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The price of being a bachelor

Martin Swapan Pandey
Born in a large family, he always wanted to be out of it, to live on his own, away from his folks. “One day, when I grow up," he would whisper to himself from time to time. His day came eventually when the family decided to send him to Dhaka for studies after he passed his SSC examination from a school in the south. He was mad with joy. He called it bliss. This was after all a dream come true. But that was then. Sixteen years ago.
Today, he knows by heart how hard it can get to live in the capital when one does not have a family. “This house is only for families; we don't let it to bachelors," he has heard the house owners say perhaps 100 times over. And he does not like the way building owners say it.
During his college years, he often wondered if there was any law to regulate
house rent. Now he knows that there is. He also used to wonder if the law had such discriminatory provisions. Now he knows there is none.
A service holder in a private firm, he currently lives with his siblings in a two-bedroom flat in Rajabazar. The flat has a common dining and living room and he pays Tk 20,000 in monthly rent, utility bills of another Tk 2,000 or so excluded. That's the price you pay when you are a bachelor.
"But you don't pay the price if you don't get a house at all. And finding one is never easy," he says.
Before he rented the house, he spent weeks searching for one, knocking on house owners' doors and calling the numbers on the to-let notices. At times, the communications would not last more than a few seconds. "Bachelor? Sorry." Sometimes the phone would be hung up
before he could finish saying, "No problem. Thank you."
Weeks went by; the month was nearing its end. He was in desperate need of a place to live for he would have to vacate the previous house by that month. It was the 26th or 27th of the month when he met his "saviour". Saviour he was, for he agreed to let his house to a bachelor: two months' advance, Tk 20,000 in monthly
rent, water bill included but gas and electricity bill excluded. Everything was verbal, no agreement was done. But that was all right.
But things were not all right after he moved in. The house owner started charging for all the three utilities - water, gas and power. That was not to be. When he pointed this out and reminded the owner of their conversation that the rent included the water bill, the owner said he could not remember because he let different flats to different people on different conditions.
On his insistence that he clearly remembers their earlier conversation, the owner said: "Okay. Let's fix it like this. You pay for the water bill, and I will take care of the gas bill.”
He agreed and thought of the plight of the other millions living away from families for work or for study.