Searching for Home in Mumbai

8/19/2008

It is worse than people say, this hunt for real estate in the city of cities, the slum of slums at the edge of the Arabian Sea.

I looked at 13 apartments today.

Let’s begin at Anjali Apartments. The anxious, unctuous owner came scurrying out, a skinny little guy with thinning hair combed back so that it looked perpetually wet, who had clearly thought a lot about his lighting situation and installed indirect lighting on the ceiling in both living room and bedroom.

This alone is suspect.

He went room to room, flicking the switches – “See, direct light,” he’d say, bathing us in harsh fluorescence, “And indirect light,” he’d say whereupon we’d be plunged into restaurant romance level dusk.

And he was proud of his “all imported crockery,” so proud he’s locked it up and couldn’t show it to me.

All of which might have been fine – the poor man had evidently put time and money into all this – except for the fact it was on the ground floor of a wretched building, a place so crumbling and dim that the two nice brokers I was with – Vimla and Miriam, women fit to be your mom – turned their noses up and made cluck cluck clucking noises, shifting on their feet, not wanting to go inside.

The seller’s broker, a guy who’s name I never did catch, who had a kind of skin pigmentation abnormality which made him pink in places and who wore nice jeans and black sandals with black socks and a bright pink oxford shirt who had a kind of Italian look about him, said firmly: “The owner has come. You must take a look.”

And so we looked, at the grey skin of the building itself, which was cracking. And at the old lady in a peach sari with a skinny baby on her lap sitting outside, who seemed surprised when, on the way in, I smiled at her.

The real problem with this apartment was the fact that it was on the ground floor, which meant the curtains were always drawn because you are essentially in the parking lot. The cave-like feeling was abetted by the fact that our friend the owner had found it necessary to outfit the place as a self-sufficient bunker. He had installed a spare water tank. “We get water 24 hours but sometimes the people upstairs if they use it all up . . .” He had also installed a back up generator. “Oh we have electricity all the time but sometimes maybe it goes out for an hour or two,” he said gesturing to a grey jumbo cooler sized contraption with ominous looking red clips on the top in the hall. “Most people don’t provide this kind of back up,” he said, nodding, the proud scoundrel. He wanted a lakh ($2380) a month.

Then there was the marvelous two-bedroom in a building called Seacroft, which looked as if had sprung full-formed from the head of Zeus, cool kitchen tiles, a blue room, and a green room with blonde wood, and cross breezes in the living room, a swish pink sofa and nice zebra print chairs, and gorgeous new chrome refrigerator and a new washing machine and an ecstasy of bathrooms, situated in Bandra’s Shirley Rajan Village, off Pali Rd, mere minutes from Gold’s Gym, and a short walk to the sea. The village is said to be named after two thwarted Indian lovers Shirley and Rajan, who like Romeo and Juliet never could wed. Only thing: The owner wanted 80,000 Rp a month and a 20 Lakh deposit. That’s $50,000.

There was the one-bedroom in the Silverene, which had a crested gold drop ceiling and a royal blue wall and traffic noise, all steeped in dim eastern light (50,000Rp month, about $1190, plus 5 Lakh, $11904, deposit).

There was the sharp-smelling Neefam, near Almedia Park, and God’s Gift, which had a big living room but desperately ugly gold and blue sofas. There was Stonearch, in Rizvi, which cost a Lakh but had no stove. There was the one just off Turner Road, K’Sara, on the 8th floor, which we poked our noses into and smelled what we smelled and saw the wall crumbling into the living room and backed ourselves out they way we had come, must to the mystification of the short round woman in a mumu her thin grey hair tied up in a bun, who shuffled out after us, smiling a toothless, searching grin: “But why not?”

There was #603 in Kanti Apartment, which has a gorgeous garden and a pool far down below and breezes that fly up from the sea. But the fridge had gone moldy and the cabinets had succumbed to some ancient stickiness, and there was a revolting green-tiled bath. (50,000 Rp.) And there was the Nisoni, Tasoni, Latasoni, which was teensy but crisp and new (65,oooRp).

And back up at St. Mary’s Hill, again in Kanti Apartment, this time on the 15th floor, there was an empty shuddering trio of rooms fronted by a glass wall that slid open to the sea and let the wind whip in from Arabia. Down below the sea washed over long brown rocks and there were gleaners and seagulls and flat fading light on the water. Up high, where we were, there were a hundred hawks screaming and swooping and soaring, sometimes not 30 feet away, and you could feel the world out there, hear time and distance and infinity rolling in, as these ancient, cool winds washed over us, washed everything, washed us, away.

Inside, however, there was nothing: Two battered metal cabinets, a badly abused kitchen, linoleum tiles, wires springing helplessly out of the walls like arteries. (60,oooRp)

Take heart, Miriam and Vimla said, go home and rest.