Over the last few weeks, Bombay Times has highlighted the grievances of single men and women in the city seeking to rent a shelter. To our surprise, actress Radhika Apte had been through similar experiences a couple of years ago, while hunting for a place she could rent with her live-in mate.

She told BT, “I've rented houses in Pune and Mumbai and the experiences haven't been too distinct. Most flat owners seem to have a problem with a guy and a girl sharing the roof without being married, but marriage certificate is not a necessity for renting a place. We didn't have one, but we had been in a live-in relationship for long enough. Even the law acknowledges a live-in relationship if it survives a certain number of years. I was asked on several occasions to produce a marriage certificate before being given the house on lease. Eventually, when I couldn't find a place, I rented a friend's house.“

She rues the fact that several young couples go through a similar grind even today. Radhika feels that as long as a young single tenant next door is not noisy, it shouldn't matter to the neighbours what time he or she walks in and if he or she has guests dropping in at unusual hours. “I can understand if a residential complex has elderly people and someone parties every night with loud music. But if that is not the case, why do people have a problem if someone works wonky hours or has guests coming in at any hour of the day or night?“ Radhika asks rhetorically, adding, “These ridiculous conditions force youngsters to lie about their professions and even marital status. Boys and girls face discrimination of a different kind in our cities. A lot of residential societies don't rent homes to models and actors only because of their profession. They associate unpleasant experiences with them. Some societies restrict people from eating non-vegetarian food, while others don't allow people of other communities to reside there. Is that not discrimination?“ The actress insists that neither of this should be a criteria for anyone to be denied a house on rent. “What I cook in my kitchen shouldn't be anyone's problem. If the restriction is placed by the flat owner, for whatever reason, it's understandable. Why should anyone else have a problem with that?“

Radhika even remembers an instance where one of the landlords insisted on meeting her mother when she told him about her profession. “I was a 28-year-old girl then, not an under-age kid that they wanted to see my mother. Eventually, I had to relent,“ she says, adding, “I remember when I was moving into my newly-bought apartment, some of the ladies in the society wanted to know my cultural identity. They asked me, 'What's your full name?' How does it concern them? It was so annoying. This needs to stop now.“