Dream Home — Home Dream
Super built-up area, built-up area, carpet area et al are constant math functions in their heads. Three, two, one, and even zero bedrooms are the downsized dreams they settle for relative to what they can afford. A zero bedroom!? Yeah, that’s a surrogate word for ‘One Room Kitchen’ in a hyper-clustered metropolis like Mumbai, where I transformed from a chrysalis to an adult and lived in exile for more than a decade and a half, cut off from the roots for all practical purposes barring a few occasional visits home. You don’t hear a ‘One Room Kitchen’ anywhere else in the world. For a millionaire in any part of the world to even think of a ‘wasp habitat’ is a crime, not for the ones in Mumbai! In fact, they became one by investing in ORK, or RK for short. We are not restricted to discussing millionaires who inherited from the patrimony, business owners, and multi-talented individuals. Buying real estate is a piece of cake for them. This story is not about them.
As for the rest; buy cheap in a low-buzz locality, sell high, churn and grow capital, buy-sell, think big, and risk big. Have a heart? And have guts? And here — money. That’s how it works in that world. Perhaps it works the same way in every scheme that involves a rat race, excellence, success, fame, or big fortune.
Like everyone in that city dreamed of their own house, I also did. At least an RK — a last resort for a poor man’s housing ambitions. RK is not a taboo for me as I lived my pubescent small-town life in a ghetto-like locality where everything you spoke inside the house was heard from three households away in all directions and vice versa.
Having settled for a small deal, you are ready to break your piggy bank securing lifetime savings for the down payment, registration, stamp duty, GST, and paperwork. The bankers are ready to move your papers as soon as you turn in their fee, and you’re good to go? Well, not yet. You have to play the black & white game. Doesn’t sound that great? These are the fancy ratios thrown at you. 70:30, 80:20, 60:40 etc. The figures indicate the extent to which you must work your ass off to feed the rapacious builders morons with unaccounted money. Landlords and those bidding on their properties learned of this dirty dealing from them and showed stone-faced resistance to any request to relax the B/W ratio. With traps set, the dreamers floundered overboard with debts to pay these predators.
As they emerged prosperous, proud of their risk appetite, they sang the b/w song out loud. They became pawns in this parallel economy, serving as the exploiter’s mouthpiece. Those who failed thought it was pointless and wrote articles instead.
All my fruitless attempts threw me out of the game, and I eventually moved out of the city to pursue something better. The home dream was probably not my cup of tea or at least I believed so.
My dad wasn’t as horrible. The early 2000s saw him achieve his dream in Erode, an agro-industrial town 60 miles from our native place. He paid more than twice as much worth for a building with lousy looks and rudimentary interiors designed by the local builder goon. When it was his turn to be cheated, he got cheated in installments as though he signed a subscription for it. It wasn’t his fault. After all, he was a poor retired man investing his lifetime savings and superannuation for one dream — owning a house. He walked in & was trapped. There is no straight bailout unless you have the guts to take on the rogues.
When the structure and beam sprouted from the ground and stood, wore bricks and cement smears all around, decent enough to be called a building, the builder charged him for roof flooring probably the seventh or eighth time. The local builders traditionally mix some tile chips, cement, and sand as the base, then add a waterproofing layer to it after days of curing. My dad’s dream was probably jinxed to an extent that the mix was washed down the drain by rain three times in a row. On one occasion, the drunk mason mixed terracotta for cement to lay the foundation! The eyewitness account of that incident says that the man lay flat on the six-inch thick terracotta coating drunk and sang a song from a Tamil movie album. The line goes ‘pothukkittu oothuthadi vaanam…’ which roughly translates to ‘Cloud burst and pouring, you hunty…’
All this was happening in a span of 5 years. A ranch like this should be raised in no more than 3 months at the very most. This builder has been behind bars and in prison twice over fraud cases slapped on him for his big-scale scams. The government changed, rainwater harvesting regulations were enacted, and land prices and raw material costs skyrocketed. Seniors who were waiting to meet St. Peter have also bid adieu, while others who watched the building grow slowly have also died out of boredom. My dad bore the brunt of everything. But after all, he was eventually successful, unlike me.
Things have changed over the years. The youth of Tier 2 cities, including my generation, dream innovatively and care about the environment. They sit and plan as a team involving every family member and friend. Blend and mix the infinite combinations of clay, straw, marbles, and coconut shell to Go Green. The bricks, sand, paint, ventilation, urban agriculture, compost pits, beekeeping, you name it, they meticulously bind it all on paper! They add bells and whistles to perfection like a seasoned architect from a Zurich school of architecture. They know all the jargon of this new arena and use trendy words such as sustainable materials, renewed energy, gardening, symbiotic and ecological. Friends and relatives gather to witness the wonder, celebrate, jubilate, and invite them to their piece of wonder to return the favor.
Chasing the dream, a distant cousin of mine who built his ‘dream’ also had to lose his share of the pie to a builder. This builder walked away with a hefty one million Indian rupees with an unfinished terrace and some interiors he promised for. This is a common story across India amongst dreamers and builders. Dreamers lose money and builders steal the money as if it is their birthright!
Side hustles, a new economy, being goal-oriented, hailing from a business family, and filthy wealth have all changed the realm of possibilities for dreamers. They don’t mind losing the money on the final lap of their race. Imagination and creativity are the limits, not money anymore.
The losers are referencing the Tamil spiritual term “Veedu Peru Adaithal” which translates to “Be the luckiest to get home”. The implied or figurative or philosophical meaning is to attain “Moksha” or be freed from the cycle of birth and death.
