Do you need to buy that house?

Should you buy a new house in a city? In one word: No. Buying a house in a city is a pain in the arse. And it doesn’t make economic sense. Let me tell you as a person who bought and sold two houses in a span of 10 years. 

Like most young people, I was made to think that buying a house is the coolest thing to do to show that you have arrived. After you buy the house, you do it up with fancy stuff. Huge sofas, cooking range, tables. double beds, big TVs and in my case, a big aquarium, were the things you acquire for the house. And there is no end to these things, a geyser, a shoe stand, a car, crockery, wood work, that beautiful chair, that yellow lamp shade, this coffee percolater, that potted plant and the list goes on. A no or an inability to buy these trinkets of modern life can trigger intense dissatisfaction that can even dissolve a marriage or spoil happiness for weeks on end.

Economically, also an apartment or an independent house doesn’t make sense. I was made to believe that when you buy a house, you save on income tax. Pure rubbish. For the house that I owned till a few hours back, I paid Rs 540 as interest everyday. That is Rs 15000 pm and Rs 2,25,000 per year. And the money I repaid each year? Rs 96,000. If I didnt own the house, I might have paid Rs 1.5 lakhs as IT but I would have had Rs 75000 more to spend on my family. 

So the IT you save when you buy a house on a loan, is the interest you pay! Stupid. Either way you are a loser. One way your hard earned money goes to pay the bank employees or the other way it goes to pay government employees so that they can have a luxurious life.

Most houses in urban areas are overpriced. Just search any online site and there are dozens of postings for houses. Rs 50 lakhs to Rs 2.2 crores is very normal. An average urban salary earner makes about Rs 50,000 per month, so the price of a house is 100 times his monthly salary! Think of all the family sacrifices necessary to payback this huge money! 

The houses are overpriced because Indians have a lot of black money. Even I was a willing contributor to black money. While buying the house, the builder asked how much can you give as cash. I quoted an amount. He wanted more. The bells didn’t ring in my mind that the money I am giving as cash is disappearing from the system. But even the builder has to pay cash when he is buying iron, sand, cement, plumbing and other building materials, because none of these dealers accept cheque or card and don’t give bills! So, all the houses we buy just adds to the hoard of black money.

Doesn’t the government know this? Of course. A paint can sold by Asian Paint or Durolux or some other company has a price and the company tells shareholders how much it has sold, but somehow our sales tax officials don’t seem to know about it. Corporate India knows how many iron rods have been sold, but the government doesn’t seem to know, creating a huge stash of unaccounted money. 

Now that I have sold the house, I am free. I have some money in the bank and the freedom to live in the area I like. Oh the rent? That will be about half the EMI I used to pay. Will the rents go up? Not much. There are so many houses owned by people with black money, that the supply outstrips the demand. I used to pay Rs 3000 for a single bedroom house in Marredpally about 12 years back. Now, the same house can be rented for Rs 8000. Inflation? Guess, here it is not a problem. To put it in perspective. A cappuchino used to cost me Rs 8 and a frappe Rs 35, now one of them costs Rs 92 and  another Rs 143 at Cafe Coffee Day. 

So, should you buy a house or rent a house? 

Oh BTW I want to rent a house near Somajiguda or Nanal Nagar.

Turtle tales by the sea

The alarm went off at 3.30 am and without hitting the snooze button, I switched it off. First triumph of will over habit. The rest of morning chores were easy enough and I was out of the house by 3.45 am, with my trusted cameras and ready for the encounter with Olive Ridley turtles that roost and lay eggs across a wide swathe of Orissa’s long coastline. After a breezy journey of about 30 km from my home in Gopalpur on Sea, after crossing the Rushukulya river, we were on the lookout for a village called Gokharkutta. And a pointer by WWF that showed the way to Rushukulya Rookery, the largest nesting ground for the endagered Olive Ridley turtles. 

Off the NH5, we were zipping on a village road that was as smooth as the pimpled cheek of a teenager, though it was made with concrete. We had a cellphone number with a promise that the person would show us the hatchlings, but we will have to give him Rs 300. When you want to make  a discovery, do you want to take a short cut and a guide? Heck no. Dr Ram Kulesh Thakur, the English teacher of NIST playing the role of a guide as well the driver, said his Maruti Alto can match a Merc and his knowledge of the place would be better than a local's. 

And there we were driving beside the irrigation canal (old travel tale: all rivers lead to the sea), and we saw a pile of concrete chips heaped on the road. “Oh! It is a moment’s work,” said the guide and drove bravely on. Grrrr, grree, the wheels started spinning wildly while the car remained in its place. A little investigation revealed that the undercarriage of the car was stuck on the chips while the wheels were free! After some sweating and pushing, as first rays of sunlight shimmered like gold in the river channel, we were as stuck as ever. Then a passing bare torsoed jogger, with a red gamcha (loincloth), stopped and gave a push and with a bit of luck, we reversed the car for yet another adventure, as the guide said he got confused by a new temple. “This road is closed, you have to take the other road,” someone advised and we discovered that turtles are called ‘kancho’ in Oriya and ‘tabelu’ in Telugu. 

Driving through a diversion that passed over agricultural fields and through a one-car road village, we were near the sea. About a km away, as we walked in the sand, we could see a gentle orange ball of fire shimmering in the sea. And at a distance, the cawing of crows. 

A clutch of local boys in shorts started walking along with us. 

On the sandbar, the WWF signboard on the green plastic net perimeter had a stern warning about the rookery and the signature of DFO, Berhampur with two entrances for dogs and foxes. The pug marks were everywhere. And there were fresh marks of something big walking on the sand. “These are the prints of a mother Olive Ridley turtle, she must be here somewhere,” said Ram, and sure enough ahead of us was a huge lumbering turtle with yellow, green and black pattern and eyes the size of oranges. 

Inside a small lagoon were bobbing heads of the other turtles waiting to cross the sandbar into the sea. Aim the camera, and whoosh, they would were gone. The pattern kept repeating itself. Between the lagoon and the sea, was the heartbreak of white shells that could be seen for yards. Crows, crabs, dogs feasted on the eggs and hatchlings. An occasional fish eagle would swoop down to pick up a hatchling for a snack. On the other side, as high waves of new moon crashed ashore, sweeping away the sand, rows and rows of eggs were there for picking by a clutch of ravens. The eggs looked like a bunch of grapes, stacked as they were one on top of other.

“A few days back, when I came alone to see how the turtles lay their eggs, I was in for a surprise. Around 2 am, a big turtle waded ashore and after crawling a few feet away from the sea, it started digging using its hind flippers. Once the hole in the ground was sufficiently big, it started laying eggs as I noticed it had ceased digging and was stationary. I switched on my Lava phone’s torchlight and I could see round white balls covered with a shiny substance fall one after the other: plock, plock, plock. Then the turtle stopped laying eggs and began covering up the eggs with sand. And then it began the process again,” informed Ram Thakur.

“We have come here to see turtle hatchlings make a dash to the sea, and all wee are these lumbering helpless beasts?" I mumbled as we started walking back to the Merc-Alto.  "Ye dekho, ye dekho chota kachua," shouted Ram with excitement pointing at a small black thing, which moved occasionally. As I shooed away the boys following us from trampling on the baby turtle, we were in for a dilemma. Should we interfere with nature and its survival of fittest rule and watch the struggle that may end in a heartbreak? Or should we give a helping hand to nature, and carry the baby turtle to the sea and release it? 

To hell with Darwin and environmentalists, I picked up the turtle in a small patch of sand and ran to the sea. As the waves lapped the shore, I gently put down my patch of sand with the turtle and waited. Shwoosh, shwoosh and the small ball of blackness was washed away. Then, it got washed back. Swoosh and the bigger tide just took it away with the small flippers wriggling before disappearing forever. From the time I saw the big turtle to the time of holding the baby turtle and releasing it into the sea, and watching it disappear, it was an exhiliarating transcendental experience, that I never knew.    

On the other side of the netted enclosure are two cordoned off squares with round wicker baskets and a pointer about the number of eggs and a date. Inside one of them, a hatchling kept walking to find a way out, when a WWF person walked in like a king. Stripping himself to shorts and tee, the young man pulled of a violet rubber glove onto his right hand and started digging furiously. He would stop, pull out a dead turtle that couldn’t dig its way out and throw it aside. “Today only four have hatched, yesterday there were 80,” he said. 

But I had released one baby turtle to the sea. Who knows, years down the line, some 80 years later the same Olive Ridley turtle will waddle ashore and lay its eggs and another generation will have the transcendental experience of seeing the circle of life in a few hours in a small patch of sand between a river and a sea! That would be something.

Phailin ke pehley Phailin ke baad Gopalpur

“It began as a gentle breeze on the morning of October 12. By afternoon anything that could fly was flying. Then it became very dark and the rain came in sheets and the sound of wind changed to a shrill sharp whistle. Then silence. Utter quiet. At 8.30 p.m. there was a distant roar with whooo sound, like a pack of wolves, it was coming from all sides and it grew fearsomely louder. I remembered 1999 and ran inside and bolted the door and the pet dog wouldn’t leave my side,” says Venkatesh, a fisherman, who saw Cyclone Phailin strike Gopalpur on Sea just 600 metres from the coastline.

“It was like a mirror. A sheet of water and me and my friends could not take a step in the rain without the fear of being blown away,” says Ritesh, an engineering student, who clambered to the terrace of hostel building of National Institute of Science and Technology.

Repairing, make it reassembling, their thatched house, the fisherfolk in Kotta Bauxpalli how they were forced to leave with whatever they could carry on their person on the day of the cyclone and shifted to a school on the hill. “When we came back, there was nothing left, we could salvage some bamboo sticks and brought some new coconut leaves to put the roof back on,” says Korlamma, a housewife, as the family works on the thatched house.  

They said Cyclone Phailin packed the power of 100 H-bombs. Oddly enough, Gopalpur and its neighbouring villages now resemble a warzone with nothing vertical except concrete constructions. Some cellphone towers have appear as if they are draped around the building they were standing. Centuries old banyan and peepul trees have been plucked out of ground like rice plants. Transmission towers and coconut trees have been snapped into two like matchsticks.  

It will take some years for the villagers to get back on to their feet.

My Amma

This is my mother. Today is her birthday. If she was alive, she would have been 79. I am
here because of her. Every time I see this haunting photograph clicked at a cousin's wedding
in Visakhapatnam, I think about how I would have clicked her photograph now. Sitting on the big green chair at our Nagpur home, or the sofa for which she designed white covers with her embroidery of elephants, deer and peacocks? Or in the kitchen where she used to cook the awesome yet simple dishes?
With the cake she used to bake for my birthday and hide it in the attic out of my reach? Or in the sprawling house of her father which is now a hotel? The mind races with ideas and photo op images.
We lived in Nagpur, Motibaug Colony, Q No 173/4. I don't remember much about her appearance except for the fact that when I see myself in the mirror, I see my mother's complexion. I remember the white conch bangle, the red bangles she would wear along with the gold bangles and big red dot of sindoor. Born into prosperity and pelf in Gopalpur on Sea in Orissa, marriage brought her to first Nainpur and then Nagpur where my father was posted. Summer vacations would mean the 1000 km trip of two days switching three trains and endless hours in waiting rooms where I would get to sleep on the bedding roll (do you guys remember) which had the smell of vintage leather thanks to the straps.
A woman can be herself or be a mother. My mother was both. By being a mother to three children didn't affect her personality. Or did it? Everytime I see a black and white movie with her favourite song in Telugu and Hindi I wish she was alive today. In the age before TV, the Philips valve radio was our window to the world. We listened to news, songs, stories and then some. Afternoons meant listening to radio Cuddapah Kendram which was the source of Telugu songs and culture at home.
Amma surrounded us with culture. We had an aquarium before it was a rage, my brother had a Hawaiian guitar at a time when mothers would hit their children for not studying, my brother did oil paintings when paints were priced at a premium. Then in the late seventies my brother bought a HMV 1010 ic record player and my world opened to the sounds of ABBA, Bee Gees, Tavares, Osibisa, Beethoven, Manna De, Jagjit and Chitra Singh. Today, as I see helicopter moms trying to control their children's creativity, I wonder about my mother and thank her every living moment for letting me be me: Even when I hid class books to avoid reading. When I was in class VII, my brother bought Stevenson's Treaure Island home which he wanted to gift it to a friend the next day. I had my science exam the next day and I desperately wanted to read the book. My brother wanted none of it. My mother struck a deal for me. If I could answer the questions my brother asked, I would be free to read Treasure Island. My mother knew me well and I won. And I was allowed to read the book till 11 p.m. I was swept away by the sea spray of Stevenson and his characters and it was the beginning of my adventure with words and stories.
Children learn the ways of the world from their fathers and about relationships from their mothers. For me my mother showed both the paths. Her world and ideas were very clear. Her feminine intuition cut through the claptrap of politics. For her Gandhi was the villain of partition for singing religious songs in public sphere and Jinnah a real hero who failed.
"Religion belongs inside the home you don't have to show it to the world," she said. "When Nehru died in 1964 his ashes were sprinkled all over the country and it led to 10 years of drought," she told me and also told me about the heroic Lal Bahadur Shastri who swam across a river to educate himself and as a prime minister came up with the idea of skipping dinner on Tuesday evening to save foodgrains when Pakistan attacked India. Patriotism didn't mean salaming Gandhi or Nehru or calling them ji but in standing up when the National Anthem was being played, whereever we were.
One of her sisters had a troubled marriage at a time when such things didn't exist in respectable families. As a child, I learnt that was unacceptable. How can a man control or ill-treat a woman? Not done. The men folk who peered into other people's houses were deemed bad and those who didn't poke their noses were considered good. I wasn't told what was good or bad, but was given the positive choice.
I was a mamma's boy as I followed her everywhere. I would listen to her conversations with others and keep filing away the information. My brother would have none of it and pull me out of the feminine company. But I had learnt a lot. I became a metrosexual man before the word was coined.
Was it all good? No.
I grew up to be a man unfit for this age of greed, envy and competitive jealousy. A non assertive person who doesn't know when to say no.
But I am happy. I just miss my mother, her sambar, her kaja, her avakai, her mean mutton curry, her dry fish baingan curry, her ugadi pachchadi (I know one other mother who makes it similarly).
This blog post is for my mother who believed in me, my brother and my sister. This is for us. Happy Birthday Amma.

Death of a duck

Years ago, before Discovery Channel and Animal Planet happened. I killed a Ruddy Shelduck in Gopalpur-on-Sea. One of my  uncles had my grandfather's single barrel gun. You load a red coloured cartridge with a certain number on it. The higher the number, the more number of pellets (round bullets) the gun fired. You walk to the edge of a lake or a water body that had a large number of water birds and you fire at the place with highest density of birds and the birds tumble into water that have to be retrieved. If the shooting of the bird appears like a no-brainer, retrieving it is an act of courage. You wade into the slushy lake of unknown depth and long lotus stems that can pull you down and trap you and entangle you. And just when you have reached a nearly dead duck, all it does is waddle one foot and it moves further away from you!
Since, I was young, I was not allowed to shoot the birds. Carry the cartridges, crawl on all fours and retrieve the birds that was the job of a young man.
One afternoon (duck hunting is done in early afternoon when the sun is up and the birds have gorged themselves to the gills and somnolently clean and preen themselves) we reached the edge of the backwaters and the uncle's friend fired at a pair that was waddling near the edge. One pellet struck one bird while the other took to air. Apparently, these ducks mate for life and the bird that was alive would circle the dead one to find its well being. So, like good humans we waited out of sight near the dead duck while its mate circled overhead making raucous calls. It dived down and rose up and did ever tighter circles near its mate. Finally, after about half hour it decided to land near its mate. A duck is very graceful in water but out of it, it is the clumsiest thing on two feet. When it lands, it slows down, rears back, puts its feet first and then waddles to glide into the water. The uncle took aim and fired in the general region where the dead duck was. The bird raised its head in fear and tried to fly off but managed to flap only one wing. The pellet had struck the other wing. I raced into the water and retrieved both the ducks one dead and the other very alive and vigorous bird. It was a beautiful bird. Mainly bright yellow colour with different coloured feathers on its back and neck, bluish beak, and red eyes.
We cycled home with me holding the bird and whole village gawking at the spectacle.
One of my brother's vegetarian Punjabi friend from Nagpur came home on the same day and he was zapped with all the hullabaloo. I took the bird to a neighbouring fisherman who deftly cut the neck of the bird and gave me its body after some time.
That day, dinner was an awesome experience for  me. I would be lying if I say I felt guilt for the bird. The meat was tender, the bones could be chewed  and eaten up.
But now, as a mature person, when I think, I wonder how I could do what I did. Why didn't I bandage the bird's wing and let if fly. Why I didn't stop my uncle from shooting birds that mate for life.
Even now, our education is about marks and human life and not about humanism and nature.

The joy of Totapuri

Mangoes come in two varieties: one you peel, cut, dice and then daintily stab the pieces in a glass bowl with a fruit fork and put it in your mouth. The other mango you  squeeze and crush and then slurp the juice. Mango eaters are also of two varieties: The folks who prefer the cut and eat kind and the people who choose to love the mess of eating a gooey, sticky, fibrous mango with all the attendant drip, dribble and drool.
Unfortunately, the art of eating mango is dying as more and more people switch to the comfort of bottled juices, mango milk shakes, fruit salads and jams. Eating a mango with a fork or a toothpick is like eating a lunch in South India without de rigueur pickle. It isn’t the done thing.
A mango is one of the connects with childhood for most Indians that is renewed every year. A time when summer vacation meant mangoes in a diet. A mango with breakfast, then with lunch and then when adults have tea and one on the sly when nobody is looking.
With exotic names like Hapus aka Alphonso, Imampasand, Jehangir (ironically, Mughal Emperor Akbar who planted one lakh mango trees doesn’t have a variety named after him), Banginpally, Benishan, Totapuri aka Collector, Malgova and a dozen other varieties, the wash, peel, cut and eat mangoes have their own appeal with the comfort and dainty eating. 

It is the myriad juicy varieties with non-royal names like cheruku rasalu, chinna rasalu, pedda rasalu, raspuri, chausa, dussehri that one gets the feel of the mango season.
A mango connoisseur would wash then squeeze the mango in a particular way from below to up, one has to be extra careful with the thin skinned dussehri, and it has to be done in such a way that the sap is drained away, Then you have to carefully remove the crown of the mango so that the juice doesn’t spill over and the bitter sap is removed in its entirety. Then juice should be made to flow into the mouth in a particular way to experience the bliss of mango heaven. Then one thing unites the dainty eaters with the mess lovers: The seed. Slurp, slurp, slurp.
Whoever thinks a mango is eaten because it is sweet is wrong. A mango is eaten to revisit childhood and for glimpse of heaven that was once so near.


The pix is of daughter eating Benishan and her father eating a Malgova.

Angry skies over Hyderabad and the colours were just right.

A view of the much photographed Charminar from Machli Kaman.

Home is the sailor: The four fishermen haul up the country boat onto the sand after a busy day at the sea while a crane goes about its task undisturbed in the estuary in Gopalpur.

Lost in thought: Daughter dear sitting on a boat lost in thought.

More of the same, with just the colours adding to the magic.