Dreams fall flat

The real estate boom is fast consuming all of us and we humans are becoming victims of a vicious game being played by the so-called developers, writes Kulpreet Yadav.

The real estate boom is fast consuming all of us. Not only are buildings after buildings eating into everything that was green and serene around us, we humans, too, are becoming victims of a vicious game being played by the so-called developers.

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It all begins with them showing you a nice sample flat, which takes your breath away. Before you can snap out of the dream, the bank loan hounds in the vicinity have tricked you into believing that you can actually afford the house. Once that’s done, of course, you end up paying through your nose for the best part of your life.

Everyone dreams of owning his/her own house some day. It is a primal thirst that lives within all of us. I too succumbed a couple of years ago. It was only when I shifted to my newly-acquired house, about a fortnight or so ago, that I realised that I had been taken for a ride. Am I the only one? I am sure not.

The management, now richer by several hundred crore rupees (thanks to the tribe of ignoramuses like me), is least bit bothered. My builder, laying out similar bait, has just launched another ambitious plan to sell many more of such future-imperfect-now-aesthetic flats in a nearby locality. And the best part is, people are thronging to buy the houses.

Just yesterday, sharing the lift with a milk seller, I keenly watched his expression as the lift crossed the fifth floor. As the inevitable happened, and the lift shook as if all hell had broken loose outside, the man shouted in fright. I smiled. We used to behave in the same way earlier.

In all his innocence, when he recovered, he made a quiet declaration, “My God, I think our village dwellings are far better. I am not coming here anymore.” Can we, who have coughed up lakhs of rupees, say the same thing?