New Buddhas of Suburbia

In the search for the Gurgaon subanimal, our car pulls up at the carefully guarded entrance of Garden Estate. The title is not entirely wasted on this stylish suburban housing colony where Gayatri Gupta lives. Gayatri’s home is as understated as she is. There’s nothing loud here, but everything screams class — muted colours, low lighting, and Gayatri in her dark trousers. The attractive young Sanawarian and Lady Shriram College, Delhi, graduate, sinks into a plush sofa as she says quietly: ‘‘It’s a comfortable life.’’

Comfortable? Hmm, bit of an understatement. Sure, the Guptas are no cousins of the Raichands who inhabited the palace in Karan Johar’s fantasy flick K3G (address: somewhere in Delhi). Theirs is a location you can place — DLF City Phase I, Gurgaon — in the Capital’s suburbs. And yes, it’s a believable, self-contained upper-middle-class existence where commuting is done by car and not on chopper alone.

But it’s above and beyond merely ‘‘comfortable’’. Rents here range from about Rs 16,000-Rs 50,000. You could buy a villa for Rs 1 crore-plus. From a window in her bedroom, Gayatri points to the clubhouse with its pool, sporting facilities, beauty parlours for him and her, and restaurant. The residents’ association organises cocktails on occasion (ahem, try beating that, south Delhi!).

Away from places like DLF City, Heritage City, and Gurgaon’s Sector 14 and 17, there’s the rest of Gurgaon which is waved off as ‘‘Haryana’’. The subanimal disdains the local Haryanvi, especially the one who made a quick buck by selling off land to the builders behind the high rises. Insurance employee Tanisha Sood is almost embarrassed as she says: ‘‘These guys whiz around on crowded roads playing loud music from their cars. When they start frequenting a hotspot, we move out.’’ Vashi, Nerul and Sanpada are the more upmarket parts of Navi Mumbai, and names such as Sagar Vihar, Seawoods Estate NRI Complex and Millennium Park coming up at Sanpada are uttered in a tone of respect. Flats here cost upwards of Rs 18 lakh, the bungalows begin at Rs 1.5 crore.

It’s tempting for the subanimal to take things for granted though. Most housing complexes in Gurgaon have 100 per cent power backup. Security too is ‘‘taken care of’’. In places like Seawoods in Navi Mumbai, seeing children off a schoolbus is a hi-tech ritual. ‘‘Let me see if the bus has reached,’’ says Kaushalya Iyengar, a new state-of-the-art mommy at Seawoods, as she glances at the closed-circuit TV in her flat. The space: India. The time: IST. But the precautions (some 20 security guards on the way up) seem out of an address anywhere-in-the-US.

The sight of the stunning Seawoods complex would prompt any visitor to tiptoe up to the Iyengars’ flat. The facilities include well-manicured lawns, fountains, landscaped gardens, a Spanish-style clubhouse with a pool, tennis courts, badminton courts, a bar, a restaurant. Why tiptoe? Because the silence demands it. Because only the sounds of the sea seem to intrude on the quietude.

Says Dr Aparna Salunke who runs a clinic in Vashi: ‘‘The children here go to Ryan International, Apeejay or Delhi Special School, which is readying its International School building right next door.’’ Ryan is reportedly trying to get recognition as a school offering the British O-levels. From these ’burbs will be born future globe-trotters, citizens-in-transit, as comfortable in New York as in Navi Mumbai. Like much of Gurgaon, the Navi Mumbai subanimal, too, echoes Salunke as she says: ‘‘When my son grows up, he will do exactly what he wants.’’

Schools, hospitals … ‘‘we’ve got everything here,’’ says Teesha Kochhar, an insurance employee who stays in a bungalow with a seven-member joint family in Gurgaon. The subanimal makes a statement by making no statement at all. Teesha does it with a pale pink shawl casually thrown around her shoulders, her slim figure hugged by a pair of fitted blue jeans. She and her husband Suneet work close by. With Gurgaon’s virtual lack of public transport, they still remember the difficult months they spent commuting to ‘‘town’’ with just one car between them. Today the family owns four cars.

Work is not always a motive for the move, there’s also escape from the inner-city chaos. And now, the subanimal is determined to tame Chautala’s Haryana as if it were the American Wild West. So, as independent bungalows — where everything is not necessarily ‘‘taken care of’’ — began facing power shortages, residents welfare associations became active. They went a step further. Former Foreign Secretary J N Dixit spearheads SURGE (Society for Urban Regeneration of Gurgaon and Its Environs). The Punjab and Haryana High Court has admitted two PILs filed by SURGE, one questioning the use of residential land for commercial purposes; the second demanding to know what the government did with the several hundred crores collected by builders from house-owners and deposited with the government to develop infrastructure for these colonies.

The ’burbs are no longer mere sleepovers. ‘‘It was called the dormitory city because people worked in Mumbai and came here to sleep,’’ says Aspi Mistry, a software engineer living in Sanpada, ‘‘but now more people work and live here.’’ The spanking CBD Belapur and Vashi Railway Stations have attracted a stream of filmmakers, just as any company’s shift to Navi Mumbai draws hordes of its employees. Says Rajeshwar Banerji, a top shot with Seagram in Gurgaon: ‘‘Upto 30 per cent of all Seagram employees live here.’’ Banerji’s home is about 1.5 km away from the workplace among the deliciously well-appointed apartments in Heritage City with its spacious lawns, badminton and basketball courts and the promise of a club with a swimming pool.

The Great Entertainment Hope for all Gurgaon residents is also coming up: The seven-screen PVR multiplex likely to open early this year. The glitzy Lifestyle mall has already given locals reason to smile. PVR will be housed in the MGF mall. There’s fast-food salvation in the form of a McDonald’s apart from Shopper’s Stop. With bustling activity on this front, and the increase in restaurants and pubs, Gurgaon is clearly not a desert island.

The subanimal wants culture but demands it at the doorstep. Mandi House maybe Delhi’s West End. But it’s a 20-plus km drive away. So Aniruddha Ganguly, country manager (T&D service business) for Alstom, and others got together to form the Aravalli Centre for Art and Culture, which will be inaugurated with a performance by Mallika Sarabhai on January 19. Aravalli will organise cultural and educational programmes, and hopes one day to have its own building housing an auditorium, art gallery and pub.

Navi Mumbai might soon follow suit if its residents’ lament is any indicator. Dr Salunke admits that her children are deprived of the kind of theatre that, say, a Prithvi festival would showcase. She tries to make up for it by taking them to Prithvi in Mumbai whenever possible. Others dip into the bar, restaurant and pool facilities at Seawoods on weekends. There are also weekend picnics to the nearby Nishi Land waterpark.

Back at the Gupta home in Garden Estate, Gurgaon, a tray arrives with cookies and tea served in artistically misshapen cups. As William Dalrymple’s The White Mughals stares down from a bookshelf, Gayatri’s husband Saurabh enters with their infant Samara in his arms. An alumnus of Lawrence School, Sanawar — like his wife — and Hindu College, Delhi, his accent, like so many of India’s educated young metro residents, does not give away his roots; his wardrobe complements his wife’s. Gayatri is a homemaker now. Saurabh is with the family business. ‘‘Like us, we would like our daughter to go to boarding school,’’ he says. They make a handsome picture — this man, woman and child. As Samara grins merrily, Gayatri says with a twinkle in her eyes, ‘‘You know, we have a 10-year plan. For three years we will stay in this flat, and then for seven years in one of the villas here — if we can afford it.’’ Life is not just about money. It’s all about planning, honey.