Who is a respectable tenant in Mumbai?

What do you want, Mumbai? Who do you want as your neighbour, or tenant? You want ‘good’ people, yes? By good, you mean ‘respectable’, non-violent (not publicly violent anyway), quiet people (who don’t complain when you turn noisy during festivals). You want kids who work towards being accepted rather than causing mayhem. Yes?

And you want some do-gooders, yes? The old lady who plants trees. A retired uncle who ensures waterproofing of the terrace happens on time. A doctor whose doorbell you can ring at midnight. A collegian who tutors ‘weak’ students.

What you don’t want is a do-gooder who helps the most vulnerable of us all. Say, a neighbourhood ‘doctor’ who treats slum-dwellers at his home-clinic. What you certainly don’t want are girls like Trina Talukdar and Robin Chaurasiya.

Early in life, Trina decided to do something to stop human trafficking. One of the first lessons she learnt was that victims of trafficking and their children need a real alternative — a real education and worthwhile jobs. So she decided to provide a real alternative.

Robin and Trina co-founded ‘Kranti’ and began to rehabilitate a few girls in Mumbai. But they didn’t send the girls into a ‘home’. Instead, they made a home, living in a rented flat, and caring for eight girls between the ages of 8 and 17. But now they’ve been asked to vacate.

Besides, school after school has denied these girls admission, although they are rapidly gaining Math and English skills, not to mention art or athletics, wherever their talents lie.

These rejections aren’t because of the girls’ background. Not yet. Landlords and schools don’t know where the girls come from. They do know that the girls are poor and need support. But that (to borrow a phrase from Shania Twain) don’t impress them much.

The fact that Kranti has money for rent also don’t impress them much. The problem, Trina says, is that nobody wants ‘single girls’ as tenants. Everybody wants ‘families’, which translates into ‘mother+father+own kids’. It doesn’t translate into vulnerable minor girls supported by an NGO.

Trina blogged about a little girl who couldn’t read six months ago is already reading Enid Blytons in less than a year (for details, visit http://bit.ly/ldu4h6). I doubt if this could have happened if the child was packed off to a ‘shelter’ or a hostel full of strangers. She needed — and found — a stable family through Kranti.

Now you will say, Mumbai, that you admire Trina and Robin. But you aren’t sure you want young girls staying alone in your flat. You are suspicious of young ‘alone’ girls (even if there are a lot of them). Who knows what they’re up to, right? But do you know what girls who live in ‘families’ are up to? What about the men? In a building close to the one where the Kranti girls live, a pregnant housewife recently killed herself by jumping off the 18th floor. Was that ‘family’ a happy place, Mumbai?

As for single girls, let me tell you what they’re up to. If they’re like Trina, they’re up to a whole lot of good! The rest are up to work. But it is hard to forgive people who make you feel unwanted, especially if you’ve done nothing to deserve it. So why should single girls treat ‘families’ with respect if the favour is not returned?

Guess what, Mumbai? If I ever have my own flat, I wouldn’t want families as tenants. I remember the time we had ‘father+mother+own kids’ as tenants. They stole our ceiling fan and a doormat. So much for ‘respectable’.

Annie Zaidi writes poetry, stories, essays, scripts (and in a dark, distant past, recipes she never actually tried)