By Aakar Patel
Most people live in apartments, and two-bedroom flats are the standard home for India's middle class. Over the last 15 years, the definition of middle class in India has grown elastic and it can now accommodate families of six that make Rs30,000 a month and families of two that make Rs6 lakh a month.
But two-bedroom flats are standard in Bombay, and rents vary only by neighbourhood, much like in New York, though in Bombay the erosion of quality over short distances is higher. The best neighbourhoods of the city are in South Bombay, the most urbane and civilised part of India.
Standard home sizes appear to be different in Pakistan and those of my friends and acquaintances in Lahore, Karachi, Multan and Islamabad are invariably much bigger than my flat, though it could also be that these people are wealthy.
Indians invest in two things mainly: gold and property. India is the world's largest buyer of gold, much of it being turned into heavy and ornate wedding jewellery; and most Indians (Gujaratis excluded) would rather invest in property than in equity.
The world's richest man, Warren Buffett, lives in the same three-bedroom house in Nebraska he bought 51 years ago. That would never happen in India, because for us our status comes from the size of our residence.
The billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, Britain's richest man, bought a house in London's Kensington Palace Gardens for 70 million pounds (about 560 crore Indian rupees) in 2004, and it was then the most expensive residence in the world. It had 12 bedrooms and parking space for 20 cars, and was sold to him by the Formula One championships owner, Ecclestone.
In 2008, Mittal broke his own record and bought another house in the same neighbourhood for his son, and this cost 117 million pounds (Rs 936 crore). For his daughter, Mittal bought a house in Delhi that cost Rs100 crore ($ 22 million). None of this would have dented his wealth, estimated by Forbes magazine last week, even in these times of recession, to be $30 billion (Rs140 lakh crore).
His Delhi house is in the area built by the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who designed New Delhi. The city was built from the ground up in the early 20th century after the capital was moved from Calcutta.
A friend of mine married a couple of years ago and the reception was hosted by the bride's uncle, a justice of India's Supreme Court. His lordship's official residence was a Lutyens bungalow. While the house itself wasn't particularly large (though it was quite monstrous by Bombay's standards), the garden it stood in made it special. The refreshments were thoughtfully laid out at the other end of the lawn from the house's portico, and by the time you walked across for a refill you were considerably more sober than when you had started out.
There was such space that strolling around its grounds was like going on holiday. Lutyens's bungalows are elegant and low-slung, and politicians love them and refuse to vacate them after defeat.
All of Mittal's residences are puny next to the house that is now the most expensive in the world, and it is coming up on Bombay's Altamount Road. Being built by India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, it stands 60 stories tall and is called Antilla, after a mythical island. Its architects Hirsch Bedner estimate it will cost $2 billion (Rs9,000 crore), and four people will live in it. It will be magnificent, breathtaking, and incomprehensible in a city that is 50 percent slum. Mukesh's brother Anil lives in another skyscraper, and only five people live in that one. Its first half-dozen or so floors are just for parking cars, and the terrace has a helipad.
The ancient Romans also built vertically, which was necessary for a population that was a million-strong and not particularly mobile, there being no public transport. Many Roman buildings went up seven floors. The classicist Peter Jones tells us that Augustus (died AD 14) set a limit of 70 feet for the height of buildings, which would have made them as tall as modern six-storey apartments. Unlike Bombay, where flats on higher floors are sold at a premium because of the view and their distance from the anarchy of the street, Roman tenants on floors six and seven must have paid less rent because of the climb.
The only private residence that is designated a palace in Britain is Blenheim, seat of the Duke of Marlborough. It was given as a gift for his superb victory over Loius XIV, the Sun King, in 1704. It is a grand house though some think it ugly.
Blenheim was where Winston Churchill was born in 1874. His grandfather was the 7th Duke of Marlborough, and it was a family that was connected to many great men.
Curzon was governor-general of India at the age of 39 in 1898 and there was a ditty laughing at his manner, probably invented at Eton, that shows what regard the aristocracy had for the palace. It went:
'My name is George Nathaniel Curzon/I am a most superior person/My cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek/I dine at Blenheim once a week'
Can grand residences be truly enjoyed? Only their owners can say, but sometimes larger doesn't mean better.
India's Rajput palaces, and most palaces in India, are quite ordinary. This is because Indians have no natural sense of ergonomics. Enormous palaces will have poor functional spaces like bedrooms and toilets, though they will be quite ornate from the outside.
Someone, I think it was Aldous Huxley, said that the Indian maharaja would arrive in a gleaming Rolls Royce, but the driver would invariably be shabby and wipe his nose on his turban. Their palaces are similar, though there are exceptions.
Baroda's Sayajirao Gaekwad III, a man of refinement, built the Lakshmi Vilas Palace in 1890. I have seen it and it is first rate, with many sitting areas and shaded groves, all of which have a little buzzer with which to command refreshment. Gaekwad funded the American education of India's constitution writer B R Ambedkar, and famously did not bow to his majesty George V, during the emperor's coronation in Delhi in 1911. Gaekwad built Baroda's MS University, which is spread over the city in his many palaces, and is the best university in Gujarat. The faculty of technology and engineering was set up in a palace called Rang Bhavan, where Gaekwad kept his dancing girls.
The best palace in India is Falaknuma, built in 1893, on the outskirts of Hyderabad, and now a Taj Hotels property.
It wasn't built by the Nizam, but by his prime minister, the Vicar ul Umra. It has over 200 rooms and made of marble. European architecture doesn't normally suit India because our weather is warm. Heavy Teutonic or ornate and gilded French-style buildings look out of place here. But the open and light Mediterranean style of Italy is perfect and that is how Falaknuma was designed.
It has a dining table that seats 100. The story is that the palace took nine years to make and on the night it was inaugurated, the Nizam, who was invited, told his prime minister on leaving the party that he loved it. Noblesse oblige, and poor Vicar ul Umra handed the Nizam the keys and walked away.
This was the sixth Nizam, the dashing Mehboob Ali Khan. His son, the seventh and last Nizam, Osman, was the richest man in the world. But he had a poor reputation among his people and thought to be not just a miser, a kanjoos, but also a coward.
The ditty about father and son was:
'Mehboob Ali Pasha sher ko mara/Osman Ali Pasha plague se bhaga'
Having large houses does not mean that one becomes refined. The Nizams had relations with Muslim nobility and Osman's son Azam Jah was married to the Turkish caliph's gorgeous granddaughter, princess Durr-e-Shewar. One morning, an emissary from Istanbul arrived in Hyderabad and was led to the Nizam, who was sitting in a corner in his usual tattered robe, knitting socks. The puzzled emissary looked at the courtier, who confirmed: "Een Shah-e-Dakhan ast (this is the king of the Deccan)."
"Panah bah Khuda," muttered the Persian, (God help us).
The writer is director with Hill Road Media in Bombay. Email: aakar @hillroadmedia.com