. In what became a painful practice, he started speaking less and less to avoid this, not even greeting his family with a “salaam” over the phone. Lack of residential proof also meant that he could not open a bank account.

Salim’s (name changed)  journey of renting a house mirrors these experiences. Even when he found a person ready to rent him a place, their queries and concerns stemmed from stereotypical images of Muslims. In one instance, the owners wanted to know if his family was educated and if they would conduct ritual sacrifices inside the house. “Sometimes they would say that they did not want too many people coming into the house, like a huge family.”

Single ladies and bachelor boys

Sometimes hindsight lifts the heavy pall of grave situations, allowing us to laugh at them. Mahima Paul’s laughter tinkles over the phone as she recounts multiple harrowing experiences of renting a house in Mumbai. 

On arriving here for her first job, she found a house in Shivaji Park — a 1BHK already accommodating five women. In an alarming practice reminiscent of a draconian boarding school, the owner of the house, a man, would often walk into the house  “check” if their things were out of place, taking them away if found lying around. 

What’s worse is that she was evicted in fifteen days for refusing to move her things into the balcony to accommodate a seventh person. She found herself on the curb at Shivaji Park at midnight, reaching out to a cousin in another city to pick her up.

Mahima, a Christian, has faced the double whammy of discrimination — religion and being single. In a blatant act of moral policing, her leave and licence agreement at another rental didn’t allow male visitors after 8.00 p.m. and a house owner in Chembur  prohibited meat consumption.

Writer Rituparna Chatterjee tears up over a phone call while narrating her experiences of finding a rental home. Originally from Mumbai, she came back from California to write a book in early 2016. Considering all the conditions home owners have, she was an “ideal tenant”— Hindu, upper caste, married, vegan, able to pay the rent. She says, “I couldn’t be more perfect.” 

And yet, she had to struggle to find a home in Versova. She would be asked to show her marriage certificate. People would repeatedly refuse to rent her a house because “she looked like an actress and actresses sleep around.” Even after she finally found a house, she was evicted suddenly one day without any reason and found herself homeless.

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Aboli Maharwade came to Mumbai to study. On moving out of the hostel, she  looked for a house in Kandivali, Malad, and Goregaon with three hostelmates. The first thing they were told: they wouldn’t get a house as single women, followed by questions about their caste. Owners would agree to rent to her friends, they didn’t want Aboli in their house. What made it even more difficult is that Aboli works in the media which can mean odd working hours. 

When they finally found a house through a friend’s mother, it came with usual conditions: no male visitors other than family could stay over and no meat consumption. In a particularly horrific incident, when male cousins of one of her roommates were visiting them, out came the pitchfork wielding neighbours, banging at their door, demanding that the men leave.

Aboli dreads having to move again, what with the high rents, the deposit, and the moving cost. In fact, two of her roommates have already left Mumbai, at their wits’ end after trying to rent a house.

Single men fare no better. When Arvind Antony started working at Reliance Corporate Park, he moved into a house in Ghansoli with a colleague. “Brokers know which flats allow bachelors and which don’t. So he only took me to those flats which allowed bachelors.” One of the home owners had a condition that women could not visit after a certain hour. The security guard kept a hawk’s eye on their comings and goings, and would not allow his roommate’s partner to even enter the building. 

What do brokers say?

Getting a house in Mumbai requires most people to go through the ritual of approaching an agent or a broker. Well versed with the system they know how to match a house with a tenant. 

One broker we spoke to refused to accept that people face discrimination on any grounds, claiming everyone finds a house. But in the same breath he said that Muslim tenants find houses largely in “cosmo societies”. His personal biases also came through when he said that ‘Muslim clients break their leave and licence agreements’, implying that this is one of the reasons they don’t get houses. 

Another was more forthcoming and admitted that some people may find it more difficult to find homes than others. He also pointed out that conditions put by owners are not just restricted to diet, religion, or singlehood  but also relate to whether they have children, or if they are from Uttar Pradesh and so on. 

Both asserted that in case of a police complaint against the tenant, the broker also gets into trouble. They justified the attitude of home owners, saying tenants often break the terms of their contract, lie about themselves and disturb neighbours by returning late or bringing home friends. Societies on their part reiterate this, claiming unpleasant experiences — late night parties with loud music, which is particularly disturbing for senior citizens. 

Legal aspects

While home owners often use the society rules as an excuse to refuse certain tenants, any such resolution, even if passed in the AGM (annual general meeting) has no legal standing. Advocate Mrunal Warunjikar confirms this saying the Model Bye-laws of Cooperative Housing Societies  do not permit such conditions. 

The only condition mentioned there is that the home owner must intimate the society eight days in advance that the house is being rented out and submit a copy of the leave and licence agreement to the society and the police. But if the flat owners themselves don’t want to rent a house to someone, the potential tenant is left with no legal recourse.

Read more: The urban choke: Need for safe housing and improved roads

Where do they go?

“Getting a house in Bombay is luck. If you are lucky enough you will get a good owner who will let you live like a human being,” says Mahima.

Both Layal and Farid point out that despite not having any overt physical markers of being Muslim, they faced such hassles and it seems well nigh impossible for people wearing a hijab or a nakab to access a rental home in Mumbai.

It is equally true that the list of conditions keeps getting longer. As Farid points out, “If a society has decided that they will not rent to Muslims, it will not stop there. It will then come down to food choices, clothing choices, caste. It can go to any extent.”

Rituparna puts it a nutshell when she says, “It’s about the petty mentality…it’s that moment of power.”

In summary, in Mumbai, variously dubbed “city of dreams”, “mayanagari”, finding a room of one’s own indeed seems like a distant dream.

Also read:

• Solution to Mumbai’s housing crisis: enable people to build their own homes
• BDD chawl redevelopment: Bumpy road to a better life
• Is the BDD chawl redevelopment Mumbai’s chance for course correction in urban planning?