The hassle of shifting to a new place

Moving into a new house, i.e., to a completely strange area, remains filled with excitement. But in a chaotic metropolis like Dhaka, it turns out to be a nightmare to many. The expectations from living in new environs are more often overridden by the ordeals of shifting from one neighbourhood to another. Fear of the unknown and other related worries rob many people of the natural thrill of beginning yet another chapter of life in Dhaka. The woes of shifting multiply if the distance between the old place and the new one happens to be wide. For smaller families with simple household belongings, the task is simpler. But those who have a large number of family members, the shifting turns out to be strenuous --- and at times a gruelling experience. Big and extended families possess myriad types of objects. Normally they range from several bedsteads, furniture, electronic goods to crockery, kitchenware to boxes and, in cases, stacks of books.

The house-shifting on pushcarts on weekly holidays became a common spectacle in Dhaka in the 1970s. It was the decade that began with the independence of Bangladesh, Dhaka being the capital of the new country. The population of Dhaka has witnessed a galloping increase since then. The previous offices in a provincial city transformed into those operating in a national capital. It drew a huge middle and lower-middle class educated workforce to Dhaka. In tandem, pressure mounted on the size of the residential accommodation facilities. It resulted in the fast emergence of two new social classes --- the house-owning landlords and the tenants, mostly new comers to Dhaka and without landed properties. The city's urban society comprised these two classes in the pre-independence times as well. But both their prevalence and separate class characters remained largely subdued. As decades wore on, the landlords continued to increase in number, so did the tenants.

Tenants moving into new places to live in a more convenient rented house are still a part of Dhaka's cityscape. But in terms of both outward view and essence, the spectacle has undergone many a change. Independent ground floors and houses on first, second or third floors have been replaced by apartments in high-rise complexes. Living in condominium housing units has for over a decade become the common practice in Dhaka. The trend is now popular with the middle, as well as lower-middle class people in the capital. Compared to independent, isolated houses, the apartments on upper floors are considered secure. In terms of facilities, too, they are viewed as being more comfortable than the old-style individual residential places.

In spite of these favourable features, the apartment tenants also change places. The reason, the most prominent among many, is the rise in rent. The other irritants include changes in the addresses of the educational institutions of the tenants' children, and change in workplaces. As a consequence, the tenants residing in apartments undergo the similar ordeals as experienced by those living in conventional dwellings. Dhaka's perennial gridlock has only complicated the shifting.  A common fact applies to both the groups: no rented house is permanent. One has to remain prepared to leave such a house today or tomorrow. If one rents a residential place, he or she had better accept the rises in the rentals without much fuss. Nowadays, there are tenant societies which they can turn to for remedy. But the stark reality is they have to move out, and bear with the hassles of shifting to a new place. Hiring specialised agencies to do the job have yet to be in wide practice in Dhaka.

Postscript: relations between landlords and tenants should be congenial to the benefit of both.

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