What’s so real about estate anyway

A realestate ad is to a middleaged Mumbai tenant what pornography is to an early teenagermdashjawdropping piece of fantasy messing with juvenile expectationsThe massive constructionerection you see flipping glossy pages of the morning broadsheet in the bathroommdashwith green landscaping all over tiny cars maintaining 20feet social distance on a welltarred road is as close to reality as children drawing their first versions of a home Huge hut triangular roof mountains behind and the sun as big as birds flying around it Itrsquos a ldquopictorial representationrdquoThe interiors of stunning 234 BHK ldquosample flatrdquo are so TajMarriott presidential suite that if you could afford that upholstery yoursquod own the building But there are properties you canrsquot ignore After all this onersquos just ldquo15 mins from the closest mall 20 mins from the railway station an hour from the airportrdquoThis is to inform you that ifwhen you do move in navigating the gunk outside the first thing yoursquod wanna know is how the hell to get outta there anyway Otherwise slide your windows pull the curtain How does it matter now where you aremdashSholapur Singapore all the same no Unless you inevitably crave a work plus social lifeAnd with the massive Mumbai that often depends on where you live Instead of the city people move to neighbourhoodsmdashColaba or Versova Saki Naka or Chinchpoklimdashselfsustaining blackholes harder to exit from once yoursquove made it insideI first moved to Chembur from Delhi for the same reason that I am Indianmdashfor all the nationalism itrsquos not like I had a choice My parents were already here Where was Chembur in 2002 when I got here Irsquod say in PuneBut more practically ldquoabout an hour awayrdquomdashfrom everything Colaba Versova Saki Naka or Chinchpokli Time of day determining minor lag here or there Given one main road with zero arteries for an escape route southwards To the north itrsquos close to Navi Mumbai yes Which is a wellplanned city that came up in the early 1970s designed by Charles CorreaThe purpose I guess then was to build a second option for Bombay only better Part of the project was for the state government to shift there Only that people donrsquot move neighbourhoods unless moving upmdashwhich in the context of Indian metropolises Kolkata Delhi Bengaluru is strangely to the southThat is where Maharashtra politicians and top bureaucrats stayed put refusing to budge from their official homesmdashin and around Nariman Point Itrsquos a trait they share with their traditional middleaged neighbours many of whom have lived with parents because moving out would decidedly mean stepping downNewer migrants shorn of address snobbery are free to go wherever they wanna So where do they go They start with digs the size of bathrooms in tonier neighbourhoods like Bandra paying rents that leave little for barsrestaurantsmdashgetting progressively expensive thanks to excisetaxes plus worsening curfew hoursmdashcutting down on a social life stillIn need of at least a larger home or even a similar size because the current neighbourhood has been priced out alreadymdashthey keep shifting further and further north at a kissing distance of Nashik For where else to goThe future of cities has of course everything to do with talents it attracts Ask any sharktank from a world of fancy startups over the past decade where theyrsquod punt to set up shop Not MumbaiThe hustle here appears too much to draw in the brightest young anymore Even the famed roundtheclock socialparty scene hardly exists any longer Maybe Bengaluru which has had a metropolis thrust upon it Kolkata Chennai relatively provincial Delhi selfadmittedly judgmental aggressive and pompousFor a woman in India the comparative anonymityopenness of Mumbai as a social choice is a nobrainer For the finest fresh graduates to this city half of which reside in slums living itself is a monetary hassleRents go up because the rich have invested that kinda money to pick up places I donrsquot know what their margins aremdashbut the realtorrsquos is the only Mercedes parked among hatchbacks of tenants in the crappiest buildingsGradually nobodyrsquos buying these properties too Last checked 109 lakh apartments were unsold lying vacant Because no one can afford them But no one will drop the price No one lives in them Creating ghost towns where only the lsquospirit of Mumbairsquo survives Creating a legit case for the Great Exodus following the Great Resignation post the pandemic because nobody will make more eitherThe problem and solution lie in the same bed I survey my neighbourhoodmdashpartly for having drooled at a property ad once and the social media push notifications and phone calls that havenrsquot stopped sinceWhere is Chembur in 2022 An elevated road always empty Eastern Express Highway came up I suspect for politicians to access their constituencies exiting VT peak South Mumbai for Chembur in eight minutesrsquo flat As did SantacruzChembur Link Road getting you to Saki Naka in about half the time Likewise Bandra East connector clearing the way for ChinchpoklihellipNo this isnrsquot a real estate ad Itrsquos pornography Apartments in the kilometreradius of mine selling for over R10 crore being the new lakh These are Manhattan rates So are you coming to MumbaiMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper