Inside a Politician's House

Friendship Day turned out to be an odd day when I almost ended having lunch with a minister in the government here. I also saw a house belonging to a politician that was under construction and marveled at the imported fittings.

It was a cloudy day yesterday and there was a fine drizzle which meant there wouldn’t be many booksellers at Abids. I decided to skip the weekly visit to Abids, and being Friendship Day decided to go along with a friend who asked me if I could tag along with him. Kumar, my friend of more than twenty years is quite a busy man as he is a landscape consultant. He takes me along sometimes when is visiting a site where he is executing a project. Yesterday I agreed to go along since it would give me the chance to chat with him and also spend some quiet time sitting in a car and catching up on my reading while he was at work on the site.

The site was at Jubilee Hills where all the rich people, which includes politicians, have their million rupee homes. Kumar happened to be providing consultancy to a politician. When he asked me if I wanted to take a look at the house of the politician still under construction I did not refuse. It is not very often that one gets to see the insides of houses in places like Jubilee Hills, at least not me. It was a palatial house that was almost complete. There were chandeliers in almost all rooms. Plastic sheets covered every thing in the house.


The marble floor was covered in polythene sheets as were all the furniture like the finely wrought dining table, the beds and other furniture. There was an imported Italian Jacuzzi still in its packing. There were people busy making last minute changes. Another week or so and the house would be ready for occupation. I did not like anything in the house except a small alcove in a bedroom accessible by a wooden staircase. It seemed the perfect place to have a study. But I wonder how and from where do these politicians get so much money to afford imported fittings, teak wood staircases.

Then my friend dropped a bombshell that the politician who had arrived had asked us to accompany him to a Minister’s house for lunch. Even before I could recover from that shock we were off following behind the politician’s convoy snaking our way toward the Minister’s house. Just outside the minister’s house I recovered my wits and told my friend to go ahead and have lunch with the minister. I am not used to sit with ministers and have lunch with them. So I waited outside in the car while Kumar had lunch with the minister since he was not in a position to refuse the offer.

That was how my friendship day went.