Gandhigiri - in action

To give you a little background - In Singapore , you can rent an apartment by making a contract of 6 months or an year, landlords usuallydon't do short term contracts. So we got a house for 6 months and happily settled in. We loved the place - 16th floor , children's park opposite , library a stone throw away , MRT ( railway station ) and bus stop close by , shopping complex and theatre a 5 min walk ... and best and most important of all , a mini-mart right below the apartment with Indian groceries ! What else could one ask for ?

And our landlady was quite nice too ... once when I fell ill badly and called her up to ask for thenearest clinic , she even offered to take me there.

We had plans of staying there and then extending the contract for 2 more months , by which time it would be time to head back home. Everything was going as per plan ( beware of this thought, thats when things start tumbling over you, left, right and centre ) So we chilled out - inviting friends for parties , watching movies every other weekend , altogether having a good time. We were also expecting my parents to visit in due course.

And then the blow came - my landlady said someone had complained to HDB ( Housing Development Board ) and they had in turn warned the owners of 'consequences' if we were not evicted ! I'll have to dig more into background here - HDB is a govt department that sells subsidized houses to S'poreans and expects them to live there , allowing only to sub-let the apartment if the place is too big for them. If it has to be rented completely, written permission from HDB is necessary.
Now, though they are S'poreans - normally law-abiding citizens, they are just people afterall and the thought process goes something like " Some extra bucks doesn't hurt right ? Who is going to check anyway ? "So , they bend the rules to their convenience - lock one room in the apartment and rent it out. If HDB enquires , tenants are supposed to say the owner actually lives there and has just stepped out for a while ! so as tenants you take the house, pay rent and also implicitly agree to save the owner's skin.
Thats how the system works and it has worked well all these years , and we haven't heard of an instance( or even a rumor ) of some tenant being evicted because a neighbour complained to HDB.

But then , our landlady claimed it to be the case. There didn't seem to be any way to verify it. She was scared that her house could be confiscated and so we had to scoot. And we were in an impossible position because no one would be ready to rent us their house for 3 months ! We explained this to the landlady but she wouldnot budge , instead she gave us two months to vacate ! wow , if you were so scared of losing your house why are you giving us so much time ? doesn't make sense. Thats when we smelt something fishy...and since I was quite friendly with her ( till she became the harbinger of bad news ) I started asking intelligent questions ;) and some secrets spilled out.

The landlady had already applied for a bank loan for house renovation, she had to start renovation to get the money , to start renovation we had to move out ...and that was the story! So why didn't she just say so ? I honestly don't know her motives for lying to us , but she did , annoying us even more.

Anyway , we had to look for another house , which we eventually did and got a better one , though a little expensive. When the time came to say Goodbye, she was sweetness personified - offered to give away stuff - dishes , pillows , cups , spoons - whatever we wanted for the new place - was it the guilt ? We were not to be left behind either - replaced the two glasses we broke with new ones , cleaned up the wholeplace to a shine , got new batteries for T.V and A.C remotes ... yes , generally did everything to intensifyher guilt he he. Still remember her uttering repeatedly " Oh you needn't have to do this !"

And to think 'Lage Raho Munnabhai' was not even released then !
When I watched the movie later , it made me wonder - isn't this what we did ? So cool ! :)