satire: Lutyens Zone Bungalow

 

 

— Ah! the golden nest of Delhi’s most blessed souls! It clings to New Delhi the way Secunderabad hugs Hyderabad or Navi Mumbai trails after Mumbai. Old Delhi has been around since forever — a maze of lanes, kebabs, and history. Then came New Delhi, all dressed in colonial geometry, and suddenly we had two Delhi—Old and New. You can’t even tell where one ends and the other begins; one moment you’re dodging rickshaws in Chandni Chowk, the next you’re gliding past a roundabout where even the traffic police look like they have diplomatic immunity.

 

When the British architect Lutyens designed this zone, he clearly had in mind a place where the high and mighty would live in harmony with red tape. So now, inside this elite cocoon, dwell ministers, bureaucrats, MPs, and the occasional retired someone who forgot to retire. Here stands Parliament House, Rashtrapati Bhavan, India Gate, the Supreme Court, the High Court, museums, stadiums — basically every place that reminds you of power, paperwork, and pending files. If there’s anything ‘old’ here, it’s literally the Purana Qila, the Old Fort — a fossil among fossils.

 

To live in the Lutyens’ Zone is not just about having an address; it’s a lifestyle, a status symbol, a declaration that you have arrived — preferably in a white Ambassador with a red beacon. The streets are spotless, the trees trimmed like they’ve been through military school, and the air has that unmistakable scent of privilege mixed with bureaucracy. Here, offices line up like obedient schoolchildren. Inside, paper crops are sown, watered, and harvested. These crops don’t depend on monsoon or market — they bloom whenever a political season turns favourable. The sowing is done with a file, the watering with signatures, and the harvest — well, that’s when someone, somewhere has collected the booty.

 

Now, these bungalows — ah, they have magic in their bricks. Once you’ve lived in one, leaving it feels like exile. It’s an addiction stronger than caffeine or Twitter. There’s a saying here: ‘If the bungalow goes, part of your soul goes too’ So, when the time comes to vacate, people discover their inner yogi — stretching deadlines, extending tenures, pleading cases. ‘This bungalow is lucky for me’ they say. ‘Where will I go in my old age?’ Some even make it an emotional issue — suddenly it’s no more their bungalow, it’s their community’s pride. If they’re evicted, apparently their caste, community or constituency shall become homeless overnight.

 

And then there are the truly creative ones — they install a bust of their father (the original allottee) declaring the bungalow a ‘memorial’ and wait for the government to hesitate out of respect for the dead. It usually buys them time, not immortality.

 

But the latest and most powerful weapon in the Lutyens arsenal is the art of party-hopping. The logic is simple: “You give me a bungalow; I’ll give you my loyalty — and maybe even call you divine. Overnight, they experience ‘spiritual awakening.’ Their conscience, previously asleep like a government office on a Sunday, suddenly declares, this new found ‘Leader’ is the incarnation of Vishnu! From then on, it’s pure devotion — all for the love of the house, not the House of the People.

 

Imagine — the ‘voice of the inner soul’ now has a real estate value. How times have changed! Once upon a time, saints gave up homes to find truth; now, politicians find truth to keep their home in Lutyens zone.

 

Ah, the value of a Lutyens’ bungalow — you wouldn’t understand, my dear Chunni Babu! It’s not measured in rupees or square feet, but in influence, manipulation, and the ability to say with a straight face, ‘My inner voice told me to live in this very bungalow till my last breath’