A Flaw in the Plan 2/8 - Diagon Alley

“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don't much care where.

Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.”

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (readers would do well remember that Alice was horribly lost)

 

Disclaimer: The following chapter may (or may not) be based on real (or fictional) events. The author may (or may not) have been one (or several) of the characters in the story. As you read, you will find a complete lack of logic, morality, and bowel movements by the characters. You can be assured that this story was written by someone who had either lost his sanity, or was at least very close to the (mis?)fortune. By now you have also realized that nothing good (or bad) will come out of reading further. We did not want to waste your time with a very long disclaimer. But this disclaimer serves to filter out only the most voracious (jobless) readers. And frankly, this story is only for those half-wits (geniuses) who will read anything that appears on their screen. We truly detest (love) such people. The only people (goats) who might be more miserable are those who invest in Indian real estate.

 

Buying real estate in India is a bit like trying to purchase a unicorn from a street vendor – except that the unicorn is invisible, has a habit of moving around when you're not looking, and might turn out to be just a painted donkey. Let me take you on a journey, a perilous adventure filled with pitfalls, ridiculousness, and the occasional existential crisis.

 

You go to buy a pen in the market. You pay the money. You get a pen. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Fortunately, that’s how BUYING works. Or at least should work. Consider the following scenario.

 

You go to buy a pen in the market. You pay the money. You get a pen. The pen doesn’t work. You give back the pen and ask for your money back. But that’s not what happens. Because that would make it real. What happens is that the salesman, a charming fellow with a smile as crooked as the pen itself, gets another brilliant idea. A special idea. Another situation! He offers you a new pen. A better pen. A more expensive pen. You’ve already spent money. That’s sunk cost anyway. You think, why not throw more good money after bad? And so you do. You get the new, better, improved, life-changing cancer-curing world-hunger-ending pen for a discount than what it’s worth. Why not shell out some more money and buy the better fucking pen, you think to yourself. And you buy the better pen.

 

The pen doesn’t work. You give back the pen and ask for your money back. But that’s not what happens…

Now consider this: when you buy a pen, you pay for the whole pen, not per centimeter of pen. Imagine if the pen seller started quoting prices like “Rs 1/cm,” and since the pen is 10 cm long, you end up paying Rs. 10. This would be considered the peak of absurdity, right? Right?

 

Welcome to the Indian real estate market. Where projects fail, men with big pens keep getting bigger, and you’re left holding your pennies. Stupid arguments are the norm and hapless buyers can’t do anything but learn the ways of the jungle. Because real estate is not a logical decision; it’s an emotion. It’s perhaps the costliest emotion you will ever feel in your life – except Indian marriages. But that’s a story for another time.

 

When you go to buy a 3-BHK apartment and the price is quoted as – “Rs. 10,000/sqft for 750 sqft”. Am I expected to do the math? You don’t have a calculator handy? Instead of an amount, can I write a math problem on a cheque? Why is the price being quoted in sqft? Will they sell me 2 rooms in the 3-BHK? Do they expect me to say that I want only 350 sqft, so I won’t pay for the remaining 400 sqft? But the confusion is a part of the charm. Without this perpetual disorientation, the buyer doesn’t feel like he’s taking an important decision.

 

And let’s talk about square footage, shall we? There’s carpet area, built-up area, covered area, super built-up area, and the mythical RERA carpet area. It’s a Russian nesting doll of real estate, each layer more baffling than the last. There’s the carpet area that I can lay the carpet on. Fine. That is the area I can use. But there’s a built-up area which includes the internal walls and pillars of my flat; after all the walls are a part of my flat, even if I am not exactly living on it. But then there’s a covered area, which is the area that comes under a roof, which includes all walls, pillars, and balconies. That is the area we pay municipal taxes on. But lo and behold! There’s a super built-up area, which is the total area including the common areas of the lobby, lift, open spaces, parking spaces etc. This is the area on which prices are typically quoted.

 

The Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA), in its infinite wisdom, decided to simplify things by defining the RERA carpet area as

“net usable floor area of an apartment, excluding the area covered by the external walls, areas under service shafts, exclusive balcony or verandah area, and exclusive open terrace area, but includes the area covered by the internal partition walls of the apartment.”

 

If you’re still confused, don’t worry – you’re not alone. The RERA carpet area is a concept so revolutionary that no one, not even RERA, fully understands it. In the end, the area is whatever the builder tells you it is. I dare you to bring a tape measure!

Now just because you have been quoted a price per square foot, doesn’t mean that’s the price you pay. You silly boy (or girl, but please no more!). There are sales taxes, registry charges, EDC charges, community corpus, advance maintenance charges, PLC, and other miscellaneous costs.

 

But let’s not get bogged down by mere numbers. Let’s talk about the true cost of real estate in India – the cost that isn’t measured in rupees, but in your will to live. Indian real estate is as punctual as its trains and as reliable as its weather forecasts. When a builder tells you that construction will be completed in two years, what he actually means is that it’ll take three years. But you can’t file a complaint before four years, because that’s what the RERA registration says. Your case will likely be heard well into the fifth year, by which time the place might, just might, be habitable.

 

And this, dear reader, is before you even start thinking about the amenities. Swimming pools, gyms, and gardens are like the Loch Ness Monster – often talked about, rarely seen. Even if you do get them, don’t expect to use them anytime soon. Your interior designer, too, will take his sweet time, delaying everything further while adding to the costs.

 

Then there’s the booking process. Ah, the sweet moment when you decide to take the plunge. You arrive at the site, full of hope and dreams of your future home. The salesman greets you with the enthusiasm of a carnival butcher, at not what is yet a building, but to a gaping hole in the ground. With a sweeping gesture that ends somewhere in the clouds he says,

“Look sir. Look up towards the nothingness in the sky. That’s where your home will one day be. And you’ll have a view of a garden, a swimming pool, a mountain range, and a giant mortgage in your name. It’s beautiful how the system works. And you’ll be charged a beautification cost just for that.”

 

You squint at the sky, trying to imagine your future abode floating majestically above, with a view of a serene lake. Never mind that the “lake” is more of a swamp, or that your view might one day be obstructed by another tower that, for now, is just another hole in the ground. But you’re convinced, by the salesman’s enthusiasm or your own desperation, who knows? And you hand over your money. Congratulations! You’ve just become a patron of the arts, funding the builder’s ambitious project to transform that hole into your dream home. Whether he actually succeeds… well, that’s a risk you’ll just have to take.

 

Then there’s the world of TragicKicks and 9900decimals. If you’ve ever posted your credentials on these sites, you know that they can give the good people at Bajaj Finance a run for their money. I once told the 38^th broker of the day that the property I had posted over a year ago was not available for sale anymore.

 

But if you ever happen to engage with a broker, you know that the price you quote is always wrong - even before they have ever laid eyes on the property. Because there will always be something wrong with it, the position, the vastu, the locality, or simply the “vibes”. The brokers always tend to tell the seller that the price should be lower and the buyers that the price is too high.

 

You see, there’s a price quoted by the seller. But he’s greedy. He will probably sell for a little less than the quoted price if pushed for it. And there’s a price that the buyer has in mind. But his wife will probably coax him into going beyond his means. After all, little Bunty does need an extra room for studies and you need a room for the grandchildren to be born after 25 years. Plus, where will we keep all the crappy stuff like your mom?

 

So the broker’s job is to bring the buyer and seller to an agreeable point. But the brokers are good. They won’t just push the buyer and seller in the deal zone and walk away with their 2% commission. That’s what idiots do. Broker’s aren’t idiots. They’ll create the deal zone wide enough to create a big margin. And who takes away the margin? Obviously the person handling the cash. Whom both parties trust. And who knows the market and the property. Or at least seems to know it. Now who could that be…?

In the end, investing in Indian real estate is not just a financial decision – it’s an emotional rollercoaster, a test of endurance, and perhaps the best way to lose your sanity while maintaining a semblance of dignity. If, after all this, you still decide to buy property, I tip my hat to you, brave soul. You’ve clearly mastered the art of surviving the absurd.

A Flaw in the Plan 1/8 - The Marauder’s Map

“An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.” Worst life advice ever!

 

Chacha and I were driving down a beautiful stretch of road. Or at least as beautiful as it gets in rural West Bengal. By "beautiful," I mean the leaves had that extra slickness post-monsoon, glistening with the pride of not being drenched in smoky city air for a change.

 

‘Isn’t smoke supposed to be a tree’s favourite snack?’, I wondered. At least that’s what we were taught in school – trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, apparently. Too bad it’s only bad for humans.

 

Chacha jolted me back from my existential musings. ‘How much farther is it?’

Ah! The quintessential ‘it’. The ‘it’ for which we had made the 2-hour drive. He wouldn’t even call ‘it’ by its correct name.

‘It,’ I took a pause to let it sink in, ‘is around 30 minutes away.’

‘If the road exists,’ I added just to mix my pessimistic realism in Chacha’s eternal optimism.

 

Chacha had bought a piece of land years ago and had promptly forgotten about it. Happens to the best of us, right? Having nothing better to do during Covid, I tried to go over the old rusty family documents and estimate my inheritance. There was a pandemic out there after all. During this time I stumbled upon a bunch of deeds for this forgotten land which, according to the ancient scrolls, was next to a highway. And we all know, thanks to our grandfathers, that highway lands are like discovering gold under your bed.

I went into full detective mode. At first I tried hand-drawing the land by combining all the maps on the deeds – total disaster. Next I tried juxtaposing the plot map, mouza map, Google Satellite image, and maps from the deeds on top of each other. Slightly better, but still not usable. I couldn’t figure out the shape of the land. Finally, in a moment of part desperation and part nostalgia, I turned to the oldest and most loyal tool in my arsenal – MS Paint.

 

Most of the younger generation might not understand or appreciate the importance of MS Paint. Some of you might not even have a Windows computer. You have my condolences. For you never got to experience the might of MS Paint - the unsung hero of the 90s. Be it making a perfect rectangle or dive deep into Ayesha Takia’s… eyes. MS Paint was the answer to everything. And to those who are closer to my age and still cling to your Windows devices, I have one question – how’s your backache?

But I digress. With the precision of a surgeon I drew out the plot of land Chacha had so longingly ignored for years. And the masterpiece looked something like this:

No wonder Chacha forgot about it.

 

1.      Only a sliver of the land was connected to the highway

2.      That sliver wasn’t connected to the other pieces of the land

3.      Those other pieces of land weren’t connected to each other

4.      WHAT THE PHUCK!

 

Now don’t get me wrong. Of course the land was connected to other pieces of land. That is how land works. You don’t just have some land and then it ends. Galileo proved that wrong centuries ago. What I mean is that the bunch of land that Chacha owned was not connected to other pieces that he owned. It looked like scattered puzzle pieces from different boxes. Sure, the West Bengal mutation department had done a splendid job of listing the names of the landowners on their website. But knowing someone’s name isn’t enough if you intend to transact with them. A phone number would have been nice.

So it turns out some clever broker had convinced Chacha that he could acquire the whole plot. The land was once owned by the Nawab on Bengal who in 1727 gifted ‘it’ to a loyal subject – may his soul rest in piece. The loyal subject had four wives and a brood large enough to fill a small village. Fast forward through three centuries of inheritance, squabbles, unresolved disputes, legal battles, and a fair bit of incest, the land was now owned by an army of descendants who could not agree on dinner, let alone sell their land. I guess that’s what 300 years of procreation does to family values. Since ‘it’ was presently held by scores of people, Chacha would have to buy it slowly, one at a time. Since no one person could use the land effectively, it could be bought at a very cheap price. That went on for a while. And then the broker disappeared. And Chacha was left with a jigsaw puzzle of land that wasn’t connected to anything. Not even itself.

 

After piecing this horror show together on paper, I convinced Chacha to at least visit the place. Mind you, he’d had never actually laid eyes on it. Only I had advanced his knowledge about the place with Google Maps. But not his fault. Most of the prior generations had barely laid eyes on what would screw them for the rest of their lives. Only after tying the unbreakable legal knot would they realize what they’d signed up for. Our generation had done away with those concepts.

 

The roads of rural Bengal pose their own set of challenges. It is said that if one can learn to drive in Bengal, they can drive anywhere in the world. That is why NASA is littered with Indian scientists – NASA brought in scientists from Bengal! Because if you want someone who is able to drive a rover in a completely hostile and inhospitable terrain having no idea what lies ahead and being prepared for anything, you need someone who can drive in Bengal. Which is pretty ironic, because since I have come to Bengal, this place has done everything to kill my drive.

 

The drive was mostly soundless and often roadless. Years of monsoons had withered away the roads and any kind of markings. And so, we arrived at ‘it,’ which, as it turns out, was less of a place and more of an existential dilemma. ‘It’ was in the middle of nowhere. Not the poetic middle of nowhere, where you find peace and tranquility. More like, ‘How the heck do we monitor this?’ nowhere. Evidently Chacha had bought a piece of land right in between and hence, far from, two villages so we did not even have a lock-shop close by. Not that we could have locked down the unwalled land with a lock. Other than a grazing cow, there wasn’t much to see. Sure the highway passed near, but it was a West Bengal highway. Delhi has better streets inside the chasms of Hauz Khas. And if that’s not relatable enough, think of the roads on which two cars can make slow love while passing by each other. The silver lining? You could drive fast – because no one else dared to.

But the pièce de résistance of ‘it’ was this: there was no ‘it’. The land, per say, wasn’t there. Someone had dug away the earth from the land. What was left was a lake. Or rather a collection of sizable puddles. So to recap:

 

1.     The land that wasn’t connected to the highway

2.      The land wasn’t connected to other lands

3.      The land wasn’t even land

 

I guess all wasn’t at loss. Some lesson could be derived from this dastardly tale. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Which brings us to our second story…

A Flaw in the Plan 0/8 - The Vanishing Glass

“Every dead body on Mount Everest was once a highly motivated person.” - Folk wisdom

We have all heard of rags to riches stories. The ones where, curiously enough, our fathers or forefathers struggled long and hard to gain fame and fortune in society. People, whose unrelenting endeavours and irreproachable work-ethic made them a living legend amongst peers and secured a legacy for generations to come. The world encourages us to appreciate and applaud such men.

 

This isn’t a story about those men.

 

We have all heard of stories from our uncles or grand-uncles (why are we still talking to them?) about the land purchased by someone who knew someone who knew them, and they became rich overnight. Or that cool teenager who bought bitcoins when they were launched and now drives a Rolls Royce off cliffs in Los Angeles. Or the bum who bought Infosys shares during the IPO and forgot about it for the next 30 years. Strokes of luck? Genius? Something to be pursued? Should I write a blog series about it? No. This isn’t one of those stories.

 

In 2015 I graduated business school to join the ranks of financial wizards who make the world go round. If you’ve ever seen a dark-suited plump bald man with a permanent expression of being late for something, you know who I’m talking about. In their youth, they had passions and hobbies but no money or time to pursue them. Then they all read Ikigai and turned all their hobbies into professional side-hustles. Who said the devil doesn’t devour souls anymore? He has simply taken the guise of capitalism. But again, this is not a story about the evils of capitalism. But we’re getting there now.

 

I chose to pursue my career in a niche branch of finance called “stressed assets management”. Interestingly, when we talk of “stressed assets”, the asset itself is not stressed – it is the investors who are stressed. But saying that out loud will deter new investors, and we investment bankers don’t want that. Stressed Assets essentially mean that if you invested in (or were duped into) “some-thing” and the “thing” part stopped working (or disappeared or was blown up in a war or the world shut down for a few months or the USA elected another stupid leader), you have yourself a stressed asset. Common examples are the abandoned half-constructed buildings typically found in every Indian neighbourhood; or the investment some fellow made in shares and lost everything; or the wedding and the inevitable divorce that bankrupted the groom. All of these were conscious decisions taken by well-meaning people, hoping to elevate their quality of life. Some money was spent. Some memories were created. And then everything came crashing down. All that remained was ruins of a beautiful dream that never saw reality, often infested with snakes – literal or figurative. Optimism? Over-optimism? Irrational Exuberance? Or just bad luck? But again, that is not what our story is about. But you can now see where we are headed.

 

Once upon a time in a village, there lived a farmer. He was poor. He had four sons. All four of them were poor. He also had a wife. She was also poor. There was even a grandmother, and you guessed it – poor. The whole family was poor. They lived off the land, which means that they grew stuff on the land, and made a living. The farmer grew old, say about 80 years, it doesn’t really matter, nobody cares. The sons were all 40-55 years old. As the farmer approached his death, he called his family close to him. For one last time he saw the people who had loved and cared for him his entire life. With his last breaths, he summoned the strength to say his final words. He told his sons that hidden within his field, there was a treasure. If the sons tilled the soil and cultivated the land, they would find the treasure chest and would never want for anything in their lives. With these words, the poor farmer drew his last breath and died.

 

The sons were confused. But with an unsaid agreement, did not speak to each other again about the treasure. These might have been the mad rumblings of a dying old man. Surely no one in their right mind would have kept their family in abject poverty while a treasure rested in the ground they had harvested their entire lives. The sons performed the last rites of their father and never spoke of the treasure again – for a week. Of course curiosity burned in them and they were having difficulties in performing regular bowel movements. The youngest (why is it always the youngest?) son could take it no more. He took a sickle and started tilling the land at the exact spot his father had mentioned. And before sunset, the sickle hit a chest buried deep in the ground. The chest was carried up. The boys (men?) couldn’t believe their eyes. The senile man had been right after all. He did bury a treasure in the ground. That old fool! But all was forgiven now. The sons could live the rest of their lives out of the poverty that had suffocated them for so long. The lock was opened and the box was opened. To find it full of Rs. 1,000 currency notes.

Our story is about such treasures. Long lost hopeless dreams that were 17% bad luck, 13% stupidity, and 71% lack of attention to detail.

 

During my career I came across many such stories. Where the most common response was, “this cannot be right. Is it though?” Actually that was the second-most common response. The most common response was depression. No matter if you had invested in it or not. Just knowing that human civilization had sunk to such levels of stupidity and greed makes you constantly wonder if we are past the great barrier of stupidity. And whether humanity had had its long run and now it was time to handover the planet to the birds and bees. I think they would do a much better job with the planet than humanity. If you agree, congratulations! You’re a communist.

 

In the coming chapters, we shall share stories of broken dreams, theft, bankruptcies, and plain old stupidity. Living these stories for years has helped me outgrow any surprise that the world might throw at me. After all, human absurdity knows no bounds. And I am living proof of that very fact. 

Father

“How are you different from your mother?”

“I hope in as few ways as possible.”

-        Martha and Harriet, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Episode 1X05

I made a friend recently. As a single man in his mid-30s, returning to his tier-2 hometown after 13 years, making friends hasn't been easy. So when the chance came upon to have dinner with a newfound friend, I pounced on the opportunity.

The conversation led to how men spend their youth trying to rebel from their fathers, only to end up like them in so many ways. I found this weirdly conflicting and relatable. For much of my adolescence, my father wasn’t really a person I could look up to. He was that presence in my life who was annoying me. In his mind, he might have been pushing me to live better. But the constant disappointment with everything that I did was overbearing. To the point that I really didn’t care what he thought of me. The brief interactions that we did have made me wanting less. Time and distance made it easy to naturally grow apart, and we didn’t even have much to talk about. Having reached the age of 30, father was a figure who existed, but we didn’t really have what we could call a real relationship.

Come to think of it, I didn’t really have any real relationships in my life. I had friends from three different colleges. I had colleagues that I would forget the moment I changed the job. I had dates, but never a stable relationship. But I didn’t really have a relationship that I could rely on. If I were to fall sick, I didn’t have a person who would wait outside the hospital doors. For much of growing up, I was on my own.

Covid changed that. Fate brought me back not only to Kolkata, but to the family business. I now lived at home and worked with Dad, being now witness in hindsight to his life journey, with all its revelries and mistakes. Over the years, I was the one who sat outside hospital gates as I became the person the family could rely upon. This was never the plan. But life has a funny way of disposing man’s plans.

The thing that brought me back to the family was actually the business. The mismanagement of it to be precise. My father comes from a generation of free-thinking risk-takers. This was the generation of the Boomers – the ones who had the world open in front of them and charged at it with full swing. The ones who had nothing to lose. Of course they hit some and missed some. All of them had investments that had gone sour and would have made a killing if only this or that had happened.

Going over the business, I realized that Dad had expanded the business beyond what he could reasonably manage. Coming from more sophisticated jobs, I had some idea of how to organize and manage bigger businesses, but I had never shouldered the responsibility of owning anything of value. There was still much to be learnt. And that is where Dad and I started becoming a good combination. We found common ground in managing the expanding business, and could talk like adults. No more did I have to face the constant disappointment. I would report to him as I would to a senior at my office. Over time, the reporting requirements reduced to him just being a mentor I could seek advice from, but was responsible for my own decisions. In time, I understood the circumstances in which faulty decisions had been made long ago. True empathy came when I made a few bad decisions of my own. It is impossible in this world to live without making mistakes. What is needed is someone who can look at you and say, “so this happened, what next?”

As we spent more time together, I started to cherish it. For once, I had this person with whom I constantly disagreed – over politics, religion, business, and lifestyle. Yet, I constantly found myself to be more similar to him than not. I could always rely that he understands my condition, both said and unsaid. He understood the enthusiasm of youth. We connected on our pursuit of spirituality and constantly quarrelled over the correct way. Coming from totally different upbringings, we were able to offer new perspectives on old problems. Even though we disagreed on practically everything, which continues to be a constant source of irritation and anguish for me, I know that we work on the same value systems. We have common ground. And we can talk to each other like men.

Over the years I have come to consider myself luckier than most of my friends. Many of us escaped our tier-II upbringing settling in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore when home became the new family that we initiate. I miss that freedom and self-reliance. I have given away a part of my life to exist for the family. In that, my world has grown. I am able to spend time with my parents which could not be possible for most of my friends. I was able to spend time with my father while he could still teach me something; and I could add some value to his life. Most importantly, I had one person in my life that I could rely upon and know that his mere existence acts as a calm over the chaos that I live through.

Over the years we have planned trips together, collaborated in legal battles, took decisions for the business and the family, and just sat across the table and shared thoughts about what we are going through. Often, I would caution him against over-extending himself, either physically or financially. But I understand that he needs to feel like the risk-taking entrepreneur that made a life for himself. I cannot pull him too far back. He is old, but he is still a man. When he says that we will climb a snow-peaked hill, I cannot refuse him simply because I see the risks more clearly. Instead, I stay right behind him. And when I stay out late at night, he doesn’t question where I was. Once Mother did try to instigate him into questioning my whereabouts. He simply said that I am a grown-up and will go where I please. He respects my boundaries. It was me who had difficulty accepting his.

And so it continues. I don’t know how much time destiny shall grant me with him. There will come the inevitable time when we will have to part. I intend to cherish every bit of it. I couldn’t discover a relationship with my father while I was growing up. But it was wonderful to meet him as a grown-up. He had to make the wait while I made the climb.

It is difficult for a single man in his mid-30s, returning to his tier-2 hometown after 13 years to make friends. But you don’t really have to look very far from home to find one.

Kashi 3/3 - Dalmandi Road

I had taken an early morning walk southwards from the hostel towards Assi Ghat. I walked till the end of the road where the Ghats ended. To venture further south I would need to walk through the town, which I didn’t want to do. So I returned north to the other end of the city. I reached Manikarnika Ghat beyond the Kashi Vishwanath temple. However, I did not happen to cross the Namo Ghat that I had heard a lot about. Someone said that it was further up north beyond Manikarnika, but boats refused to go there and there was no more road beyond Manikarnika. So I decided to walk through the city.

I followed Google Maps which didn’t show a direct path to Namo Ghat. I would need to detour from deep into the town and come back towards the ghats. It was early and I was fresh. I decided to take the journey. The path would take me through a narrow alley named Dalmandi Road. Varanasi had a lot of alleys, so that wasn’t surprising. The surprises started once I entered the alley.

I walked into Dalmandi Road through the western side and the shift was immediate. The entrance was a bustling market even in the morning close to the entrance of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. There were queues of people waiting in line for the temple, early morning shoppers, breakfast places Varanasi is famous for, or people just loitering about on a vacation. But just around the corner inside Dalmandi Road was a completely different vibe.

The place was almost deserted. I saw perhaps 10 people during the kilometre-long walk. The buildings on each side of the road were ripped away from the ground. It didn’t feel like a city anymore. I imagined this would be what war-torn Palestine or Ukraine might look like. It was also very noticeable that this was predominantly a Muslim locality. The people I saw on the road had traditional Muslim attire and beards. There were broken water pipes which still had streams of water, making parts of the road muddy. It was disturbing that there could be such a view just next to that bustling market outside. It felt as if I had been transported to another planet through a portal, and I wasn’t sure if I could go back. If an accident were to fall upon me in this alley, there was no way anyone could know or I could be found. I felt away from my home planet. These buildings didn’t seem to be demolished in an organized manner. The trail of destruction were left behind. At one point I could see what must have been a dining room at some point, still intact but the exterior wall was missing. A lot of buildings seemed to just have been dropped, without any post-cleaning. As if some bombing had occurred in the street. But why would the bombing happen only on this street, and no other streets adjoining. I wanted to Google where I was and the history of this street. But faster than that I wanted to be out of the other end. This was obviously not safe. I didn’t want to run, lest any stray dogs come after me. I knew that it was important to appear tough when you’re shit scared.

On returning to the hostel I Googled and found that there was an active demolition drive at Dalmandi road. Some articles said that it was because the construction in that lane was unauthorized – an argument which lent little merit. Varanasi is an ancient city. Most of the construction in the city is unauthorized. The residences in narrow lanes predate any civic authority. Even the lanes do not always have names. The other argument was that it would enable a wide and fast corridor from the ghats to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. This was an infrastructure improvement initiative. There is a fierce debate of development vs. preservation that is intense enough at Varanasi, and we will not get into that in this article. I am sure the free and fair elections at Varanasi will give verdict to this debate. But it was interesting to note that only the Muslim locality was targeted for such infrastructure improvement, in a somewhat traumatic way.

Dalmani Road finds its mention in the throes of history. It is populated by silk-shops, brothels, and residences of Muslim shopowners whose shops were on the ground levels of such structures. It is said to be the place where the revolt of 1857 was planned. I would believe that, as the best place to plan a revolt would be a narrow Muslim Lane in a vastly Hindu religious city inside a brothel. There can be no better cover. That history is now rubble. I am sure there will be vast improvements to the Shiv temple in lieu of the destruction. I doubted if the God of destruction appreciated this violence in his name.