The ugly truth behind my beautiful home

My recent post on FaceBook where I shared the news of my living room being featured in an article written by my interior designer had friends and relatives congratulating me and sharing my happiness. Of course, I was on top of the moon. However, I could not push away a sense of despair, a twinge of sadness, and a feeling of unrest that has clung to me ever since we moved into this house, our first home.

We all dream of owning tastefully done up, beautiful homes. We strive and work hard towards buying that house we believe will be our cozy haven where we can retreat after a long day's hard work, to sink comfortably into our mattresses, cushioning ourselves from all worldly worries.

However, what if this very dream turns into the bane of your existence?

I'm sure you are now perplexed, aghast even to see how ungrateful I sound.

Let me explain. I love my home, but, this is only a part of the entire truth. And, here, I speak for hundreds of other families who deal with this ugly truth each day. A good locality is as important as a good home, don't you think? And, a good locality necessarily translates to having a proper, clean access road that is wide enough to accommodate vehicles and pedestrians, is well-lit during the night, a functioning drainage system and clean piped water. Even as I type this out it seems unbelievable that these primary demands are still applicable. Isn't it a pity that even after so many years of independence and democratic rule, such basic needs are not met? Yet, we from Thubarahalli locality, stand deprived of all of this, and thus, feel cheated; forced to come to terms with our crushed dreams.

This our "access road" that spells death-trap when it rains, as you can see: a muddy path that resembles the surface of the moon with crater-sized potholes. This has been its state for over several years now. The last couple of years has been most crucial because of the mushrooming of several high-rise apartments on either side. This patch spells doom in all ways for the residents that include several little children and the elderly. The dust storm raised during dry seasons, thanks to the vehicular traffic, has most us wheezing and coughing for the majority of the year. And, do I even need to chalk out the dangers we land ourselves in when it rains?

This is sadly the truth in many pockets of the so-called Silicon City or Garden City that Bangalore is popularly known as. Hapless customers are trapped in multiple layers and levels of bureaucracy. Corrupt, disinterested officials work in tandem with the dishonest real-estate builders who choose to build apartments over pieces of land embroiled in several ownership litigations, leaving end-customers to deal with such aftermath. (If have worse luck, you also end up (like me) reaping the fruits of choosing a wrong builder who decides to also screw up your remaining sanity.)

How is this mess first created? 

Most real-estate projects here are built on private lands with internal agreements between the landowner and the builder to surrender a portion for an access road. How legal or reliable these agreements are, is anybody's guess. The responsible BBMP approves real-estate projects without any due diligence. The builders in turn, armed with "government/sanction approvals" and "clear title papers", lure gullible customers with their glib marketing speech. (In our case, we were time and again assured of how the "road" is just a few months away and will indeed be ready even before their projects get over). Much like the jokes on HR management, in the real-estate sector too, the customer is treated with kid gloves only until the sale agreement is signed. And, in today's times of extra-inflated real-estate prices, once a flat is purchased, there is no looking back for an average buyer.

Caught in the myth of the golden deer, buyers end up running from pillar to post rousing sleeping officials, imploring them to take cognizant of their plight. To show that they are genuinely interested in the welfare of the citizens, the local corporators and MLAs diligently turn up at strategic points in their political career (read election time or when firefighting situations like a mob protest) and make feeble attempts to set right things. A few days of energetic activity around the area and your hopes are raised. Finally, deliverance, you think. The energy, but, fizzles out even before you say cheers and it's back to square one.

And, mind you, this is "supposedly" an upcoming locality with close proximity to good schools, offices, and swanky malls. In fact, there is a very popular school, running their business (education has also become a business, these days, no?) for the past eight years, at the end of this very sham of a road. There are talks of an upcoming Metro and an underpass to ease traffic in the adjacent corridor. You might think that's good news. After all they are signs of development, right? Hell no, I only shudder at the prospect because this would mean more chaos for we all know our government only likes to introduce new projects with complete disregard for their organized implementation.

So, while we live in plush interiors, our surrounding is no better than that of slum dwellers. Such an irony! We diligently pay taxes, squirrel away our savings, live on a shoe-string budget to fulfil our dreams, but end up being mere puppets in a play of power orchestrated by corrupt officials and dishonest builders. Can you imagine my heartburn now as we risk our lives and vehicles, trudging, plowing on this patch several times a day? Even shopping for essentials needed to be a planned affair, because, of course, we need to keep our nightmares to the minimum. 

It's not that we have chosen to suffer in silence. Our voices are just not being heard or perhaps ignored. We have an official FaceBook group that has active members carrying out dialogues with the local corporators, carried out peaceful protests, staged satyagrahas, signed online petitions, alerted the media and even tried to level out the patch ourselves. 

Residents from adjoining apartments joining hands to make the road motorable.

Isn't it time the "responsible" officials do their duty? Is it really out of their capacity to bulldoze these errant landowners to surrender part of the land that is supposed to be a legal road? And, if this is, indeed, illegally seized by the real-estate builders as claimed by the landowners, how did the government sanction the projects in the first place? We need answers and soon!

Come August 1st, 2015, we have planned another peaceful protest. Will we ever see the light, err road?

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Utilizing space, and how!

Space matters. And no one understands this better than someone who has lived a considerable amount of time in a space-crunched city like Mumbai. Jostling for space is not a new concept for Mumbaikers. From trying to secure a standing position in a packed local to utilizing the tiniest corner of a one BHK flat, every inch matters. Only a person who has lived in this interesting city understands the importance of a sq.ft in the real sense. If  you've ever been to a typical apartment flat in Mumbai suburbs, you'd exactly know what I'm talking about.

No corner, niche, or extra (if any) space ever goes wasted in the quintessential home of a Mumbaiker. One can marvel at how people fit in an entire household replete with all the modern, essential and luxurious fittings in a 600 sq.ft flat that will have a complete functioning kitchen, a living room cum dining cum entertainment area, a bedroom cum study. Mostly every space doubles up as something else and every corner gets utilized into a relevant storage area for all practical purposes. A sofa-cum-bed, a cabinet shelf that doubles up as a study table when opened, a bigger than usual balcony that gets converted into a room by enclosing the window area, a dresser built into the wardrobe, all of these are trademark ways of optimizing utility of the available area. Space economics attains a whole new dimension.

A person used to living in these conditions also develops such a conditioned thinking where space wasted becomes storage wasted which is akin to money wasted. When a person from such a background goes to live in a different city that is probably not that space crunched, he begins to feel bad for the criminal wastage of sizeable living space that is squandered away due to poor design of floor plans. It can be highly frustrating and difficult to make peace with the situation where one has the luxury of spacious houses (in terms of sq.ft) on paper but valuable portions of such area goes un-utilised due to disproportionate allocation (for.e.g. a flat having a huge dining space but a cramped up master bedroom) thanks to incompetent floor planning by the builder. Sleep is certainly lost over how to increase productive area and decrease non-productive ones.


Working around the original floor plan involves a lot of work (read glib talk, marketing skills, in short a lot of headache). Knocking down and adding a few walls may not be as simple as it seems. The original design architect is mostly someone who does not have enough aesthetic sense or is perhaps wedged between the constraints laid down by the builder. For, nothing else can explain the sheer stupidity and lack of aesthetic appeal shown in some floor plans. The execution of these plans is overseen by site structural engineers who work in 2-3 hierarchy levels. A simple change can be okayed by the first level guy. If he does not have the required authority to sanction the change, the 2nd/3rd level guys need to be involved. In all this daunting milieu, the poor customer suffers greatly, for not only is he paying through his nose for a house he dreams of making into a home, but he is also required to make several layers of compromises with the look and structure of the house.

Is it too much to ask of the builders to work with some amount of conscience, ethics and sincerity when designing and constructing apartments? Will it be too taxing if they design each apartment with the end customer in mind? Will they lose too much of their wealth if they can provide a decent carpet area along with good amenities for a cost that does not seem as though the target customers are only NRIs? Why is that a common average man, even after gathering all his resources has to settle down for a house, not because it fits into his idea of a dream home but because that is only what he can afford?

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A rant

I know I know, I said it is break time and here is a new post from me. But let me warn you, it is purely a rant. Had to get it out of my system. So guys you are free to skip reading the following.

It has been a crazy and sick-literally- holiday so far. For the first 10 days, R and S (niece) took ill one after the other. We barely got well and adjusted to the new place and my mom has now fallen sick. R is still being strange. He is back to his naughty and mischievous self, no doubt. But he rarely plays alone with my parents. Not even his paati with whom he was all chummy just a month back at Bangalore. Five minutes with them and he begins to look for me. This has thrown all my plans of meeting friends, shopping and general TP out of the window. There is no point dragging him along for the above itinerary.  He wouldn't relish it or let me either. Also, he eating all my time by insisting on viewing some rhymes whenever I get a chance to be at the computer. The keyboard and CPU being at his reach makes it difficult for me to multi-task this activity which otherwise I used to do at my place. Not only the computer but the switches around the house are all at his reach and when he is not bothering me, he is playing truant with them-"on", "off" goes each one of them like a discotheque. Hardly amusing when the house has been recently renovated with every corner shining clean and bright. I am just putting it down (the clingy behaviour, that is) to being at a new place compounded by the fact that his dad is not around. Though, given his hitherto easy-going nature has me unconvinced with this reasoning. But, you can't really predict toddler behaviour, right? Hoping that this is temporary phase and he has not morphed suddenly into a clingy, insecure child. *crossing fingers*.

My worries carry further. Hubby might have to travel abroad starting mid-Nov for about 6 weeks. This translates to me having to come back to Mumbai for the said period. With R's current behaviour, that's hardly a jump-with-glee situation for me. That's not all, we had a sight-seeing trip to Bhubaneshwar planned along with my sister's family in Dec to coincide with my cousin's wedding there. I was looking forward to that trip since the time we got to know of the wedding which is like 6 months now. I'll still go for the wedding but am seriously reconsidering taking the sight-seeing route 'cause am really not up to putting up with R in his current persona all alone. To manage a hyper-active AND clingy toddler all alone is not my idea of a vacation. I am not even talking about the multitude of ticket rescheduling that will have to be done. I am still sulking with the new development, though. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.


Phew! rant over.

P.S.: Secretly hoping that the visa gets rejected *casting an evil-spell, muhahahaa*

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