The house that Ambani built... but refuses to call home

Mukesh Ambani’s billion-dollar house has everything you could possibly want.

A movie theatre. A car service station. A health spa. A ballroom. Mother of pearl floors. And lotus pools.

Everything except family.

He built the 27-storey cantilevered mansion with its helipads and floating gardens. And now according to the New York Times he’s decided not to actually live in it. Nearly a year after it’s grand unveiling, it remains a house not a home. Its famous owner is still firmly ensconced in the humble old 14-storey abode with mommy and younger brother Anil.

The building once dubbed the world’s most expensive home has basically become “the world’s most expensive house in which to serve canaps to guests.” It just stays lit up all night, as if the Ambanis were all hanging out at home, watching movies, eating ice creams and getting in that late night Stairmaster session. But they are really all tucked into bed at their old place, Sea Wind.

Brilliant. No one is probably going to ever top that kind of show of wealth.

Laxmi Mittal bought a luxury house on Kensington Palace Gardens for Rs 400 crore in 2004, made from marble imported from the quarry that supplied the Taj Mahal. Then he bought another lavishly furnished property in 2008, complete with an art collection for Rs 800 crore in 2008 for his son. He followed that up with yet another mansion in the neighbourhood, the former Filipino embassy, for his daughter. But the Mittals are gauche enough to actually live in these mansions.

Ambani, on the other hand, gets to build his house and keep that “new house smell” too.

[caption id=“attachment_111483” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“It’s very eco-friendly of Ambani to build a hanging garden that will absorb sunlight and keep the insides cool and save on the energy costs. Buthow about turning off those lights? AFP”] [/caption]

But in the process, of course, the house is coming to represent everything it should not. When it was built it threw into sharp relief the ballooning wealth gap in India. Ambani had to face a barrage of criticism. Ratan Tata tut-tutted ,“The person who lives in there should be concerned about what he sees around him and [asking] can he make a difference.” The Ambanis retorted that unlike others in the jet set they didn’t have villas tucked away in exotic locations around the world. They just had one home. In India. The house sounded almost like a patriotic statement on the Mumbai skyline.

When Shekhar Kapur went to the housewarming he blithely observed “It’s great to breathe fresh air at this height and leave Mumbai’s pollution down below.” It was the gated community of all gated communities, the ultimate ivory tower soaring far above the ant-like teeming masses. Now it’s looking more and more like a white elephant.

Not unlike the giant elephants that dot yet another recent stupendously expensive ego trip - Mayawati’s Rs 684 crore grand park in Noida.

But at least that park, wasteful as it seems, is a public park, a bit of green space where old people can stroll, and children can play, and young lovers can hold hands albeit all under the benign stony gaze of Mayawati, Kanshi Ram and other Dalit icons.

Ambani has not announced any plans to open his castle to the public. No guided tours, for examples, for the residents of Dharavi. And for good measure. Perhaps he knows his history. All it takes is a stroll through the rooms of the palace in Versailles and the French Revolution starts to make perfect sense. Off with their heads, indeed! And Antilia actually has more square feet of floor space than Versailles. Shobhaa De called Versailles “a poor cousin” to Antilia. But to be fair, even Ambani’s skyscraper comes with public perks, if not parks. As architect Hafeez Contractor pointed out Antilia’s efficient use of land “decongests the area at the ground level so more trees can be planted. Ambani’s choice will make high-rises more acceptable.” So take that, all you vicious petty nay sayers.

Of course, the difference between Mayawati’s park and Ambani’s pied-a-terre is that one is built from the public exchequer while the other is private. As his spokesman testily pointed out, “It’s a private home. There is no reason to discuss it in public.”

According to the N_ew York Times_ the real stumbling block might be vastu. A vastu expert told the Times Antilia might have run afoul of one of vastu’s key principles: The eastern side doesn’t have enough openings to let in the morning light. That can lead to misunderstandings between team members, negative energy and more hard work to achieve moderate success. God forbid.

When Antilia was built it was apparently done in accordance with both vastu and feng shui principles. I don’t know if this new vastu glitch shows the inherent problem of Hindi-Chini bhai bhai cooperation pipe dreams. But if it is true, it does prove that the most powerful person in India is not the politician. Or the industrialist. Or even Anna.

It’s some nameless astrologer with a notebook full of curious little diagrams.

Perhaps Ambani should have thought twice about naming it Antilia, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, rumoured to be the home of fabulous treasure, its sands glittering with silver. But it’s a_mythic_island. No human ever lived there.

One word of advice to Mukesh-ji. It’s very eco-friendly of you to build a hanging garden that will absorb sunlight and keep the insides cool and save on the energy costs. Buthow about turning off those lights? A Rs 70 lakh electricity bill is surely a little excessive for a house where nobody is ever home.