Monday Musing
[ Tongam Rina ]
In April last year, I found myself looking for a residence in Itanagar after my father suddenly decided he was giving up the official bungalow. We had temporarily moved into his official residence while waiting for our rented flat – which I had called home for almost 15 years – to be renovated. We ended up not moving back.
We had settled into that mouldy and rundown, never repaired five-bedroom government accommodation with two dark dining rooms, and a kitchen even darker, with frequent power cuts and water supply interruptions. The tap water, when it made its rare appearance, looked like it was drawn straight from a flooded highway on most monsoon days. Whether water came or not, you still had to deposit 1,000 rupees to the PHED each month! Till the very end, no one had any idea who owned the building because four departments were involved, and none of them were available – except in March when they came to paint the house, without treating the mould. March ending is real deal in the entire state.
I could never figure out the design of that house, nor the kitchen and bathroom fittings. Those government buildings where the tap is too short. People who were big-built didn’t use the washroom. Wise choice. They would have gotten stuck. The toilets were so tiny, the door had to be opened carefully, the bucket adjusted, and then latched while making sure the bottom didn’t hit the wall while squatting. When getting out, the same process. One had to be careful not to hit their face while opening the door. Always. Anyway, looking back, that mouldy, dark house was a luxury.
Finding a house in Itanagar is a daunting task. With a fixed budget and a fixed number of bathrooms and rooms in mind, those houses definitely do not exist in Itanagar. When the location is decided, it’s very much like following a Google map and getting lost. The house or location won’t be found in the same place. If someone’s looking for a house with a clear view of the mountain that hasn’t been scarred by human’s unending greed to expand, or near a riverfront that doesn’t smell like sewage or carry the constant fear of being washed away during the monsoon, it’s best to stop looking. The answer is: just find any house with a room or stay with whoever is willing to offer a room, a bed, or a floor mattress that has to be tucked away beneath someone’s bed each morning before people wake up. Homelessness doesn’t afford the luxury of shame, or being disturbed by discomfort.
The problem is, there’s a high probability that a relative or friend is already hosting many others looking for homes.
Thousands of workers and students, jobseekers are in temporary arrangements before finding a proper home. It’s unlikely they will find the one they are looking for because it’s simply unaffordable to have a house in the town.
One main reason why houses still stand right next to highways, streams, and other vulnerable locations is because it’s easier to build an expensive traditional house than to find a readymade one for monthly rent, even if it means living with the fear of being flooded or swallowed by the earth, leftover from faulty road construction. The administration, which otherwise doesn’t do anything, can always evict them if they get bored of dealing with files in their offices.
The unregulated town is expensive, and not everyone can afford a home. There’s no affordable housing policy. Even those who can afford it can’t buy homes here. One has to buy the whole building, or buy land and build one, or encroach on a government building using sources and connections to make it a personal home. The first two options were – and still are – beyond the reach of yours truly.
Third one? Someone else has already done it!
I’m not asking for heaven, but still, the lookout is for a two-room apartment with two or more bathrooms, a decent kitchen, a dog-friendly, less noisy, non-intrusive neighbourhood, reliable water and electricity supply, and a monthly rent within a range that’s affordable, so there’s no need to take out a loan for an advance. Banks, anyway, don’t give loans to poor journalists. It would be an added advantage if no calls come through, asking not to publish, even if their cousin’s wife’s cousin’s distant cousin’s engineer son-in-law eats up an entire water, road, or electrification fund and ends up in the news because someone chose to use the RTI Act to extort. Just pay them off before they go to social media with bits and pieces of information as an intimidation tactic to extort. It’s a tried and tested tactic that works for everyone involved.
If there’s a parking space in the building itself, even better, but the highway will do for parking. Just like most law-abiding citizens, parking will be done on the highway. What are four-lane highways for? The chances of an old car, that has a mind of its own, being stolen are lower on the highway than with smuggled, brand new cars with registrations from mainland India! Weren’t Arunachal Pradesh police complicit in smuggling these cars? Some of them were, and now, back to policing us – literally.
My memories take me back to the old government house that we called home for nearly five years. One of the government departments planted an ornamental tree right near the entrance, where there was a small manicured concrete lawn. They obviously had no idea how tall or large the tree was going to grow. The tree had outgrown the concrete, claiming its space as it should. The last I saw was a robust tree, tearing through the concrete and its surface, much like a commentary on the state of affairs. A new identity, newer and alien narratives of the majority that is often patriarchal, plucked from somewhere in the mainland that respects no one, nor is rooted in the indigenous way of life of respecting each other and oneself. (For feedback, write to tongamrina@arunachaltimes.com.)
