The solution is within and simple.

When the last company that I was working with, sunk while I was still on its roll, my biggest fear besides losing my job was risking all my cash deposits that I one point of time considered liquidating to pay off the pending home loan amount. Thank god, nothing untoward happened except my opinion towards mortgage companies which went downhill to become almost an immeasurable aversion.

A few years back I bought a flat that I never resided at, paid only interest to make my bank richer by a million rupees before I sold the house off one day, by writing off another million as a carry forward financial loss. The idea of saving rent and an income tax through a mortgage loan is a folly; it is like getting nude to save on wardrobes. I don’t quite appreciate my future savings to be plagued by EMIs, anymore. Like a kid eating an ice-candy in a hot summer, one third of my candy leaking right under my nose while satiating my fetish is an awkward damage. We work our bottom out to earn and save money. It is ridiculous to let anyone have a say in it, mortgaging banks in specific.

***

6 years later I thought of buying an apartment one more time. This time, I was clear in my mind that I would disregard the mortgage options completely and use only a portion of my savings in buying an apartment. I went around looking for houses with a good budget in mind only to be embarrassed by a fact that the money I set aside for a house could have gotten me a 1200 SFT pigeon hole. The air and the light at every apartment that I visited was so poor that the builder bragging on vastu compliant houses built in 60%  open area with landscaped green space - appeared like a complicated connection between Pythagoras theorem and Group theory; made no sense to my mathematically weak brain.

By walking a mid path against all odds, I somehow zeroed in on an apartment and asked my father in law to pay a visit to take a look at it and share his opinion.

While I returned from the office, he was patiently waiting for me to settle in.

“Is that really the house that you want to buy?” he asked me with a substantial suspicion. 

“Why … what happened? You don’t seem to have liked the house, did you?” I responded aloud.

He took time to counteract but when he did, his quiet scorn was obvious.

“I’m a little uncomfortable while saying this but if I don’t say now, I will be more uncomfortable. 

You slogged for years to be at this stage. Every penny you saved today gives you a power to spend it in many ways, but not waste it, recklessly. What would you call an address that wipes out half of your savings and renders only you a tiny joy?

Even if you live in this city for the next 5-10 years without your own house, you pay rent almost at the same rate at which your investments earn dividends. Keeping your deposits intact and paying the rent out of the interest that your deposits generate is the most mindful thing you should do than diluting your deposits and wasting them on an apartment. Once you know that you don’t need to work anymore and you are ready to move into a suburban portal of city, you can always build a house on one of the plots that you bought. By then those would have become premium places to live, with suitable surroundings. Who are you trying to convince? To start with, are you convinced?”

He gave a characteristic reversal to the situation through his telescopic rationalization on my poor judgment. His razor sharp cost to rent ratio analysis coupled with a caustic commentary made me peculiarly numb, like a signal-less TV with just a torpid blue screen.

A throb of awe wrapped around me making me wonder at an abundant intelligence that lies with people who don’t necessarily work as strategy consultants at best in class business houses.  An overpowering materialistic desire that existed ceaselessly for years was suddenly gone. The deafening demand of an aimless mind was immeasurably calming.

Oblivious of the bemused outlooks of an idiot savant like me, my father in law was cleverly slaughtering countless myths that I was secretly living with, for years.

“Well ..” I had a tone of resignation.

“.. I thought I was making a good decision by booking an apartment. But now I know that I am making a better decision by not doing it. Wow .. I was almost about to repeat a bad mistake” 

I smiled and sighed in relief.

Some reliefs in life are orgasmic; this was one of those, that cannot better be explained in words.

***

Old friends in India, after 10 years of gap if ever meet accidentally once, one of the things that they must know from each other in the first two minutes of their meeting is whether they own an apartment as though nothing important in their life bigger than an apartment has ever occurred.

I’m not an ‘anti apartment’ protagonist, literally.
Or probably, I have grown so, in the recent past. I don't know.

It is just that I do not find apartments ergonomically inhabitable and economically viable, anymore.

The more I look at the colorful ads from the cartel that creates condos, the more I get convinced on consumers’ displaced motivation. Moving into a house that is never yours until the completion of 20 years, exposes one of the most horrible weak spots of urban population; no wonder why I call this buyers’ displaced motivation. When a chauvinist ego of ‘achieving something in life by buying an apartment’ takes a driver seat by defeating a deepest desire of feeling contented, disposition kicks off. Interestingly the victims whose self-worth starts playing behind pointless purposes in life, they become adamant to prove a point that apartment comes first, not the contentment. I am of a belief that no ambition should supersede the zest that stems from hundred small things in life. House is where sparrows sit and peck their teeny food from the lawn that makes a way to tiny rainy water streams that flow to nourish a handful marigold plants sheltered right under a cluster of mast trees. Probably, this is one of the features of a dream place where I would build my house soon, but this is something that any normal man who values his money can afford. There are thousands of good property sellers who sit on gated communities with right titles. Instead of investing in apartments to save on rent and multiply investment, it is not a bad idea to spend on plots that we can build an independent house to live. 
The description thus far is for those who can afford. What about those, who cannot?
Well ..if we can live with a reality that Queen of Whales is not our cousin, what stops us in accepting a fact that we don’t live in an apartment and find an alternative? I’m not writing this in despair and my views are not abrasions of a pessimist nor advisory excuses for less privileged population. My reaction stems from a reality that ½ of our population doesn't own a house. Does it mean that ½ a billion Indians should just sit and sob?

I see a bunch of people coming into employment with a perpetual obsession to buy an apartment. Rest of the world may call it an early financial planning. I call it nonsense.High rise house horror mostly has destroyed all the sanity that once existed with people who today are just competing to be in a queue to get into a world’s fastest express train that takes them to a fool’s paradise. Half of this crowd which was born poor went to schools that had poorest amenities. A crowd that walked without shoes on an uncut grass of widespread meadow, sniffing the solacing smell of the soil by hearing the thinning noise of flowing water complimented by the squeaky and croaky frog chorus is settling for claustrophobic halls by insulting acutely joyful experiences of their childhood. This surprises me, to the hilt.

My father being a conservative man never risked his money to reap extraordinary returns.

Today, I don’t complain on my father’s financial outlook - which rather shaped my everyday life, profoundly. His attitude made me respect money and people who earn it, a hard way. There were no obvious miseries though, but I recognized quite early in my life that earning money is tougher in life and toughest of all would always be saving it. I realized that we were poor and my father worked very hard to make us feel good. The insufficiency of some fundamentals in my earlier life kept me on the guard all the time so much that I did not even realize as to when I surpassed the basics that I always wanted to attain, after I started working.

Most ambitious men are like nonsensical buffaloes walking on an unfrequented milieu.

Sometimes, you notice that a few in the herd suddenly start running just because one unruly buffalo chooses to run. This suddenly becomes a phenomenon and you notice that most of the buffaloes are on the run. The run has no agenda, no direction and no control. It is just a mindless - scary run. Some, don’t stop even when many in the crowd have stopped. The ones who run the farthest leaving the normal crowd often times are bemused as to why they ran, first of all. Their timid eyes symbolize confusion, remorse and loneliness. I guess the buffaloes that randomly ran, someday realize that the act was a consequence of meaningless herd mentality. I’m one such buffalo who now wants to return to the hut, slowly. I have been away from the hut for quite some time; a resolved return would at least render some relief.

Leading an insecure, intelligent and an independent life is everybody’s karma but one should pause intermittently to undo certain things in life. Here I am, pausing and daring to question myself, knowing well that all my obscure questions have obvious answers. Just the way I hold the power to live a life that I desire to live, I should better hold the courage to accept the answers; answers that are not going to be convenient. After all, no journey to the graveyard is worth living, if we end the journey with some unanswered questions. Fulfillment of a life after all lies not just in asking some tough questions but in seeking simple answers and possessing courage to accept it. Those who accept those answers and make modifications in life are the ones who create and share joy. 

The solution is within and simple; we have just alienated and complicated it.