movies that are completely disconnected from reality and which feature hyndi speaking men and women and children living in opulence and laboring extremely hard to ape white men and women and children in lifestyles, speech, mannerisms, gestures.....virtually everything, the hyndi cinema world sometimes takes a big risk at damaging its own self esteem by venturing out to make a movie which it believes reflects the earthy reality of life of Indian commoners !
Alas, the one BHK family in Mumbai is as far down as it will dare go !
The decades of hollow vanity Bollywood has built up around itself and infected most hyndi speaking middle class north Indians with will simply not allow it to go further down to where more than 55 % of all Mumbaikars live - in horrendously unclean and congested slums with the railway tracks and other open areas as the only option as toilets !
Having stayed in a chawl for 50 years I can understand how tough it is for the Mumbaikar and his yearning for privacy even though it is a 1 BHK and the inferiority complex when you come to know that a friend or a relative has a 2BHK or a 4BHK. While the politicians and the Municipal corporations have fulfilled the dream of the average Mumbaikar staying in chawls to get a decent flat under re-development, what has happened in effect is a spoils system where the ruling party facilitates signatures of the tenants for re-development and the largesse is distributed by the builder, babu and politician nexus where they profit by giving out of turn or more space to the facilitators and black money still continues in this real estate industry irrespective of demonetization. The tendency to cheat the tenants is real and present and we have to live with it. There is no level playing field and all is fair in love and war and in real estate transactions. If you have money you get it, else forget it.
Mumbaikars are fools not to understand the underbelly and reason for their struggle and fight to even get a tiny space to sleep or privacy while the real reason is not shortage of space but exploitation by the respective Municipal Corporation and Govt. in not having proper development plan as well favoring the rich and those having better money to spend. Else why is development being allowed in already cramped places and new buildings allowed to come up adding to curtailing of existing places which was well planned decades back. Naturally slums and people who earn less has only one choice, either travel to & fro for earning from a far of place which is 2 hours away one-way or live in slums, encroachments or small rooms where two people cannot even walk comfortably. People of Mumbai also love struggling and dying unnecessary just to be proud of the statement that Govt., BMC and media have put on each Mumbaikar, stating See Mumbai is professional, though they die everyday at every step, they still have a heart to struggle and live. What a shame. Mumbai was such a lovely place decades back which was planned well with 4-floor buildings, enough open spaces, house ownership and rentals were cheaper and available as per our budget and mainly there was a social fabric which used to tie up every Mumbaikar, be it rich or poor, because Mumbai had a rich culture. All this is unfortunately gone due development.
