ONE'S OWN SWEET HOME

 From Sampath’s Desk:

 

ONE'S OWN SWEET HOME

 

East or West, Home is the Best. Think how nice one’s feeling would be if it were his/her own sweet dwelling unit!  Many places we roam about, people we interact with, enjoy sceneries around and pleasures we experience - be it ever so pleasing - may only be transient and may not match our idyllic pleasant home, whatever is its size, big or small. The strong desire to build or own a house for a life of exclusivity and security with uncompromised privacy, and if possible with enhanced and enriched aesthetics, is inherent in every living-being not to speak of the human-beings. An animal finding a den or cave to live in, or a bird cobbling up its own nest using straws, dry-leaves, etc. is a simple pointer. However much one might try, it is well nigh impossible to find a better place than one’s own sweet home!

 

Gone are the days when people stuck to individual houses using the traditional inputs, say, tiled roofing, rough lime/cement flooring, open lung space in middle of the house, an atrium for non-specific use, frontal raised floor/pedestal (called ‘Thinnai’ in Tamil), a spacious backyard, airy rooms and verandah with many doors and windows, etc. Today, the concept of individual house has been replaced by Flat/Apartment system with every inch of the available space squeezed and enfolded into the dwelling unit for the fullest residential-use and/or commercial exploitation. In cities and urban centres, trees are mindlessly felled and nature-savvy environment indiscreetly devoured into making way for high-rise soulless concrete jungles shrinking the lung space. The expanses in conventional and traditional big houses have been truncated and shrunk into tiny residential units called ‘flats’.

 

Craving, yearning and clamouring for nuclear families and giving adieu to joint-family system have necessarily transmuted the trend into ‘detached families and attached bathrooms’ from the age-old ‘attached families with detached bathrooms’. Exodus of people from rural to urban areas will inexorably continue given the plenitude of facilities and amenities available in urban settings.

 

Congested city life and its milieus have propelled the population to fan out into peripheral areas and form what are known as ‘suburban hubs’ and/or ‘satellite towns’.

 

Once a luxury or comfort, a house/apartment/flat has now become a necessary. If one can afford, they can convert it into an opulent ambience, splash of magnificence, splendour look and what not that give indulgent experiences to the residents.

 

A house is not just one that has been made of concrete/brick walls, beams, plastering, white-washing, etc., but a ‘sweet dream home’ is one that is packed with the affluence of emotional bondage, well-knit relationship building, portal of love and affection, moving and touching warmth laced with geniality and amiability prevailing among the members of the family in the background of beautiful living space.

 

Of late, we see many advertisements by realtors claiming to have built residential complexes with nature preserve, embodying and forming a perfect setting for a home replete with a slew of finest amenities and facilities lining up to lure prospective buyers. With customer sensitivities assuming more and more complexities for their ‘dream home’ in which they make the investment of their life, there is a beeline of living-space promoters in the realty industry vying with one another to woo them. They try to spin a grandeur lifestyle for customers to enjoy rather than a simple comfort of home. They aim at what they claim as a good and right mix of their little efforts, effective steps and value additions towards space provisioning, apt structure adjustments and management and squeezing in of purportedly 'first-and-best-of-its-kind’ domestic ambience, to enhance and enrich the residents’ lifestyles thereby enticing as many prospective buyers as possible. Even though the business prospects in today's realty sector where it is too difficult to satisfy customer’s varied and diverse requirements have become daunting with the ever stiffening competition, yet the promoters leave no stone unturned and sweat it out with live volcano zeal to delight the prospective dwelling unit owners and build for them a prideful home introducing nuggets of innovation and creativity in the ever-expanding, exciting and vibrant housing industry.

 

There is a saying that whatever you invest in the yellow metal and in land (meaning house construction) will never go waste. In fact, its value will only multiply. This has become increasingly true what with the cost of land, house and flat(s) continuing to skyrocket. Alas how really this maxim has turned out to be true!

 

                                                                                                              

R.SAMPATH