While finding a house on rent is a difficult proposition in any part of the country, it takes an unabashed caste angle here in Abu Road. “So what’s your second name,” is the first question you will hear in any middle class locality with a dominant population of a certain high caste. One of my acquaintances, in fact, had to hide his religion and assume a pseudonym to get a house on rent. He is dreading the day his cover will be exposed — in the interim, he has given his office address for all his correspondences to avoid being caught. “Once you get a house after a volley of personal questions your ordeal does not end there,” he said when we met here. The house owner reserves the right to barge in any time to check if you have kept her/his house in order, he added. The day I reached Abu Road, I was worried about the kind of house, more importantly the kind of landlord, in store for me. If I got them, that is. My local contacts told me the first negative was my bachelorhood. The owner of the first house I was shown did not ask too many questions though. The house was located in an urban village and had two small 10x10 rooms with a small kitchen and a smaller toilet. The windows opened to the street where women, children and elderly people could be seen lazing around in the sun. Though I was not expecting to find a south Delhi kind of locality, the peering eyes of passersby were certainly a little discomfiting. Fortunately, I didn’t have to take that house on rent. Then, one contact told me that a couple working in an NGO here were leaving town for two years and wanted to give their two-bedroom house on rent. The house was in a newly built township, some 5 km from the main town, and I decided to give it a dekko. Called New Town, it turned out to be a dream location. Spread over 3 to 5 sq km, the township had two apartment blocks and several independent plots of varying size. Surrounded by the Arravali ranges on all sides, it was breathtakingly beautiful — I so badly wanted to take a house here on rent! Arti, the house owner, did not disappoint: she said she had made up her mind to rent out her place to me the moment I had called her up, asking about it. Her house was on the second floor of one of apartment blocks and the bedroom windows opened to the majestic hills touching the clear blue sky. As she handed me the keys, I was already wondering how beautiful my mornings were going to be on the bedroom balcony — with a cup of coffee in hand and looking out at the sun rise from behind the hills. I haven’t been let down.