View from the 18th floor

In that classic little movie, Gharaonda (1977), Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab play a young, not-too-affluent couple whose life revolves around buying a house, their little gharaonda or nest, so they can get married and live happily ever after.

In that classic little movie, Gharaonda (1977), Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab play a young, not-too-affluent couple whose life revolves around buying a house, their little gharaonda or nest, so they can get married and live happily ever after.

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The house is a metaphor for stability in their relationship; the house is an anchor, a thing of permanence. They don’t eventually buy that house — or get married — but as we walk with them on their journey, we get to see their dream taking shape, almost brick by brick.

Millions of couples, families and singletons in Mumbai have the same dream. Some chase it earlier in their lives than others, some spend their life chasing it and don’t quite make it, but it’s still a dream to reckon with for most of us.

Walking through an under-construction building site sometimes reconstructs that dream for us. Even though, right now, dreams cost in the range of a crore of rupees.

sea-view involved.

The work in progress I pick is Pearl Heights, an 18-floor upcoming high-rise on Yari Road, just after the mandir-masjid landmark. We visit the site as prospective customers intending to buy a flat. I am still overwhelmed by the number of zeroes in a crore, but this location has me dreaming and nothing can stop you from dreaming, can it?

A sea-facing flat on the higher floors is what we’d like to see, we say. We are taken up the tower by the service elevator. The higher levels are to be negotiated through the stairway, an experience that takes you back to the years when stairways were something whose banisters you slid down, before you got spoilt silly by robotic lifts with piped music.

I bring out my (rather limited) Vaastu knowledge and ask our guide about the north and east angles. He suggests a north-west location for my sensibilities. I make a mental note.

The sea-facing flats turn out to be a bit of an early bird incentive They, of course, come at a premium of some Rs 1,000 extra per

square foot. But what’s to stop us from checking out the sea-facing flats anyway?

It’s therapeutic to say the least, especially when the windows (and some walls) are missing. Pearl Heights has what are called “Malad-facing” and “Versova-facing” flats.

The first has a part-sea and part-water-treatment-plant view. In the far distance, you see the plant guzzling and spewing gallons of water, with a patch of shimmering sea and a smattering of mangroves. The second has a view that is all sea — bobbing boats and all.

LOOK, NO NEIGHBOURS

There is something liberating about the lack of doors, about not knowing where one flat ends and another begins; about feeling (at least for a brief length of time) that the floor is all yours and you don’t have to draw the drapes — because your (non-existent) neighbours aren’t looking.

You are free to imagine where you’ll have your rocking chair, your book case, your favourite painting, the dining table and the loo.

Floors without tiles, bathrooms without taps, kitchens without counters, cement bags strewn across, the corrugated paper wrappings holding sheets of glass and rows of tiles — they all add an element of romance, dusty though it is, and now you know why Amol Palekar and Zarina Wahab repeatedly went to the house of their dreams.

And then there’s the scaffolding — raw, rugged, earnest, yet adventure-filled. And there is the smell of wet cement, the fine dust that settles on your clothes… all acquire pleasurable dimensions in this context.

A quick look at the ‘done up’ sample flat destroys all the imagery in an instant. Suddenly, you see clichéd images of the house of your dreams — modular kitchens, sterile fittings and unused furniture.

Skip that visit and stick to taking in the view instead. In this case, one of the sea. It’s a view that insulates you from the mania of a city infested by under-construction metros, flyovers and skywalks. The sea seems like an antidote to the mess all around. One look at it, and all seems right with the world.

This weekly column explores the city’s varied low-cost pleasures