In three steps from living room to bedroom!

                                   

      10th of July 2013, I shifted to a new place, quiet a tiring experience, given the fact that I was going through the rigors of a full time MBA course simultaneously. The same evening I had to do an interesting class assignment, watch the movie,'Ek chottisi Baat' a timeless classic. The movie based in the 1970s is basically about how a guy uses many tricks of the trade to woo the girl he liked a lot. (Reminds me of a nightmare that was called Partner) Now the tricks that were taught to the actor were garbed under the heading 'In three steps from living room to bedroom'. Be rest assured this post is not about how to achieve the aforementioned. I am not even close to being qualified or experienced to preach about it :P. While watching the movie my thoughts drifted into a tangential direction as to how builders and real-estate have made a killing using the line 'In three steps from livwing room to bedroom' as their pseudo-mantra, or in proper MBA terms their 'Mission and Vision statement'. Many people who go house-hunting especially those who come to Mumbai for the very first time face this huge shock when the size of the house is nowhere comparable to the amount they will end up paying for it. And it wasn't very different for me. After watching the movie I actually went and counted the number of steps it takes for me to reach from my drawing room to bedroom... and guess what just Three!!! And thats not all while house-hunting you'll be confronted with some of the most hideous  places ever created by mankind and these agents will present them to you as being a totally customized Taj Mahal only for you. Its not a surprise that they are called 'dalals' and other choicest words that I would not like to mention for maintaining the sanctity of the blog. For instance one of the apartments that was shown to me opened out to a stunning vista of a nullah running 24 x 7, breeding mosquitoes of such size and stature that it seemed they could down shots of All-out every friday night. Seeing the disappointment on my face the beautiful reply that he gave was "Sir, River facing view, bahu saras chhe"(River facing view, its very beautiful). Take that for concepts in sales and Marketing.


Coming to the size of the apartments, There was a report by Jones Lang LaSalle, that the average size of apartments in Greater Mumbai has significantly reduced in the last five years. But somehow the number of rooms has magically increased simultaneously. There is a strange mathematical calculation that governs here, the size of your apartment remains the same, just depending on the number of members in your family, the same apartment can go from being a 1BHK to a 3 BHK. In such a case you shouldn't be surprised if the bathroom in your brand new home is bigger than your bedroom. And believe it or not that would be the USP of the apartment. I mean if ever the realtor made an advertisement for such an apartment it would show a svelte model dropping off her negligee and tiptoeing into a bath tub about the size of a double bed and romancing the rose petals all over her, while a hoarse voice would say " We provide bathrooms which are so large that they can even accommodate all Bangladeshis who have crossed over to India." ...There are so many more instances that the post could run  into reams, but eventually we did find a decent place which is in itself quite a story which I will covered later.

Cheers!!!