FROM MY PET “XANADU” TO A VILLA OR APARTMENT!

GOOD MORNING TO ALL OF YOU!

Villa hunting days are here for both of us, and now being promoted by our child too no less. Apartment hunting has taken a back seat naturally too!

For as long as I can recall–I got transported here by an angelic soul in 1962 June–, this city of Trivandrum never had the need for any villas.

We had spacious sprawling bungalows of every description and lovely cottages on roadsides with much poultry roaming about in absolute satisfaction.

Life went on in the slow lane and even the residents tended to enjoy their beauty sleep rather fully before they opened their eyes to the day! It WAS the capital city no less , and no one was there to question that status. All kinds of governance enhancements and citizen facilities had a decided tendency to come up here first too.

But not after the vivacious 1960’s I think.

Ernakulam posed a challenge by growing fast and turning into a business city.

Kottayam,with its happy-go-lucky breeziness, noisy hospitality  and spunky industrialists,  breathed down Ernakulam’s ruddy neck!

Kannur far in the north remained with its fond blood red Marxian ‘class struggle’ dreams and  bomb making mindset as a short route to bringing resolution in any interpersonal disagreemnts and opinion differences!!

And Kasaragod, still farther north, remained insistently in the penumbra of government machinery with its dubious gold smugglers, determined counterfeiters  and drug cartels!

Ah!

Minute by minute they have changed!

A terrible beauty got born too!

Having grown up in independent houses both me and my partner are finding it rather difficult to get properly adjusted before our lives meet a natural end to an apartment lifestyle.

A villa lifestyle also necessitates many self-limiting habits.

But what with land getting scarcer and scarcer and costlier and costlier too by the day, Indians as a rule of thumb may have to content themselves by leading such a lifestyle.

Who knows?

I may also have to soon move into an apartment or a villa owing to sheer necessity imposed by these uncertain times if not by a personal preference!