Description

A darkly comic take on the monstrous megapolis of Delhi and its many moods and characters, The Glass House presents a look into the ideals of middle class urban happiness, its link to home ownership, and the pitfalls and prices that come along with its pursuit - a must read for anyone who’s ever lived in urban India.

College professor M.B. and his designer wife, Roshni, are a yuppie couple living in the ever-expanding, smog encrusted, roiling city of Delhi. They have finally achieved their dream of buying their own apartment—in an an up and coming builder complex in Gurgaon. The problem is, it looks like it’s going to be up and coming for a while.

Along with this woe come tumbling a hundred others. M.B. is sure his wife’s growing distance and disaffection from him has less to do with the stalling on the house front, and more because she is finding solace in the arms of Rocky, the stud son of their Punjabi landlord. The landlord, on his part, ‘Fatbum’ Khanna, is greasing his way further into his tenants’ lives, filling their ears with advice on how to navigate the growing mound of bank papers, loan agreements and, of course, building jargon. What is galling for M.B. to admit is that he may just need all the help this canny businessman can provide.

Further complicating things are his NRI brother, Tubluda, and his familial tiffs with an overstepping tenant, and M.B.’s growing fascination for the ‘resident bitch’ of the college staffroom, the glamorous South Delhi girl, Malati Patel.

This is a story of a man and his search for a home. At its most obvious level it tracks the progress of the hero from the time he decides to buy the flat in the Gurgaon New Delhi high-rise to the conclusion of his dream. Obviously, it also lays bare his travails during this time. He gains the house, but does he lose the home

At a less obvious level, this is a commentary on the mad lemming like rush we all seem subject to - of building homes at great and often unforeseen costs. Costs that are always more than financial, especially in an economic landscape where the realty business is not only corruption laden but skewed more towards making the ‘quick and easy buck’ rather than creating the warm glow of solid achievement, of helping both the builder and the buyer bask in the legitimate pride of making a home, a castle, a hearth.

It is titled ‘The Glass House’ because of the obvious fragility of the dream and also because like the Emperors New Clothes - everyone except the dweller can look inside and therefore be privy to the falseness and the frailty of the illusion.

Structurally, it follows a three week punctuation - at gaps of exactly 21 days, we track the progress of our hero and his dream. This process continues for 379 days.

The characters are the hero - a middle aged professor of history, variously Mr. B, Sir and EmBee after his initials – his is the voice of the narrative, his wife who he loves but starts to suspect of having an affair with his landlords son, his landlord an all knowing, forceful businessman who is very fond of this couple, his very attractive female colleague who he almost has an affair with, an old soldier – a veteran of many wars – who changes his and perhaps our perspective on happiness, home ownership and the relationship between the two, his brother a successful California based entrepreneur and sundry others.

The cities of Delhi and Gurgaon play a major role in the narrative. They are characters as well rounded as any of the characters named above. As the year progresses, the march of the seasons plays a symphonic orchestra to EmBee’s moods and mental landscape. From the blasting heat of the summer, to the drumming wetness of the monsoon, from clammy autumn to smoggy winter – all asphyxiated under the blanket of pollution that the city struggles to breathe under – the seasons and the twin cities march to a drumbeat that is in lockstep with our Professors dream of staking his claim to the world in the shape of a home that is his own.