Kumud Merani

It all starts at a wedding. A big, bright, over-catered wedding. The giddy, terrified newlyweds are posing for their 7000th photo of the night. Sozzled guests are losing sight of their children, losing track of their alcohol consumption and embarrassingly attempting to Vogue. But we're not with them. No. We're on the singles' table. You know the one. It's near the back of the room, next to the speakers. It's a refuge of misfits and lonely hearts. Different ages. Diverse professions. One common, inescapable, unchanging relationship status. And on this night, on the back of several bottles of champagne, our singles jokingly arrive at a solution - if not to their love lives, then at least to their real estate angst and their inability to get a foot on the property ladder: they could pitch in and buy a house together. Like, a really big house. A house beyond the reach of any of their married friends. It's a crazy idea. Plus they're drunk. And they will most likely just forget about it in the morning. But then our singles wake, desperately hung over, many of them facing another painful day of house hunting and bills and work and reality. A reality which is, if we're being totally honest, lonely. And suddenly this out-of-left-field real estate option is strangely compelling. It's ridiculous, isn't it? A recipe for disaster, surely? You can't co-invest, much less co-habit with people you barely know... Unless it was just for six months. Unless there were strict parameters, you know, things like no sleeping together, no surprises. With such clear ground rules, how bad could it be? There's just one glaring problem: they'll have to actually live with each other.