From Daulat Baugh To Satguru Shlok

The other day, I went down to the 1 st floor, which is actually a club floor. One door opens to Podium, another door opens to office and party room and another opens to Gym and swimming pool. I entered the door leading to Gym. A loud music was playing and one member was on the treadmill. He was quite engrossed in his music and exercise that he didn’t notice us. But I must say, it’s a beautiful room with state-of-art equipments. Although I have never done gymming in my life, this is first time that I wish I could. There is TV in one wall of the room, I am sure when the gyms becomes totally functional, this will be a good venue to meet the society members.   The floor is fully covered with rubber padding to prevent the beautiful marble beneath. (You never know, when those heavy weights fall and break the floor).. Every detail has been attended to.  The managements has really taken pains to get the best and I have seen them help lift those equipments and...

During one of our meeting before redevelopment, there was talk of   rain water harvesting but I don’t think that there is any provision in our new building or is there? When our building was under construction, I had expressed the desire of installing solar panels on the terrace. Due to lack of space on the terrace, this idea was not received well. I wish we had found some space to install solar panels to cover at least the cost of society electricity bills. Our building is well lighted from all angles of our society, inside out, at the flower beds, at the pools, in the lobby and common areas, and it does look beautiful, it is a good feeling, but I am dreading the huge electricity bill that i will have to pay. Moreover, carrying out environment friendly  measures gets 10 percent discount on property tax. Today I receive a circular from BMC to segregate  dry and wet waste. This is a good idea and is accepted in all countries around the world. It is eco friendl...

In Satguru Shlok, you don’t need TV in every room, although nobody is stopping you if you like to. But the building is wholly wired internally so that ugly wires that you see them swinging from one building to another are not visible in our building, The wires come into building underground ,discreetly, and transports to every flat at certain points only. All the room  in each flat have such wires installed , but at one wall only. Your TV guy knows how to extract those wires into your room and get you TV connection. It is important to check where those points are, before you start to redesign the placement of your furniture and put fixtures on your wall. Hammering the wall with nails above these points can puncture the wires behind the wall. Some members did have problem when they didn’t plan or had overlooked these switches. They had to redo the wiring and shift their plug points to their desired position, but that is so cumbersome, plus of course extra expenses. I am not...

I am back again after four years of silence on this blog. The building went for redevelopment, I knew I would miss my building where I have lived for over forty years. Every brick sighed and its breath diminished each day as the day approached for redevelopment. I remember the last rainy day in June 2014, the building wept. I had moved out for two years and taken a small flat close by. When I moved, what I missed the most was my balcony. Nine feet by four feet balcony was the area where I would spend most of my evenings. As the sun slumped across the horizon, its golden rays filtered though the tall trees spreading its warmth over me. I sat in my balcony with a cup of tea on the ledge and a mobile in my hand. Many evenings were spent sipping tea and surfing through my ‘WatsApp’ messages. Sometimes I would listen to the music and sometimes watch videos on its tiny screen. Then there would be chats on social media, forward messages to read or the missed phone call to...