The ditty that Eliza Dolittle once hummed in My Fair Lady came back: “All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air…” My close acquaintances came to be property dealers and my required reading was the ‘To Let’ sections of the weekend newspapers. House hunting in the city is a full-time vocation.

Delhi landlords come up with the strangest ‘clauses’. An elderly couple said they wanted to rent their house to married couples only, but they don’t want children running around ruining their nice house. One didn’t want women/ girls as tenants. Another said, he wanted only girls — but girls who come back home by 7 pm. An elderly ‘aunty’ referred to me as “such a sweet girl”. She said she would love to have me as a tenant, but that there was a problem. She slept early. So she may be disturbed if I walked up the stairs at 10 pm. Even though she lived on the ground floor, and the flat she was renting was on the third. “If you have to come late, come back around 5 am. That’s the time I get up,” she told me with a straight face.

On two occasions, I was on the verge of signing an agreement but things didn’t work out. I began to seriously believe that I was jinxed. By now property dealers had begun to advise me on whom I should be living with. “I know another girl who’s also looking for a room. Why don’t you two stay together?” suggested one helpful man. “Why don’t you ask your parents to come over and live with you?” said another.

By that point I simply had had enough. It was then that I hit upon an ingenious idea: do away with the landlord factor altogether. I resolved that I would only take a place where the landlord did not live in the same building. So now the new address I’m moving to is seven kilometres away from my landlady’s home. I’ve had to make a few compromises, true. I will now have to wake up at an outrageously early hour to switch on the water pump for myself and check the electricity and water meters.

But, on the whole, it’s a small price to pay to keep at an arm’s length busybodies in the city who also happen to have houses to rent.