Mera Capetown,MERA DESH

The world seems to come together at Indirapuram,a suburb in the National Capital Region that abounds with high-rises. Within a 10-km radius,you can find Scottish Gardens and Orange County,Windsor Park and Haciendas,all names of apartment complexes. The bristly reality of India is never too far long power cuts and a derelict public transport system are the norm here. In Mumbai,you meet the stench of damp garbage,fish and public lavatories on way to Westgate,Claremont and Fairfield,the three blocks of a new township in Thane. There is Beverly Hills housing society in Pune and Kensington Boulevard in Noida; Camp David is coming up in Bangalore. So why be surprised if New Yorks famous landmark Times Square has its name serve as gloss for a housing society in Bahadurgarh,Haryana? Gurgaon has collapsed geographical boundaries like no place else,with societies named as variously as Wellington Estate,Princeton Estate,Carlton Estate and Richmond Park. A Delhi-based developer has twinned two vastly differently cities to create a name for his new project: LondoNoida-The Hyde Park. It is called so because 13 acres of its 15-acre area is green, says Yogesh Goel,MD of the developer Nimbus. Another enterprising builder,Supertech,inspired perhaps by the number of times the vuvuzela found its way into heated conversations recently,has decided to call his new project in Noida Cape Town. The marketing pitch: Mera Desh,Mera Capetown. In Bangalore,Nitesh Estates has named an entire batch of projects after famous tennis stadiums: Flushing Meadows,Roland Garros and Wimbledon Park.

The name is only part of the project, says Vineet Kumar Singh,business head of popular real-estate portal 99acres.com. For most buyers,buying a home is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the responses to listings on our site depend on locality,rate,features,amenities and the builder. But,yes,a catchy name may attract 10 to 15 per cent more clicks than a staid one, says Singh.

The logic of ripping names of suburbs and parks from American and British maps and tacking them onto the addresses of Indian high-rises is clear to those in the business. Avnish Aggarwal,CEO of Meriton Group that has built Orange County,a high-end society in Ghaziabad inspired by the television series on life in a Californian neighbourhood,says Indians connect an international name to higher quality. He seems to know his market. Sonia Malik name changed,an HR professional with an MNC,owns a house in Delhis Vasant Kunj and says she has grown up on shows like OC. She walked into the site office of Orange County because she believes a foreign,fancy name will draw tenants with a background like mine.

And when the idea is to stand out from your surroundings and not blend in,there is no apparent irony in calling an apartment complex in Faridabad California Country. The name is striking,unique and has high recall value. And besides,people in Punjab and Haryana have only two names in their mind,California and Canada, says Karan Vermani,general manager sales and marketing,Dhingra-Jardine Infrastructure Pvt Ltd,that is building the group housing society.

The plush life
But what does American living boil down towhat are its contours and colour schemes? Most societies with foreign names offer modern amenities such as a modular kitchen,shiny tiles,swimming pools,a convention hall and badminton/tennis courts. The 3BHK sample flat at Mumbais Fairfield society is fully air conditioned,equipped with CCTV and automated lighting in bathrooms and passagesthe lights are switched on only when motion sensors detect your presence. The hi-tech appeal goes hand-in-hand with vaastu shastra. Each flat has a private elevator that opens on the doorstep but the first thing you notice when you enter is a temple. It is very difficult to sell a house that has not been made according to vaastu rules, says Rishi Khosla,a realtor. For Suresh Mankani,senior consultant with Cap Gemini in Mumbai,buying a flat in Fairfield society is an act of standing out among his peers. The vaastu and the temple,not the name,is what influenced his decision. I want a home where my parents,wife and children can live together. Its about accommodating three generations, he says.

Delhi-based architect and writer Gautam Bhatia has seen enough of the arriviste architecture of modern India not to be surprised by such quiddities. The whole idea of gated communities is to have nothing to do with what lies beyond the boundary walls. And with international-named societies,it is about having nothing to do with India, he says. The architecture of these townships has nothing to do with the places they evoke. These are just marketing tools. Nobody would put as much money in a Vrindavan Park as in a California Town. The irony,though,is that such projects cant take the India out of the surroundings. Even from the balcony of your eighth-floor flat,you can see a man defecating. And while you move out from your air-conditioned ninth-floor flat to your air-conditioned 16th floor office,you do cross dusty roads and street children. That way,these societies havent impacted the urban landscape at all. A swimming pool sounds great but quite often theres no water to fill it, he says.

Exotica can sometimes be difficult to pronounce. MS Verma,a resident of Belvedere Park built by DLF,says no one on his street knows where the building is. They cant pronounce Belvedere. Any time you want something delivered,you have to spell it out and give 10 nearby landmarks, he says. Executives at Dhingra-Jardine Infrastructure are teaching buyers to pronounce Suburbian Floors,the name of a tower in California Country. An old village couple has booked a flat and they are being taught to say its name correctly, says Vermani.

The final frontier
Singh of 99acres.com says English names have become commoditised. Theyve been around for 10 years. In the last five years,theyve become the norm. Developers should graduate to French,Spanish and Italian names, he says. They already have. Theres an Alden Espanola in Pune and a Tuscan City in Sonepat.

Builders of Celebrity Homes in Sector 76,Noida,a proposed five-acre township of 660 flats,a swimming pool,joggers track,amphitheatre and a club-house,claim you are as good as a celebrity if you have bought their flat. Group CEO of Agarwal Associates Aditya Agarwal,though,does get into a bind when he tries to sell you the logic. The word celebrity implies status; living in Noida implies status; working as a high-earning IT professional our target customer is an achievement in itself and is also a status; so the residents will be no less than celebrities, he says.

Some are looking beyond the planet. The Aliens Group in Hyderabad has the last word in apartment names. It is building a bevy of complexes that promises nothing less than The Jetsons lifestyle: a virtual home function to remotely control home appliances and security features like maid mode to restrict access to the maid in your absence; kids mode to restrict access to electrical appliances when no one is around. The names: Aliens Space Station I and II,Aliens Elite,Aliens Hub,Aliens Fasttrack,Aliens Blend,Aliens Valley and Aliens Sweet Home. Wonder what the pizza delivery boy would make of it.
With inputs from Prabhjot Sohal,Debesh Banerjee,Deepika Nath,Shruti Ravindran,V Shoba and Pranav Kulkarni