Gurgaon Real Estate - The lighter side

I had read this interesting article quite sometime back in the Times of India and had saved it as I found it very interesting (but true). I believe it is a true reflection of the the 'Sudden Millionaires'. Just thought of sharing this.

Gurgaon is a vast adolescent real estate that stands in the glow of new paint. Luminous glass buildings, stout bustling malls and gigantic hives of apartments named after lords, knights and birds are spread over green lawns that people from Mumbai would call parking.

It is unmistakably the colony of the young, its marketplaces and restaurants teeming with EMI couples and their 'we-two-ours-two' children, and in the pale background, a dark melancholic maid.

Across this district that has no clear perimeter anymore, work is in progress. It's more than just Delhi's satellite now.

Many more buildings are rising and piers are becoming bridges. There is no evidence here of any other time but the present, though Dronacharya is rumoured to have been born in one of the hamlets.

The hint that a different population once lived in Gurgaon arrives sometimes in dramatic ways. A housewife in Nirvana, a posh residential area, recalls the appearance of a rustic woman at her doorsteps.

"I thought she wanted a job as a maid but then I realized she wanted to buy a house."

And there lies the deeper story of Gurgaon's hidden but fortunate natives.
Scions of the nomadic shepherds and farmers who once settled in Gurgaon and grew bajra, jowar and mustard in their arid lands, are today sudden beneficiaries of a spectacular revolution.

The rise of the BPOs in the last decade, the coming of other service industries, and the brute force of builder enterprise have converted almost worthless farmlands into properties that now fetch one to eight crore rupees per acre, a 500 fold increase over the last ten years in a generalization.

Landed farmers who till recently earned about Rs 15,000 per acre a year through farming, are millionaires now even by dollar standards.

And the carnival is only intensifying. Last year, over 800 acres of land were transacted. Big builders already own 10,000 acres in Gurgaon and they are buying more.

In the delirium of sudden affluence, farmers are buying cars like the Skoda or Ford Endeavour on full down payment. Enchanted by the real estate industry, many are becoming land brokers. Some are lost to drinking and gambling.

Women who used to wake up at four in the morning to finish household work, have today discovered bed tea. They even call it "bed tea".

When two neighbours now cross each other in the lane, there is a silent duel in their minds to decide who would say "Ram Ram" first. :rotfl

Recently, five Jats walked into a school and asked the teachers, very politely, if there was a smart girl of marriageable age among their students.

The men told the baffled teachers that the family had earned three crore rupees from a land sale but they were all illiterate. They had decided one of the brothers should marry an educated girl who would know how to handle the money.

Among the many fortunate farmers, is Chatar Singh, an unexcited 56-year-old man with keen, hard eyes. His white kurta has stains here and there.

In a conservative estimate, he is worth over 35 crore. He lives with two brothers and together they own five cars. Like many farmers in this area, he has been selling land to purchase more land in the out-skirts of Gurgaon.

Now he owns 19 acres worth about Rs 20 crore, according to brokers. "This land around my house is worth 15 crore," he says sitting on a cot and smoking a hookah. His grandchildren go to schools that cost over a lakh a year. "Good schools," he says. "I went to a school where the teachers would come to the class and make sweaters."

His wife is veiled and is part of the background. His two teenage sons are lying on a sofa like content pythons. :crazy

"Money has changed everything. Man has no real friend left anymore in the village. Everybody is doing his own thing," he says. "Money teaches you new things. Till recently, we didn't know the heart could stop suddenly. Now heart attacks are common."

In old Gurgaon, an area that is also called a "village" in these parts, the glamour of the new developments gives way to overcautious pigs, narrow clogged lanes and the chaos of the mofussil. Old money lives here.

Vijay Jain, who is called setheven by the new millionaires, is a large man with a gentle giant's manners. In him there is this force of rustic intelligence.

His ancestors were village money lenders and generations of farmers have turned to his family for advice. Today, no farmer in the surrounding village sells his land without consulting Jain.

Since the whole trade runs on trust, his role is crucial. He advises farmers on the right price and tells them how to invest in more land in the outer fringes of Gurgaon.

"Apart from land, I think it is a good idea for farmers to invest in making residential blocks with small rooms. There are lakhs of Bihari migrants here already. More will come. They need places to stay on rent. There is money in it," he says.

A farmer need not pay income tax on the earnings from the sale of his land if he uses the money to buy another piece of agricultural land within three years.

Even if this provision did not exist, the bullish farmers of Gurgaon would have invested in land. When 75-year-old Simrat Singh is asked his views on the easy-come-easy-go character of money, he says without blinking, "I have put my easy money in more easy money. I have bought land."

He also bought a car, "a small car" but he does not know it is called Santro.

Howzz that?? Any interesting stories to share.....
Sometimes a critical introspection into facts can be humorous:rotfl