Sir are you ready to place your order? Yes, I will have a Jain building with a temple please.

             Till about a month ago: as you drove up the slope to Walkeshwar, a billboard placed in a prime position grabbed your attention towards a state-of-the-art new building. The USP (unique selling point) of this building was that it was all vegetarian.  As our car meandered through the post-office traffic, I had to double take to check if I had seen right – yes, there was really a bubble flashing out of the billboard highlighting its ‘all-vegetarian’ feature complete with the green square vegetarian sign.
             My first reaction was to laugh, was this guy serious? And then the sad reality of the most cosmopolitan city in India dawned on me. The vegetarianism is only a façade for a bias rooted in cast and religion. And it almost feels rhetorical for me to state it.
             The idea of vegetarians not feeling comfortable sharing a house with someone who cooks meat or vice-versa – I can understand and endorse, but sharing a building? This is Mumbai, when was the last time you even talked to your neighbor (except to avoid the uncomfortable elevator silence) to find out about his health, forget his favorite dish. The denial of property because of origin is unconstitutional but finding the loophole in culinary preference is a genius of its own kind.
             Walkeshwar and Malabar Hill have slowly become predominated by the Marwari and Gujarati communities and the real estate developers (“builders”) are pegging at keeping it that way, sometimes when they themselves don’t fit the bill. Added attractions, like temples have been erected to increase interest and community-stake. Coincidentally, Malabar Hill is where Jinnah House, the abode of the founding father of Pakistan is located. It is also where we house our ministers of state who are selected (hopefully) on the basis of their skills and not simply because their origin fits squarely with that of the multitudes on Malabar Hill.
             Community-centric living itself is not a recent phenomena: Mira Bazaar is predominantly Muslim, Bandra – Christian, Matunga – South Indian but it was mostly curtailed to the lower classes where they used these community settings to share common business interests and infrastructures. But now, it has quickly spread to the upper strata of society where the bid to keep areas centric to a certain community has become the norm. The regressive progression in tolerance is almost startling.
              When I spoke to some of my friends who are in real estate, they suspended my inquiries and shrugged that ‘that’s the way it is done’. Mind you, these are not your regular run-of-the-mill potbellied paan-chewing builder variety. These are the next-gen, schooled-abroad kind. It is not their fault either -for them, it’s nothing personal. It is just easier for them to sell spaces in a building if they can promise the buyers that they will all be able to pray collectively with the other residents and ensure the glitch-less timely arrival of Goddess Laxmi.

             Even if I bar myself from thinking about the issue of secular inclusion emotionally, the issue makes limited sense from a practical point of view. The laws governing Co-operative Societies and Ownership Flat Acts were devised to deem discrimination on basis of origin, cast, religion etc as illegal. They also imply:
1) as a capitalist economy – let the free market decide who will take ownership of what (isn’t it all about profits in the end?)
2) we abolished the caste system – barring people from other communities in an allotted area implies that in this sphere one community is superior to others
3) intermingling will open your mind – interacting with different ideas, people and cultures not only helps open your mind but helps attune your understanding of your own ancestry (my Muslim roommate and Jewish floor mate found a lot in common in their cultures living together)
4) when one sunki politician decides to spark off a communal riot, how much more tough would his job be if each housing society/complex had a mix of communities living together. When Lee Kwan Yew (my personal favorite politician) formed Singapore, he kept this very issue in mind while devising the law that each housing society had to have a specific percentage of Chinese, Indians, Malays etc represented. I am a huge proponent of devising a similar law for India.

             Leave you with that food for thought (pun intended) as I close my eyes, sip on my lassi and enjoy the din of pure Gujarati banter in the Jain building I just ordered.