HATE how expensive this city is

Yes, nobody asked me to live here and all that, but sometimes the greatest city in the world is just too pricey for its own good.

I mean, come on. At a decent income, all you can hope for if you're looking to buy a house, is to save like magpies for about three years and then take a home loan. The money you save will help cut down on some of the amount you will have to raise through private sources (which your bank needs to know about, to appease their gossipy selves). Once your home loan is cleared, through a uniquely-designed obstacle race involving signatures on character certificates and salary slips from bosses, Form 16 duplicates from the time you were born, letters from the building you wish to purchase a house in, and many other entertaining channels of paperwork, you have to borrow money from friends to tide over the amount that the bank will not loan you, the fucking fucker.

And once you start repaying all the money, you realise that you are tied up for the next twenty years at least, apart from paying off testy friends and relations you borrowed money from. At the end of the first week since you get your salary, you are left with about a fraction of your husband's salary. We are going to stop eating lunch and we shall cadge invitations to dinner from the people we did not borrow money from. My mother can supply the groceries.

And all of this, for a house that is as big as a broom closet or, if you get a roomier accomodation, as big as a fair-sized bathroom with separate shower space. Into this you squeeze your two selves, furniture, bed, cupboard, pots and pans and several other items characterising domesticity.

So you decide to go for a rented place, and though that works out better because it is sort of affordable, you get grey hairs thinking of all the money you're paying via rent and which you will never see again unless you loot a bank. Since I don't know the first thing about looting a bank, I will never see the rent money we've paid this year.

What is all this in aid of? All we wanted was to live decently on a decent income in a house we were prepared to slave for and cherish and leave behind for our kids. Instead, we're running around shouting "Fuck! FUCK!" because the lease on our current house expires in two months and we have no other option but to throw away more money on another rented apartment, in the hope that two years later we will have our own home to leave behind for our kids (which we can have only after we have a house, humph).

Money flows like water in this city. It's not fair, it's not reasonable for a person who only has a legitimate job as his source of income.