The Fantasy of Exclusivity in High Rises

Growing-up in the 1990s—neighbourhoods had a distinct sense of shared emotions, sentiments and community consciousness, which was way more dominant than today’s sense of entitlement. Communities were lot more closely knit. Sharing and being there during each other miseries and festivities was not an obligation but an extension of shared-living. There was no need for committees and welfare-associations to plan impromptu cultural events, community gatherings, or picnics. The advent of the flat-culture, in the post-liberalisation era in the last three and a half decades – may have improved quality of living, but has obliterated a great deal of neighbourhood solidarity. Neighbourly exchanges and visits have diminished considerably. In this fast-paced, individualistic, isolating life – such social decline is an urban reality. 

Liberating and unplanned kite-flying, jumping on to a muddy field, or stealing guavas and mangoes now feel like memories from another life. Snakes, worms, scorpions, mongooses that once wandered into courtyards or intruded in to the rooms, now feel like creatures from another animal planet. In this age of self-absorbed, screen-mediated digital life, we have fast forgotten the habit of crowding into a neighbour’s house to watch a movie or a cricket match without permission. The present generation will hardly believe how rare televisions and telephones still were amongst the middle-class colony dwellers even in the mid-1990s. 

Neighbourhood meant more than family, as they would support, intervene, rescue – not just in the times of need but also on a regular basis. From one kitchen to another, it is quite normal to call out: “That smells delicious! You plan to eat it all alone, or will we get some too?” The everyday exchange of cooked food, gifts, opinions, advices is still vibrant within certain pockets. Accompanying to the police station or to the hospital for a neighbour, going together to vote, guarding someone’s house from a troublesome tenant or helping to evict an unlawful possession – these neighbourly duties and expectations often outweigh familial ones.

Meddling in others’ concerns, remained somewhat an inseparable part of sociality. Entering one’s own house did not mean being cutting off from the outside world. One lived with the feeling that people around are watching and judging. To some, this feels like unnecessary surveillance; to others, it is a form of sociality. People were not just each for themselves; but many lived for and with one another.

Elevations of isolation and aspiration

Under the impact of economic liberalisation, over the past three and a half decades – our cities have been demographically, operationally and visually been reconfigured. City’s settlement patterns, traffic condition, and the pull-factor have grown exponentially and grotesquely. Metropolitan cities have become the hub of all kinds of livelihood, production and service. The cities have become more cramped. Space is scarce, roads are narrow. Everything seems lot more suffocating, overflowing and chaotic. Shops, houses, garages, slivers of balconies, wires, lampposts, announcements, human movement – everything seems to be overcrowded. Courtyards are now a myth; and lawns are super privileges of a very few. 

Amid this density of the city, rises the billboards. In large type-fonts, through their slogans and glossy images and promises – they offer a different form of living in a different kind of a city. The language, imagery, colour and the mood of the real-estate advertisements sell precisely what is most rare in the city; yet most desired by consumers. If you ever have some spare time, emerge out of our phone-screens and look at the roadside real-estate hoardings. The seductive message is not that of an elusive commodity called land but an experience called living. 

What is the rarest, the most expensive, and most dreamlike thing in our urban lives today? Land, housing, and an address. Look closely – most real-estate advertisements are trying to sell us exactly an experience that is far away from common people’s reach. There’s no land left in the city, and even if there is, it’s far beyond the purchasing power of the middle class’s legitimate earnings. Certainly, one can rise high, at the cost of demolishing old houses, filling wetlands, and acquiring farmland.

What they are really selling

The language and imagery of real-estate advertising are not too eager to sell you just another house. A house is a utilitarian thing. Market does not require so much money and glare to be spent on advertising – it sells something so functional. What these advertisements want to sell is an imaginary living experience, which is located farther and higher than your apparently cluttered home or neighbourhood. The setting and atmosphere are filled with promises of cleanliness – removed from the clutter. It is indeed a manufactured ideal.

In Satyajit Ray’s Seemabaddha (Company Limited), when the protagonist’s wife shows her sister, visiting from a small town, their flat, she says: “It’s way better upstairs. Less dust, less smoke, no mosquitoes and flies.” That is, precisely the point. The high-rise carries the eternal promise of distance and separation from traffic, from the congestion, from soil, from the sweat and blood, from the protest, and the agonies of class struggle. Height here becomes a symbol of elevation and progress – tainted thoroughly by a contempt and disdain for those below. Elevation is also energised with the self-assurance of exclusivity and superiority of status and wealth.

In most high-rise advertisements, what is actually being sold – the house and its dimensions – appears in small print. What dominates the visuals and large font is class-consciousness. Hence, the repeated usage of certain adjectives is not at all coincidental but it is rather essential and inevitable; such as: royal, luxury, pristine, peaceful, premium, elite, grand, exotic. These words cannot be measured with a tape or in square feet – nor can their quality be verified – because they are merely construct the idea of exclusivity and distance from the plebeian class. We find ourselves surrounded by Ivy Counties, Casa Woodstocks, Exotica Dreamvilles, White Houses, Oxford Caps, Fistula Estates, Supertech Czar Suits, Grand Forte and what not.

Fantasy of exclusivity and 0% city

At the root of these imagined constructs lies distance and exclusivity – a fantasy of transcendence from all that is relatively filthy and real in the real city, down there. Beyond the crowded life, a utopia is visually orchestrated with trees, golf courses, and swimming pools, which are built by demolishing the greenery and filling the wetlands. The irony is that the market hardly has to make much of an effort to convince you that this concrete devastation is profoundly ‘eco-friendly’! This destructive act of creating a feeling of ‘natural’ by destroying nature will, in its own words, provide you with 70% open space and 0% city! It will offer you an artificially serene corner. 

That’s exactly the essence of numerous housing ads in an effort to sell Green Meadows, Mystic Greens, Spring Fields, Golf Forests, White Orchards – many of which are erected on former agricultural land. From everything degraded and dull – you will rise into a dazzling enclosure of abundance, whose high walls will isolate you from the sordid city. You will sit in solitude and think – this human right is your achievement and entitlement. Within this arrangement of consumption lies your safety, ease, detachment, and individuality. All your supplies will be app-mediated and will involve minimal human contact. Electricity, water and other supplies will be uninterrupted – at a high cost of maintenance. In this well-decorated lonely nirvana, every breath you take will be free of pollution – compared to the rest of the city.

In this newly elevated terrain, a sense of detachment and contempt toward the rest of the city is omnipresent. For those living on the 32nd floor, the city doesn’t even exist. Poverty can be viewed from the penthouse in 4k-clarity mediated only by an 85-inch TV-screen while watching a documentary such as Salt of the Earth. Jonathan Raban in his seminal book Soft City mentions about the dialogic relationship we share with the city, and how the city remoulds its citizens and vice versa. In the imagination of the high-rise, there is no such thing as the ‘rest of the city’. City is in now your living room. Society is where your walled compound is. 

In the comfort of your towered solitude, your only conversation will be with the clouds. Your mornings will be awakened by the chirpings of extinct sparrows. Housing is scarce and exorbitant but the view from there will always be infinite. Welcome to the new abode for which you have spent all your accumulated wealth or you are willing to pay instalments for the rest of your life. And why not, when that seems to be the only route to elevate yourself! 

Aren’t you tired of seeing the city from below?

Sreedeep Bhattacharya is an associate professor of Sociology with Shiv Nadar University.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.