Sunday ka Funda

"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."

— Audre Lorde

The price of a home

Mukesh Ambani's home at Mumbai's Altamount Road still appears to me to be under-construction. There is something incomplete about it. Or, like a wedding cake that's been haphazardly sliced through. At night, it transforms into a lit-up bauble for Brobdingnagians.

It comes at a price and now it has topped the list, according to Forbes:

The title of the most outrageously expensive property in the world still belongs to Mukesh Ambani’s Antilia in Mumbai, India. The 27-story, 400,000-square-foot skyscraper home–which is named after a mythical island in the Atlantic–includes six stories of underground parking, three helicopter pads, and reportedly requires a staff of 600 to keep it running. Construction costs for Antilia have been reported at a range of $1 billion to $2 billion. To put that into perspective, 7 World Trade Center, the 52-story tower that stands just north of Ground Zero in Manhattan with 1.7 million square feet of office space, cost a reported $2 billion to build.

A rich person is most certainly entitled to spend wealth as s/he desires. There are wannabes who aspire to things the rich want. However, when it is a home in a city with a huge disparity in wealth among its citizens, then it ceases to be a question merely of personal riches.

Reminds me of wellknown architect Charles Correa, who and said:

“When I visited Australia I realised that save for a few homes most of the people in the cities live on similar-sized plots. Australia, I thought is locked into equality while in India we are locked into inequality. Mukesh Ambani has proved it. ‘This is the amount of urban space I control,’ he is telling us by building that home. At the same time you have to be impressed. What a huge ivory tower!”

Poverty bothers us, whether it is due to sympathy or because its presence is considered a nuisance, an intrusion into our space. We drive past, eyes averted. We walk past, waiting to get out and inhale. We are uncomfortable; this is not about us.

Why don't we feel the same way about the ostentatious although that too is not about us? We drive past and look with awe. We walk past, slow our steps until a guard looks with suspicion. This makes us uncomfortable because poor guy has access to super rich.

In that, we too live in ivory towers sponging on other people's make-believe.

© Farzana Versey

Sunday ka Funda

“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way. And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”

- Harry A. Blackmun

At first, these words by a Supreme Court justice in the early years of the last century appear regressive. I particularly dislike the word “treat”. However, it is important to recognize the differences and celebrate them.

Recently I came upon the term ‘microaggression’.

These photographs were posted with this explanation:

Photographer Kiyun asked her friends at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus to “write down an instance of racial microaggression they have faced.” 

The term “microaggression” was used by Columbia professor Derald Sue to refer to “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” Sue borrowed the term from psychiatrist Dr. Chester Pierce who coined the term in the ’70s.

I was most intrigued by the “smell of rice”. When rice is steamed or cooked simply, it pretty much has no smell. But that is not the point. It is to point out a predominant trait or habit.

There are other such instances, and we will find them in our own environment too. How different is different allowed to be? Why is the ‘other’ always a matter of running down? Even within families not everybody is alike; our friends are not all the same; we too might not look, act or think in a uniform manner all the time.

Sunday ka Funda

These days, everybody seems to be friends with everybody else. And they all find how alike they are even as they merely click on 'likes'.

The friends I have shared the best moments, and understanding, with are very different from me. There could be shared values, even preferences for food, films, books, music, art. What is different, then? It is the way we look at these. It is the ability to complete each other's sentences not because of agreement, but the warmth of serendipity.

Years ago, I had written a few words here and I shall repeat some..

A friend who comes and goes is as much a stranger...a friend who takes another for granted is behaving in a strange fashion...a friend who has to keep several considerations in mind to keep up the friendship is a stranger...a friend who you are close to physically but cannot share things with is a stranger...a friend who inhabits your mind but not your heart is a stranger...a friend you feel for but can do nothing about is a stranger...

---

Sometimes we don't realise what nostalgia means to others, especially when nostalgia is all they have. I continue to question expat experts, but today I will share this little film. I won't call it a commercial, for it is the story that matters. Also, I am sure there are many reading this who think of their mother as their best friend. I do.

Call me soppy, but I had to blink away the tears. Maybe, it happens when you chop okra...



---

Image: Rediff, courtesy a link sent by a rather unfriendly friend!