It is the initiation ceremony of Bombay. You will emerge with the familiar tattoo of wrinkles on your brow. It will strip you down, it will make you beg, it will leave you impoverished and yet, yet when done will make you swagger and thump your chest in the manner of apes. You will say,"I shifted house."
Every unlucky swain or lass without a room to call their own (and by 'own' I mean conquered with stamp papers to prove it) will be yanked out with the periodicity and painfullness of upper lip hair removal. Every 11 months (or shorter periods if your landlord is an unusually jumpy bastard), just when you are curling your toes in, feeling complacent, will come the familiar keening cry that fills the soul of every bombay animal when his time is up. Bye bye home, hello homelessness.
Dismantle and regroup. Brokers closing in for the kill, showing you palaces just tantalising above your maximum stretching point budget. Where you will contemplate going without food to get that dream flat with those lovely white floors and windows that stretch from the ceiling to ground. (Western toilet, madam, with geyser) When a deposit is not a polite way of referring to your morning dump but cold hard cash that you kiss goodbye for the next 11 months. Money you never see as you shift from place to place but is the Shivastra of bartering.
I am tired. I want to live on the footpath and slay dragons in my dreams. And yes I DO NOT want to file my tax savings by the bloody 15th of Feb. I have no money, yes? I pay rent in bombay. Enough said.