The Indian summer and our search for a House have begun together. Despite the pains, I am sticking to ethics. And, the ethics of making jokes is to punch up. So, after South Delhi, let us talk about Noida. I can’t afford a house in either, so it is a punch up for sure.

A friend is buying a house, so we tagged along just for a look see. The first property we saw was a NOIDA housing scam elevator pitch. The houses are complete. Just one flat remains to be sold. Clothes fluttered from every balcony, nodding in agreement with the dealer’s claim.

But the apartment has not been approved by the government. So, you can not get it registered. You sub-lease etc etc. The dealer insisted there is nothing shady about it and challenged us to check the govt’s rera website or something like that.

My friend said he wants no part of this shit pie. He kept serving those pies until we said enough and he left us outside a golf view apartment that had a vegetable patch view and holes on the roads. Alternate golf, may be, what do we know.

Then, we landed at Mahagun Moderne. Heard that joke about how to put an elephant in a fridge in three steps? These guys shrunk the fridge and still managed to fit a few elephants in.

As you Walk into the high rise, it transfers its total weight onto your chest. Walk into an experience, as they say. The houses have light on one side, darkness on another. Just like life. You can take photos on the balcony side and develop them on the wall side.

And, the million people packed into those matchboxes can light a single cigarette and pass it around.

We took a walk. Bought two coconut water bottles with chunks in it for hundred rupees each and tried to feel fresher. Did not help. I could have booked half a seat at a PVR for that money!

Our friend asked how did we like the flats we saw. I told him this is where all your big dreams and little illusions come to die.

As we dragged our now a ton heavier bodies out, we saw the society office had a photo of a central minister’s son on the glass. Cheering, congratulating, displaying heartfelt happiness. We were in Uttar Pradesh. Answers to all your dreadful questions.

We wondered when reality becomes this crazy, do you chose the least crazy or do you walk out and say I am not playing!

I can’t afford the expensive pigeon hole in that giant ant hill. I am not playing. May the ants feast upon my pigeon. Eat it alive just the way those peeling, ageing skyscrapers scrape the ground floor off of your castle in the sky.

NOIDA. They took the abbreviation literally and forgot industrial should not be residential. You dont pack humans like export containers in a SEZ, each a proud and deluded home owner hanging from the railing, flailing and flying like a victory flag.