Veedu vs 7% floating rate

SCV Channel - Monday - Sept 13 - 10:30pm movie - Veedu by Balumahendra

Good one! Archana had acted really well. The scene when Iyengar narrates to Archana about handling the investment. When Iyengar talks about the feature of the house, Archana's eyes start glittering with enthusiasm and starts drooping again while thinking how to put in the money. Then, numerous talks and deciding on going for it.

It was  sheer poetry - more than that, it brought back the nostalgic memories of how 15 years back, my father struggled to build a house, taking lots of pains in terms of money to house and other commitments, and the sense of achievement he had - first person from the relatives clan hailing from a remote South Arcot district village to a city, succesfully settled in a permanent job and built a house also. Ok, the house is in suburbs - so what? Own house is all that mattered. No mean achievement it was - THEN.

I remember the days when my father had to go back and forth between panchayat office, builder's home and to HDFC office for getting the loan sanctioned and money released.

Cut to today!!!

I own a flat in plum Triplicane area - 50% financed by Housing Loan Institutions. Its 3 years old, and as on date, am already with my 3rd home loan institution topping up my loan every time. Bottom line is things come easy!!!

Offlate, I keep cribbing to wife and friends that something is lacking in life, life sucks etc etc...Not just me, many people of my generation feel that way. Talk to any elders, they say, "we never felt like this when we were your age". And, I know its true! With lesser salary and a bigger family to support, my dad used to toil a lot. Now, I have a fat paycheck(well, not exactly currently - but nevertheless, scaling up is not a big issue), money to spend on anything and buy anything I may need. Have switched three mobile phones already. Jobwise, am doing a better job than what my predecessor did - not clerical, but more administrative and managerial! Then, what else is lacking?

Maybe is it because everything is offered in a platter now-a-days. Not like those olden days, like in Veedu, when someone describes about having a house on my own, might not be too enticing. Because it is not a challenging task anymore. Give it to a builder, or better buy a ready-made house/flat. Only thing to do is, take half day permission (if in IT company, not even a need for permission, just sit extra hours, browse and add to timesheet as 'knowledge building activity'), go to registrar office, sign a few documents, talk crap about how bad/corruptive Govt agencies have become, have lunch with builder and get back to office. Voila - you are the proud owner.

Now there is another class which sees this class of people get things so easily, offered on a platter. They struggle so much but the results dont come easily. It's worser than in previous periods - they won't get a loan from office like in those days, because office has a tie-up with some schmuck bank, employees can apply to them directly. They don't have eligibility for a loan because their salary isn't enough.

Are we, as a society, growing healthy? People of our class say life sucks and something is lacking, because we do not have to struggle for anything. It's a buyers market for us, and we get to choose from a wide range of loans..we are the '7% floating rate' class, and there is another class which will now take a much longer time period than our predecessors to grow up. But at the same time, they become easily frustrated with this anomaly. This is not a self-sustaining model that will balance itself out any sooner.

For a country of our size, this type of divide is obscene.