Social Interaction for LG and Apartment Hunt in Pune

March 3, 2008 

Thinking how two varied topics as LG’s social skills and our moving to an apartment are related? To begin with we currently live in a sprawling independent bungalow of about 200 sq. ft with a balcony, huge terrace and a car park. It is spacious and nice devoid of all the wood work, storage space and interiors. It took us months to get settled and still it is not an organized home even after nearly 3 years. Averse to investing in cupboards that would not be of any use to us when we move back to our flat, we did not buy much - just the bare bone needed to keep a home functional with all the extra stuff locked away in the three bedroom in cartons that was either never used or only once in a while. So long it was just the two of us, this house was amazing with wonderful people for house owners.

Once Lil’ General came along, things got a little rough with it becoming increasingly difficult to make the house child-proof totally - there is stuff like collectibles that lies packed in cartons, woollens in suitcases, music system - all on the floor or underneath the bed. All rooms except the drawing room and his bedroom are kept closed at all times during the day.

This was still manageable but the difficult part was lack of company. The only people he spends his time with are the two of us and the maid who comes in the morning for a couple of hours. We saw a huge change and the cheerfulness was unmistakable when I took him to my parent’s this January. My parents’ live in a cosy apartment complex with some nice neighbors around. The time we were there, LG was hardly around at home - he is very social that way and would always open the door and go over to the neighbors’ in turns who were more than happy to have him over. When we got back to Pune, it made him very sad as this house looked a like a booth bungalow to him with just two people hanging around and no noise, no people.

We decided to move house for LG’s sake - a place that would give us and him an opportunity to see more faces, make new friends and more children to play with in the evenings etc. No big expectations on that count from us - a flat that was compact with wood work in the kitchen and lofts in other rooms was all we were looking for. Is that too much to ask for? To our disappointment, no flat we’ve seen so far in the big apartment complexes that the city boasts of have any piece of wood in them; it’s just walls with no bare fittings, no lofts, no storage space but a huge balcony/ sit out in every one of them that is way bigger than the Master Bed Room. Makes us wonder if people here spend all their time romancing on the balcony. The rent is exorbitant too in comparison to Bangalore. A 3BHK in Pune city goes easily for 13K. If it’s a semi-furnished flat, the cost increases to a whopping 15.5K or 16K. By semi-furnished, don’t get any wrong notion - two Godrej almirahs provided counts as one! One gentleman who wanted to rent out his brand new flat had a condition - to quote him “rent should be paid by the 5th of every month. For every day’s delay, 2.5% surcharge will be levied on the rent amount”. Even Chidambaram is easy on late tax payers! Not that we are going to default or anything but just look at the attitude - the gentleman is a dear NRI.

Don’t even get me started on taste and standard of living here. I mean this is seriously ridiculous. I wasn’t prepared to move in to a place that would mean having all the stuff on the floor again, so we’ve dropped the idea for now until we find something that we like.

As far as the social interaction bit goes, it would be too optimistic on my part to expect people living in metros to invite neighbour’s kids with open doors. Let’s get realistic - most of these apartments are occupied by couples who both work and hardly have a life themselves, so where’s the question of allowing a toddler rampage their home. V and myself hardly had a life while I worked - all I thought of after coming back from work was to cook something edible and then crash with the day’s newspaper. It’s not just the working couples - even the stay-at-home wives/mothers are less open to interacting freely with neighbors during the day - blame it on no-trust, mind-my-business or busy in the daily grind! I know this might not be the case everywhere but most places I’ve seen in Bangalore and Pune are that way. But, still there is a window of opportunity in meeting people in the park during evenings and community celebrations that we wanted to experiment with - something we don’t have right now. Anything better than this vacuum will do.

So here it is - if you know of a flat that meets my requirements in Pune, kindly let me know!

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One Response to “Social Interaction for LG and Apartment Hunt in Pune”

  1. lakshminl on March 4th, 2008 10:59 am

    Thanks, Allen.

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