Buying a house is like having sex

Did you know that buying a house is like having sex – there is a lot of planning, too many people are involved, you feel tired afterwards, and almost always, there is none of the appreciation that you expected.

Today, let me tell you about something that happened in mid-2009.

Around the month of May, Rekha had started cozying up to me.

Now, I know that when your wife starts cozying up to you five years after marriage, and you already have a car, it can only mean two things – she either wants a child or wants you to buy a house.

Since we already had a child, the innocent man that I was back then, I suspected she wanted a second child.

After winning my confidence, Rekha opened up: “Rajan, it has been five years since we got married.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Shouldn’t we plan for our future?” she insisted. Her fingers were dancing all over my chest by now.

“Haven’t we already planned? Did you know that it is criminal to have the number of LIC policies that we already have? We can’t get any more LICs!”

“I mean a different kind of planning,” she continued.

“A second child? Have you thought of adoption?”

“No…no…sweetheart. It is always so difficult to make you understand.” Rekha is a smooth operator. She knows when to call me a sweetheart who doesn’t understand anything and when to call me the duffer who doesn’t understand anything.

“Radhika, that Cognizant colleague of mine from Chennai…remember her?” Rekha asked, even as her fingers now moved towards my neck.

“Yeah, that pretty Iyer girl?” I am usually good with remembering girls. It is the men I have a problem with.

“Yes, that’s right. And do you remember Gayathri? That Malayali Cognizant colleague of mine?”

“Ohh yeah…that really pretty one? How can I forget the fight we had after we came back from her house? You know…I will claim that I wasn’t staring at her.”

We had been invited to Gayathri’s house one day, and Rekha had caught me staring at the host a few times. She was so pretty that once even her husband had to hold my shoulder, shake me and let out a “hmmm…” to stop me from staring at his wife.

“Forget that…I know you weren’t doing it intentionally. So, both of them have bought houses and will be shifting in early next year.” Rekha rolled the dice.

“Wow…good for them,” I replied as if I was not interested. We Rajans can spot landmines from far, which is why I tried to distance myself from the topic.

“Shouldn’t we also buy a house?” But Rekha can also be very persistent.

Over the next twenty minutes, when I was at my most vulnerable, Rekha made me promise that we would buy a house.

Since then, a lot has happened. But before that, let me tell you that wives of the past weren’t like this.

My mother, for instance, didn’t bother my father about buying a house. When my father retired after 32 years in the Indian Army, it was he who first called the whole family into a room and said, “Guys, I have decided to build a house in Madurai. What do you all think?”

We, as children, had only one question: “Will all the kids have their individual rooms?”

Being a smart man, my father said, “Yes…everybody gets their room – Sumathy, the kitchen is yours…Deepa, the living room is yours, and Rajan…the one bedroom we will have is yours.”

It would take us a few years to understand that our father had conned us.

That day, my mother didn’t have any questions. She just said, “It is our hard-earned money, and I know you will be careful with it.”

Back then, my father had got three lakhs, or so, on retirement.

The next year – in 1993 – he applied for a two-lakh loan and built a house for five lakhs.

Apparently, houses now don’t come for five lakhs. Here is a conversation that I had with my real estate agent, who helped me zero in on a property.

“Listen, Ramesh, my budget is five lakhs. I am looking at something within the city of Chennai, closer to the malls and a good school.”

“Sir, for rent, I presume?”

“What do you mean…for rent? I want to buy!” I was irritated at the agent.

“Sir, nowadays, you can’t even buy a good car for five lakhs,” the agent replied, smiling at me.

“What do you mean? It can’t be that costly. My father built a house for just five lakhs!”

“Sir, you will have to multiply your budget by ten times, and then you will get a house of your liking around 20 kilometres from the city centre.”

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after a long search, we decided on a house on Old Mahabalipuram Road in Chennai – around 25+ kilometres from the city centre.

Like I said earlier, buying a house is like having sex. There are way too many people involved – the builder, the banker, the real estate agent – and I am not talking about sex here.

Before the bank gives you a home loan, you have to pay some percentage of the house’s value yourself to show everybody involved your intent to own the house. We didn’t have that money.

I remember asking, “Rekha, can we ask your father for nine lakhs?”

“No way!”

“Rekha sweetheart, shall we ask your sister? They are in Kuwait…and rich?”

“No way, Rajan!”

“If you are going to block all my ideas, how are we going to gather the 15% to buy the house?” I was getting furious.

“Dear sweetheart, you should have thought of this before promising me that you would buy a house.” Suddenly, Rekha had started acting up.

At that point, I took an oath that the next time Rekha cozied up to me, I would maintain my composure and not get carried away.

The oath got broken in the next 15 days itself, but that incident is irrelevant to this story.

I did plan to make some money by donating other people’s kidneys, but developed cold feet just before I walked into the Kidney Donation Centre. So that got ruled out.

One day we were drinking and after a few rounds of Old Monk, ten of my best friends hatched a plan to help me raise money.

According to the plan, we would donate sperm at Apollo Hospital’s excellent facilities on Greams Road, Chennai, and use the money to fund my house.

The next morning, once we became sober, we did the math – at ₹250 per visit, we would need 3,600 visits to raise ₹9 lakhs.

This meant all ten of us would have to visit the sperm bank every day for almost a year. Since this would have tested both our friendship and their individual relationships, the plan was dropped.

One month later, we did manage to collect nine lakhs from various sources.

And then we decided on IDBI Bank and visited the bank manager.

“Sir, we are interested in buying a house. We need a home loan from your bank.”

“Do you know the interest rate?” the bank manager asked us.

“Sir, our interest rate is 100%…we completely want to buy this house,” Rekha responded.

The bank manager immediately knew that he could quote any interest rate to us and we would readily agree.

He handed me a lot of forms to fill, which I did, but not before telling him that I hadn’t come to the bank for a PhD, but to apply for a home loan. He didn’t even smile at my joke.

It took us three months to complete those forms – address proofs, income proofs, identity proofs. Rekha’s father didn’t ask me so many questions before giving away his daughter in marriage as the bank manager did before accepting the forms.

He made me wonder about Rekha’s worth.

After we filled in the forms, despite my good financials – I don’t have high aspirations, so my bank account always looks good to me – the bank refused to give me the loan.

That’s when I heard there was something called a CIBIL rating, and I was failing that check miserably. But I wasn’t surprised because back in 2003, when I had a salary of ₹25,000, I had total credit card outstanding of more than two lakhs and was running away from the banks. Like, I was changing houses every six months….to escape the collection agents.

The irony is that all the expenses on these two credit cards were part of my “Make Rekha Love Me” strategy. Life is one full circle, isn’t it?

Anyway, after pleading with the bank for six months, and a direct intervention by the institution’s vice president, our home loan finally got approved.

A year later, we got possession of the house, and today, we live there – with amazing friends all around us.