The Roof Over My Head

There may be trouble ahead
But while there's moonlight and music
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Before the fiddlers have fled
Before they ask us to pay the bill
And while we still
Have the chance
Let's face the music and dance

Irving Berlin: From “Let’s face the music and dance”


The roof over my head


You and I have come across modest bungalows, built in the days when middle class people could afford to build homes with gardens and driveways, in metros such as Delhi and Mumbai, in mofussil towns, and up hill and down dale in remote parts, with names given to them, such as, “At Last”, and, “Journey’s End”.

Such naming, as opposed to “Saraswati Niwas” and “Shankar Kutir”, or even the pretentious “Mon Repos” or “Windermere”, may seem quixotic in 2008. But there was a time, when it took a middle class man or “earning member”, most of his life, before he could own that most prized roof over his head. It was treated as something of a crowning achievement.

This is because the house builder had to pay the entire bill, the land price, the cost of construction, the architect, the municipality for passed-drawings, the supervising engineer, bribes, taxes, everybody, in short, connected with his “own house” project. And he had to do so out of his savings, or, if he was unusually fortunate, from the modest proceeds of sale of ancestral property in his “native” place, supplemented nevertheless with his savings. There were no housing loans. There was the usurious Money Lender. But that, as they say, is another story.

Most of us then had very little stashed away on our middle class salaries. We built our houses on the strength of our retirement benefits, our Providend Fund yields, our Gratuity, if any, paid by employers for long years of service. So, we spent a large part of our productive life in rented property, or, well into middle-age, in a section of our ancestral property, or, along with our parents and assorted relatives. And we were forced to count ourselves lucky because the under classes below us had God’s own sky as their roof, sometimes augmented with bits of discarded gunny sacking or plastic sheeting or tin. And, as City of Joy by Dominic Lapierre makes only too clear, even that sort of accommodation bore a rent.

But the definitive middle class look at the subject is probably Nobel Laureate VS Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (1961). Naipaul, drawing on memories of his father, wrote about Mohun Biswas in an Indo-Trinidadian setting. But this Mr.Biswas, who struggles continually to make ends meet, who marries into the Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by it, and who finally sets the goal of owning his own house, seems familiar enough. It was part of the universal Indian Middle Class experience in the Nehruvian/Indira Gandhi era and its post-colonial realities.

But circa 2008, when so much has changed, has its own set of “own roof” related problems. And it is likely to get worse with high inflation and higher oil prices. There may well be trouble ahead. We might do well to listen then to Irving Berlin’s advice and dance, while we still have the chance. After all, we may be witnessing a gut wrenching down–turn in home ownership going forward. The good thing is that many of us have indeed turned into home-owners in our twenties and thirties rather than in our later years like Mr. Biswas.

But, there are still millions of units that need to be built, a huge deficit in decent budget housing, infinitely better than government built public housing projects, but perhaps less grand than the high-end luxury units on offer more often than not. Testimony to this is in the ever rising EMIs (Equated Monthly Installments), related to housing loans of the fancier housing. But then, they come with swimming pools, health clubs, split air-conditioning and Jacuzzis. They seemed like a mere stretch when the party began five or seven years ago, but more like a rod to break one’s back with now.

However, the alternatives are not very many. It is expensive to rent “capital gained” flats, worth crores, now. Even if you succeed in getting past the reluctance of flat owning investors, wary of the antiquated tenancy laws, insisting on “company leasing” entities, it is certainly not an easy proposition. Bungalows today are definitely not for the middle class, and are beyond the reach of the middle-level expatriate too.

Still, for a brief while, the great Indian Middle Class was indeed coasting along. It was being wooed by marketers of every type of consumer durable and appliance; cars came with easy-finance loans, flowers, and a box of sweets. And Home Loans were sanctioned with lightning speed by bushy-tailed young men, who acted like it was you who was doing them a good turn, which, come to think of it, you indubitably were!

Your Middle Class ego, battered, and poignantly represented by RK Laxman’s iconic “Common Man”, in that same chequered gala bandh, those Bata all-weather pumps, the white dhoti, ably assisted by nothing more substantial than his umbrella; had got used to being boosted and caressed by constant praise.

You read about your collective might. You were informed there were 300 million and more of you. You were not only India’s future but the future of the developed world, burning bright with education and intelligence, discerning, wise, knowledgeable and now ready to embrace la dolce vita with both arms and without guilt. You belonged to the biggest middle class entity anywhere, grown from modest beginnings sixty years ago, and already larger than the entire population of America.

But now, we may have come to a watershed if not an identity crisis. Our lives are defined a little differently from Mr. Biswas’. A roof over our head is not the be-all-and-end-all of our lives but just another necessity. The trouble is, we, the middle classes, never renowned for our nonchalance, may have to learn how to face the music and dance.

Because, as Scarlett O’ Hara said, to bring down the curtain on yet another celebrated book: Tomorrow is another day. And we may well be able to pay the bill tomorrow.

(1,049 words)

Gautam Mukherjee
2nd July 2008

Printed in The Pioneer and online at www.dailypioneer.com as "The roof over your head" on Thursday 3rd July 2008 on the EDIT Page.