I’ll be homeless, soon.

It has been a month since my housemate ended her rent agreement and left our shared apartment to move in with her boyfriend, and I’m still unsure about my living arrangements. The rent of my current home is beyond the amount I can pay in a month out of the income I manage to make out of my job as an ad-hoc professor in the University of Delhi, along with the expenses which also include necessity bills, commuting expenses, and my personal necessities. I can’t pay the entire rent out of my own single salary, and so I either need a replacement for my former housemate or evacuate the house.

‘You don’t have to worry anymore, Professor Madam,’ my landlord chimes over a phone call that almost sends me into a frenzy of ironic anxiety, ‘I have found you a new housemate. If you are free tomorrow, I’ll introduce you two in the evening and if it goes well, we can sign the agreement.’

Ideally, I should be relieved to hear this news, but something seems off in the tone my landlord is using, it is extra extra sweet and I’m pretty certain he’s gonna drop a bomb. and he indeed does.

‘The thing is...it’s a he...not a she...hello? Professor Madam? Are you there? Hello? Arre phone cut gaya kya? Hello?’

Is this the situation you call – between the devil and the deep sea?