The SMS is short and clear. Rahul grits his teeth but knows he has no choice.

He has just an hour to rush back from college to his and Srilata’s flat, throw all his stuff into his suitcases and clear out. She doesn’t want to see him when she returns home.

On his way to the flat, Rahul rings up his best friend, Akaash, and asks to be put up for the night.

Rahul will only be gone a short time, though. That is, from the time Srilata’s father arrives in Pune, which could be any moment now, till he returns to Mumbai in a couple of days.

Rahul has been doing this every six months or so, and he’s not the only one.

With more and more college students opting for live-in relationships in Mumbai and Pune, such partings at a moment’s notice are becoming a part of their lives.

An hour later, Srilata walks into the flat and freezes at the sight of her boyfriend’s ashtray lying on the table. One bound across the room while she diverts her father’s attention to something else, and the ashtray has disappeared into the trash bin.

There’s still his slippers to be kicked under the bed when she enters the bedroom. Oh, men… but she’s still better off than Sucheta, who has to ask Ajay to shut up every time her parents call from Calcutta at night.

Srilata breaks into a giggle. Living in with your boyfriend without your parents’ knowledge can be fun. Especially when you are both teenaged and callow and the future doesn’t seem to hold any clouds.

“I had known my girlfriend for hardly three months when she moved in with me. Both of us were studying away from home, in Pune,” says Abhimanyu Oberoi.

The relationship ended in heartbreak for him, but he doesn’t regret it.

“Those were happy days. I spent every moment with her,” says the CNBC-TV18 producer who is the only one ready to reveal his identity (all the others in this report have had their names changed).

Ruhi Aslam was 20 when she moved in with her boyfriend. “It was an easy decision,” the now 22-year-old call centre worker says.

“It’s difficult for a single girl to get a place in Mumbai, and now with the pressures of my job, I would hardly see him if I didn’t live with him.”

The teens, mostly living on an allowance, have an added, crucial, reason.

“See, if I am living with my boyfriend, all my expenses get halved. We share everything — the rent, the daily expenses,” says 19-year-old Sucheta. “Besides, between college and assignments, how else could I have had time for him?”

More equal

But time is quality time. For one thing, the young boyfriends are far more ready to do their share of the household chores than older men might be.

“I do the cleaning and washing. You can ask her,” Anand, Ruhi’s boyfriend, grins.

“Yes, unlike a marriage, where the woman usually does all the housework, we here divide it up. He cooks what he can, I do the rest. Sometimes when the maid doesn’t come, he washes the clothes and the dishes as well. We joke about it….”

How difficult is it to find landlords who would let rooms to a young unmarried couple?

It’s not a problem. Since they share the rent, the boys and girls can afford flats in semi-upscale localities where people aren’t inquisitive.

“It would be different, of course, in Calcutta,” Sucheta suggests.

Do the young couples think about the future? For Ruhi, living in with her boyfriend is a stepping stone to married life: “We’ve decided we’ll marry in a couple of years.”

But Sucheta hasn’t thought that far. “I take life as it comes. If I finally marry him, I shall be very happy, but if it doesn’t happen I will surely move on.”

Yet, most live-in couples who have split have found it difficult to “move on”.

“When you are married, you have the support of your family and a social sanction to fall back on. In a live-in relationship, you have to deal with the break-up alone,” says Abhimanyu.

“Also, because you are so young, you never think that things can go wrong. Your friends take a back seat because after college, you run back to your partner and then it’s ‘us’ time.

“Eventually, you end up losing your friends. So when the break-up happens, it’s difficult to cope.”

Sangeeta, 20, agrees. “We were very young, so the fact that he was my best friend is something I cannot forget. Every time I want to talk to someone, I think of him. I realise that had I been older, I would’ve been able to judge him as a person better.”

Some of the girls have heard about the National Commission for Women’s demand for alimony rights for live-in girlfriends, but they don’t think it applies to them.

“Why should I ask him for money? He hasn’t forced me to do anything! He’s shouldering the same responsibilities as I am,” says Arushi, who has just moved in with her classmate Ajay.

“If it doesn’t work out, fine,” she shrugs. “The best thing about this life is that we don’t need a written law to be with each other. There are no compulsions, yet there’s a bond that keeps us together.”

Deodorant, anyone?

Is it easy to keep the parents deceived? Seems so, for none of the couples spoken to were ever caught.

“My parents would kill me if they found out,” Srilata shudders. “Rahul is a chain smoker, so when my father came to visit me recently, I had to spray deodorant in the rooms. I was so nervous — I kept praying the neighbours wouldn’t mention him in their conversations. Everything went off well, but I’ll never forget those two days.”

Families can pose problems in other ways too.

“See, my boyfriend belongs to a different community. My parents would expect him to convert if we have to marry. So it’s better this way — and we keep putting marriage off,” says Rubina Hasan, 21.

“Would you believe it, he’s so particular about my needs during my fasts! He knows more about the rituals than I do.”

Psychiatrist Harish Shetty feels the trend will grow, at least among the urban middle class.

“I believe that many parents do have an inkling about it, but they pretend they don’t know. Later, if the kids are happy, they give in.”