A Bengaluru man looking to rent a property was allegedly discriminated against by the owner, who said she wouldn't give it to a Kannadiga.
In a detailed post on Reddit, the man revealed the owner who posted the listing asked for his name when he called her to inquire about the flat's availability. He said the woman, who seemed to be from Jharkhand or West Bengal, said she didn't want to rent it to someone from Karnataka and immediately hung up the phone.
He wrote, "So today I was flat hunting and came across a listing that seemed decent. The surname of the lady who posted it suggested she was likely from Jharkhand or West Bengal. I gave her a call to ask about the availability."
He said the first question was, "Where are you from? Did you see the rent?" He replied, "I'm born and raised in Blr (Bengaluru), I'm a Kannadiga."
"Without missing a beat, she rudely said, 'I'm not looking to rent it out to Kannadigas,' and hung up on my face before I could even respond," the man said.
After hearing this, he said he got extremely angry and tried calling her back. First, the woman didn't pick up her call and then blocked his number.
The man was shocked to witness this in his own city. "Wth is going on? In our own city? I wouldn't have believed this if it hadn't happened to me directly. Didn't ask my name, my details, background, nothing. Just 'where are you from?'" he concluded the post.
Got rejected for being Kannadiga. What the actual hell?
byu/Sailing_Catamaran inBengaluru
The post went viral in no time, with many users sharing similar experiences in the comments section.
One user wrote, "I was rejected a rent in Mysore because I was from Bangalore. The lady herself was a Kannadiga from Mysore."
Another commented, "My uncle needed to stay in Bhubneswar for 6 months due to work and he wanted to stay in a nice society. He's fully an Odia local, knows no languages other than Odia and English. Some Bihari family that stayed in the society was renting, and he asked them about the house. They also rejected him for being Odia."
"Saw videos of a Marathi woman not getting a flat in Gujju (Gujarati) dominated Mumbai too," wrote another.
Last year, a similar incident went viral when the landlord refused to rent a home to the tenant because his 12th-grade marks weren't as high as the landlord wanted. He got 75 per cent in 12th grade and the owner was expecting at least 90 per cent.
