Hum Do, Humare Do Ghar

My craze for a good house perhaps has a root in my childhood. We had a huge house with as many as four big courtyards in the remote village, but that was not of bricks. The land around our village couldn’t produce brick. Even the house of my mother in her village was not of bricks.

When I started working after IIT, my dream of building a good comfortable house started taking shape. Naturally, as the first thing, I wanted to make my mother happy. I built a house on the outskirt of her village. It was single storied but modern designed with bedrooms for parents and kids and huge drawing room and a big toilet and bath too inside the house that was not very common in those days. I got a hand tube well inside the house in absence of tap water. The house had a big courtyard with a number of trees, including mangoes on one side. I used to enjoy my stay there during my annual holidays though it used to be few. My parents lived in the house till they came to live with me in Hind Motor. Unfortunately, I had to dispose of the property in 90s along with the house after the demise of my mother, as it was difficult to manage it with none in the family to take over the responsibility.

In 1982, I got the land in Salt Lake. My mother was alive and active. When she saw the plot, she was very unhappy. The area was hardly having any habitation. But one fine morning we decided to build it. The local architect got the sanction for a three-storied house, each floor as independent full-fledged flat with four bedrooms, as Yamuna wished for her three sons. My mother saw it getting built and was very happy. While the ground floor got completed in 1989, the year I lost my mother, but the whole house- its third floor, was finished in 1992. I named it AJIRA. We lived for some time. Last April we shifted almost everything from AJIRA and rented the whole premises to an educational institute.

In 1997 after the end of the full inning at Hindustan Motors, I joined Harig Crankshafts in Noida. Yamuna also joined me. For a year I lived in a rented house in Sector 30. But for Yamuna, it became difficult to live in that accommodation with unmannered landlord. Literally, she threatened to go back to Salt Lake, unless I buy a house of our own in Noida. The search started that ended on June 14, 1998 when we moved to this house that we shall love to live in till end even with many bitter experiences of burglaries. However, as I had to discontinue my job in 2000 because of my heart surgery and my disenchantment with the physical and mental stresses that it used to cause because of my workaholic nature, I gave up my ownership of my paternal property at my village home to my only surviving uncle to pay back some bank loans taken for the Noida house. Interest in those days on even the house loan used to be around 24%.

I have learnt many lessons from my life that can be an advisory for the Next Gen. The famous Indian slogan- ‘Hum Do Hamare Do’ should also have ‘Hamare Do Ghar’. It will provide the same security to the Next Gen that we enjoy also, even if each build just one house on own. Each will inherit one after the demise of the parents. We live in Noida house and AJIRA has been taking care of our meager monthly expenses. I don’t know if the advice is good enough for the new ambitious generation.