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July 28, 2006
Old, but Distinctive
This was published today in the Mumbai Mirror.
Three weeks ago, a close friend of mine invited me to her small house-warming party. She had moved from her house on RAK Rd in Wadala to a new tower, Dosti Elite, on the road behind CineMax, built in one of the industrial compounds that used to exist there alongside the Premier Automobiles workshop.
Till then (and till now) I had only seen a couple of towers in Mumbai, one in Hiranandani and one in Kandivali (E), and so didn’t really have much to compare with. My friend’s place was impressive. We went in after dark and the swimming pool area was shimmering. We saw a gymnasium, a lovely jogging track, gardens, ample parking and pretty nice apartments and it was difficult to believe that we were just a 5-minutes walk away from the blusteringly busy Sion Circle.
Living as most of us in Matunga do, in our 1 by 3s or 1 by 2s (i.e. 3 or 2 storied plus ground floor), this seemed really nice. For a short while, we kept thinking, how nice it would be to move to such a self-contained residential complex with its own facilities and avoid having to go out to stand-alone clubs or gardens. Apart from being self-contained, they also seem better maintained.
As against that, the older Matunga places offer larger areas for the same price, based on carpet areas and not on super super built-up concepts. The families are more cohesive and as we recently experienced during the summer vacations, the kids really get to form their “gangs” much more easily. But most buildings being landlord-owned, aren’t all that well maintained.
And then Shameem Akthar’s piece, two Tuesdays back, stopped me short. Can it really get that bad living in a cluster of towers? I can completely understand being a “nobody”, getting sucked into a quagmire of insensitivities, such that you start questioning your very being and existence…but I thought this only applied to ICICI internet banking and not to tower homes. And just as I increasingly find that we are better off with our “friendly” neighborhood nationalized banks, who with their “human touch”, prevent us from sinking into the “nobody” syndrome, I wonder if our small 1 by 3s and 1 by 2s are not so bad after all. So what if you have to go Matunga Gymkhana for swimming and listen to a gaggle of mothers in the afternoon besides the swimming pool discussing the best fashion designer in our area. Maybe that is how we retain our sanity and remain “somebodies”.
The sad thing however, is that if you are in the market for a new apartment, you really don’t have a choice, but to go “tower-size”. And if you do decide that you want to live in a small building, these properties are not readily available, unless you buy pre-owned older apartments, which are often rentals, which means you have to pay “pagdi” and you don’t land up owning those places. Yet, the demand for these “old” apartments isn’t really going down, and in the last few weeks, I’ve had at least three colleagues asking me to lookout for any “old” apartments that I might know of that are for sale or rent.
I have now identified my new profession if things go wrong with the current one: Real-Estate Agent for Old Properties in Matunga.
Posted by bhavinj at July 28, 2006 05:13 PM
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