A new season of friends in city

FRIENDS aren’t just on the small screen these days.
Even as the sitcom unfolds on television, Hyderabad is also seeing youngsters sharing apartments in true blue phoren style – guys and girls living together, splitting rents and pizzas with an equality that would make women’s lib activists proud.
With more and more youngsters moving to the city to work in multi-national companies or to enroll at prestigious colleges, living together is becoming part of the new-age lifestyle norm. Gender is immaterial, cutting costs by finding roommates – male or female – is more important.
Take the case of Somitra Banerjee, a marketing manager in a leading software company, who stays with his colleague Soumita Sen.
Both of them are from Kolkata and were recruited by the same company.
Soumita says, “When we looked for accommodation close to our office, we found it difficult to find single rooms. So when we found a two-bedroom flat in Begumpet, we decided to live together.�
Convenience may be the deciding factor, but there’s no doubt that enterprising freshers prefer to save as much as possible in their first jobs by splitting costs with roomies. That was one of the factors that brought Shekhar Jacob, Joanne Scariah and Abhijeet Shetty together.
Explains Shekhar, “I came here to attend a course to be a pilot while Joanne and Abhijeet were recruited as executives by an international bank. We were old friends and coincidentally landed up in Hyderabad.� The three friends decided to share an apartment in Begumpet. “We split all our bills and have a dabbawala who sends us dinner every night,� says Shekhar. He wanted Joanne to live with them as she would be safer that way, he adds.
Of course, Abhijeet has his own wicked take on that. “We make poor Joanne do all the shopping and cleaning,� he says.
hyderabadtimes@indiatimes.com