The odd couple

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, wrote Shakespeare in an era when home loans were not advertised 24x7. But journalists, even of the retired or retiring variety like me, do not quite have the dramatic licence to offer gratuitous advice - like saying "Neither a tenant nor a landlord be" at a time when people keep hopping from job to job and place to place, which, in this day and age, is known as upward mobility.
There is no question of settling down even for a tenant who wants to stay put since the landlord can at any time pull the plug by serving a notice. It's not that landlords have it easy. Just when a landlord has got used to a particular tenant's idiosyncrasies, he may shift. And the perilous process of finding a new tenant has to be embarked upon even if the landlord believes in the adage "Better the devil you know than the one you don't".
In the Bangalore apartment block where i stay, the ultimate horror story was about this tenant who vacated the premises, leaving behind unpaid bills to everyone from the milkman and the newspaper vendor to the neighbourhood provision store, all of whom badgered the landlord for their dues. The landlord occupied the premises himself instead of letting it out to another tenant - but the apartment address had by then acquired such a dodgy reputation that even the friendly neighbourhood provision store insisted on immediate payment for every home-delivery. And the milkman and the newspaper vendor would ring the doorbell every morning to check whether he was still there or had done the disappearing act like the previous occupant!
Tenants have their own stories to tell. Take the innocuous sentence in every rental lease agreement that "The lessee shall permit the lessor to inspect the premises at all reasonable times", followed by a clause that "The lessee shall be entitled to enjoy the premises without any interruption or disturbance by the lessor". The only problem is that one person's inspection can easily become another's interruption or disturbance, as narrated by a tenant to me.
This tenant stayed alone, worked late and got up late, and had this habit of keeping the front door slightly open in the morning so that the cook could prepare breakfast and leave without waking him up. He was fast asleep one morning when his aged landlady woke him up to say she had come to inspect the premises. On another occasion, the aged landlady strolled into the bathroom. "When you are staying alone, you sometimes tend to forget to close the bathroom door," the tenant told me. "Fortunately, i was filling the bucket with hot water for my bath and was wearing a banian and lungi. I did tell her to ring up before the next inspection but she could not follow me because she was not wearing her hearing aid."
And then there are those like me who have the worst of both worlds since they are simultaneously both landlords and tenants. Some five years back, i had to shift from my first-floor flat to a rented ground floor one since the spouse was ailing and could not take the stairs in an apartment block where there were no lifts. My tenant's cheque helped pay my landlord's dues.
In the Silicon Plateau of Bangalore, tenants who are into software suddenly leave when they take up other jobs or are handed the pink slip. And landlords have kith and kin who are into software and are suddenly relocated to Bangalore where they require accommodation. Being both a landlord and a tenant calls for a fine balancing act since one is playing what Bollywood calls a double role but without any studio back-up. I finally threw in the towel the other day and decided to move back to my own flat. Neither a landlord nor a tenant be, i told myself.