If New York's word is Achieve, Mumbai's has to be SquareFeet

By Sharan Saikumar In Elizabeth Gilberts’ ‘soul searching’ memoir where she eats, prays, loves (and then writes about it and gets rich) there is a scene where she and her friend Guilio are sitting at an outdoor café and discussing words that define cities. So while New York’s word is Achieve and the word in Rome is Sex, it makes one wonder what Mumbai’s word could possibly be. Is it Aspire – with the endless flow of immigrants streaming into the city looking for a better life? Is it Adjust – with its perennial shortage of public utilities and heaving infrastructure? Or is it plain Indifference disguised as ‘spirit’ that makes it carry on with business as usual in the face of the exploding trains? It could be any of the above and maybe many more. But there is one word that, in my opinion, towers loftily above them all. A word that has been ingrained not only in the vocabulary and minds of its citizens but has even elbowed its way into the dreams of everyone, starting from the biggest industrialist to the poorest slum dweller. It’s a terribly practical and uninspiring word and yet it manages to rule our world. Mumbai’s word is, SquareFeet. In a city where families with a few D-segment cars, more than a few exotic holidays a year and an army of round the clock nannies who speak perfect English and a smattering of French are everyday, the mention of a ‘4000 square feet’ apartment can make us stop in our tracks — at least long enough to ask ‘in which area’? If the answer veers towards the southern parts of Mumbai, then we simply bow down and put our hands together in reverence because in a city where space is venerated and carpet is not a floor-covering made of thick woven fabric, SquareFeet is the undisputed God. [caption id=“attachment_113775” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Life shouldn’t be lived in SquareFeet and yet it is. Reuters[/caption] So acute is our desire to acquire SquareFeet that it ceases to matter whether it is horizontally available – so what, we will go ahead and claim it vertically across multiple levels, starting from a paltry floor if we hail from the plebs, spiraling up to a 27-floor-cantilevered mansion with floating gardens if we happen to be the richest people in the country. It doesn’t matter if it’s an eyesore on the city skyline and consumes more electricity than a small country. We don’t care — we have SquareFeet. This little word is responsible for more than just triggering a hoarding frenzy. It is responsible for singlehandedly turning the fortunes of the city in the last decade by magically turning the Middle Class into millionaires with the merest flick of the re-development wand. The residents of Nutan Nagar went to sleep one night with a few thousands in their bank account and woke up to a 451 crore deal. We don’t care that behind these changing fortunes and eroding skylines live feuding families torn apart by property, prosperous builders joined together by corruption, bended laws and chopped trees. We don’t care that millions of good people, who lived on the right side of the law and didn’t know that money could be black or white, crossed over to the other side when they bought their first house. ‘We don’t care because now we got, SquareFeet’. Life shouldn’t be lived in SquareFeet and yet it is. According to the The Economic Times, a man needs to earn a minimum of 40 lakh a year for a decent apartment* while a slum dweller gets 50 lakh for his illegally acquired 10X10 foot chawl. But nobody sees the absurdity in this state of affairs. Nobody in this city seems to care that in other parts of the world that kind of money will buy you a small villa fringed with bougainvillea or that they are cheerfully giving up half of what they earn to teensy flats in remote areas that face nothing more that the neighbor’s drying underwear. Of course they don’t care because they now have, SquareFeet. It’s only in Mumbai that an ad campaign with the pointed question ‘What is the carpet area of childhood?’ can stand out and be noticed in the advertising onslaught. In the kothi-filled, space-blessed Delhi with their numerous parks, this question will make no sense but Mumbai understands it, thinks about it and then pipes up and says — about 120 SquareFeet! * source: Liases Foras Surevy, October 2010. As a blogger, ex-marketer, evangelist of socialfootprint.in and would-be novelist, Sharan Saikumar wears many hats, none of which really fit.