Law of Calculating Rents...!

It was more than 3-4 days since we were searching for a house near our college in Srinagar colony. Till this time we were frustrated and with each passing day our desperation level increased, add to it the surmounting pressure of study backlogs we had. We were standing by our modus operandi of not paying brokerage. One fine day me and Mohit seperated from the group and started moving from door to door in search of a roof, during this pursuit I saw a watchman(usually they have all the information) of a building, expecting that I will have to use my newly acquired skill of sign language along with broken english and a line of Tamil, "Tamil Tariadu, means I don't know Tamil :-)". To my surprise this old man was very good at english. Once the initial conversation get going, I asked him about any vacant flat in the building.

For the next 5-7 minutes I heard something (with little resistant and high astonishment) which I call the law of calculating rents...

He replied tersely "How much rent can you pay? (Rent doesn't depend on the house, it depends on the depth of your pocket)" to which I replied 7000-8000 (the usual asking rate in this area varies from 13k to 30k for a 3 BHK house, this is more than double the amount our senior to senior batch paid). The old man turned red and some how managed to contain his anger and moved to the next question "How much brokerage will you pay?" to which I replied around 1000. By now he was fuming with anger and said "You have paid 6 lakhs fee to Great Lakes Institute of Management (Oh! he knew the complete name of the college) for a 1 year course (he knew this too)". After passing out you will earn a minimum of 45K per month per head (as I earlier mentioned that 4 of us looking for a house). So, why can't you pay a rent of 15k for a 2 BHK house and a brokerage equal to 1 months rent(which is a norm here). All of which is going to be shared equally within 4 guys. Phew!!! I was dumbstruck and could just mummer "Anna 12000 rent and 5000 brokerage" to which he replied "No house vacant for Bachelors".

Finally we got a house without brokerage but it took persistent efforts for around a week but the law was established and would continue to work as long as GLIM is located in this colony, hopefully next batch will enjoy the hostel life....