Islamophobia Part 1: The Dwelling

A Stranger in a City of Joy

The first flat she visited was in a place everybody boasted about as being decent and reasonably priced. The next flat was as good as the previous. And on she went, walking under a sunny sky, to one place after the next, searching for that one room that would afford her the small comfort of day-to-day living. And every time, she left the place sighing with a heavy heart, unable to comprehend the indifference and meaning of it all. After all, hasn’t she been away most part of her life, working from one place to another, one country to another? For the first time, her testimonials remained just pieces of paper. Her valued and hard-earned testimonials were not working its magic.

Queries after queries from one house owner, then the next and the same dilly-dallying, the apt but polite response, "Sorry, you’re a Muslim". In this city of joy, the cultural capital of India! So astonished was she to have faced such ostracism of a society, a city of joy so prejudiced against her community, a society so deep in its communal profiling and discrimination. And yet, it was all there staring on her face!

She was a braveheart. One day, she found a room quite distant to her place of work. The owner had taken her in. As she was in one day, she was out the next day. Her neighbors objected to her presence in the complex. She was a Muslim. That was what the ruckus was all about. She was tired. It was her hopes that kept her going and her belief in her new- found job.  She was advised by some sympathizers to better look for an accommodation in a ‘Muslim colony’ where she will be safe and comfortable. In the entire episode of being turned away in house after house, room after room, she found the worst part was, when people ‘tried’ to be sympathetic to her plight.

To some, the story may raise eyebrows. To some, it may seem incredulous to be true. It may raise eyebrows. It is incredibly true. It was my experience. And this is my story.