X2: The Flat

The knowledge I gained about X2’s past was enough to get me riled up. Trust was an issue, but she promised she was a straight-forward person and she would never do that to me. She told me we should focus on our relationship. I took her word and looked to the future. X2 didn’t handle her finances herself, her father did. She was very random in this matter, as with everything else. She had casually mentioned wanting to invest in a low-cost apartment in the distant corners of Mumbai as means to reduce taxes. Her previous attempts of handling finances were with the help of her boyfriend in Bangalore, a north-eastern guy who could only be called weird. Some common friends who I met much later knew him, and they agreed. He’s a complete idiot.

X2 spoke of him as strange. Her friends had mentioned that the two of them were very different. He of all people, offered to help her with investing in stocks. He took 2 lakh rupees from X2, turning it into a meagre Rs. 60,000 in a span of a month or two. Great going, for a design specialist, attempting market trading with no experience. It’s even greater judgment from another design specialist, trusting someone with no trading experience with a large sum of money. Another time, he borrowed money from X2 claiming he needed it for his college tuition fees. Days later, X2 discovered he had spent it on buying a swanky new smartphone. A lot later, he ended up getting his MacBook wet in the rains, so he registered an account on one of those online charity services, asking for Rs. 60,000 to get it fixed so he could work.

X2’s poor judgments with her finances were not limited to her boyfriends. Her father had demonstrated some ‘great’ financial decisions using his wife’s income to further his terrible attempts at entrepreneurship. She with her mental illness would spend all her life paying the loans while he relaxed. Now retired, and his daughter considering marriage, he now had grand plans for his daughter.

One fine day, X2 called me up saying there was a property fair in Mumbai and asked if I’d like to go with her father. I said I would, and so I went. That experience was something else. Dressed in formals, but with a ‘jhola’ on his side, we rushed from one builder’s stall to another asking for rates, locations and details on loans, EMIs and pre-requisites. He asked repeatedly, “What’s the largest loan we can take? My daughter works for an MNC and has been working for nearly 4 years now. She’s very stable and we’re serious about a flat.”

At the end of that long afternoon, I remember mentioning it to her father. I think (X2) wants to move back to Bombay and stay close to all of you. I don’t know if she wants to look at properties too far. I asked him to let her come to Bombay so we could see some sites and then they could make a decision. X2 called me later that evening, telling me that her father wanted me to accompany him the following Saturday, to a part of Mumbai to look at properties in her ‘budget’. She was looking for a bit affordable as an investment, something that only needed a small loan.

The following Saturday, I got a call from her father at 8:30am in his usual reluctant, indecisive voice saying that he was a bit busy and he wouldn’t be able to come. I said alright. Around lunch time, X2 called me telling me her father had just booked a 1.3cr flat on the outskirts of Bombay. He had already deposited a lakh into the builder’s account. I think I lost my mind, for several reasons. The cost of this apartment was nearly twice the budget X2 had in mind for this investment. This apartment cost way more than she had in her savings. The loan she would need would be nearly 60% of the total cost of the apartment and it would take at least 15 years to repay. The apartment was in one corner of Pune, on the highway, with no proximity to any market or other housing, or hospitals. X2 had no plans of moving to Pune, neither one of us did. X2 hadn’t even seen the property, let alone agree to it. All she knew was that her father had initiated the booking and she was ordered to come to Bombay the following weekend to sign the papers and start paying the EMI the following month.

I requested X2 at first, to cancel the booking, or delay it for a few weeks so she could come to Bombay and look at other options. Since the property fair, I had made a list of some 20 apartment complexes in and around Mumbai to consider. I had broken it all down into easy-to-understand details, the loan, the EMI, the duration, proximity to stations, schools, gardens, price trends, appreciation, etc. I even offered to pay the pre-booking fees if they could cancelled the booking for now.X2 tried her best to speak to her father and change his mind but he refused to budge. He refused to talk to me. This was his dream come true.

It was 1.3 crore but it was a 1500sq ft apartment with a golf course, a stream, a swimming pool, a gym and more. All of this was sounded very impressive to her father. This was the big life and it was staring him in the face. How could he not want this? It must be clear, X2’s father is not a golfer, he’s not the adventurer or the social types. He was someone who had never taken his family out on a holiday, or to meet their relatives, their hometown. Yet, here he was, advocating for this property without any discussion. When X2 tried to urge, he shot it down. “You do what you’re told and do not mess this up”. X2 would break down, crying on the phone and saying she couldn’t believe her father was doing this to his own daughter. She said she didn’t want the apartment either. To me, this wasn’t the first time he was exploiting someone else for his own comfort, and now, style.

It wasn’t just the irrational, erratic and sudden decision to invest 1.3cr in a flat, but also the fact that there was no talk yet, of a wedding date and our plans. They seemed to have gotten hijacked by the sudden demand of this flat. That wasn’t the only clause though. While the flat was registered in X2’s name, she was told she could never sell the flat without her father’s permission. If she decided to sell the flat, she would need to give her father half of the money earned from the flat. There were funny promises too. There was the assurance that her father gave X2, that I would help with handling the EMI for the loan. I do not understand how promises work anymore. Had it been X2’s choice, with deliberation and reason, I would’ve agreed happily but that wasn’t the case. This was an investment for the father, made by the father, with her daughter’s savings, and her to-be savings for the next 15 years. X2 travelled to Bombay the following weekend, and she asked me if I’d like to come along to sign the papers. I politely declined.

There were other excuses made through that week leading to the signing. The flat was a good idea, because the pollution in Bombay was too much for X2’s father. He was tired of working, he was growing old. Her father was about 53 or 54 years old at this point. Remember, this is a guy who retired from active work life at the age of 35 to run a shop 50 metres from his house. The initial excuse was this was a tax-saving technique. Another one was this was only a 3 to 4 year investment, and that they were going to sell off the flat then and have that 1.3cr investment double to nearly 3cr. The one bit of reasonable assurance was that her father would sell off the shop and repay the daughter in the next 2-3 months. The thought of it would never cross his mind, not then, not nearly a year later. The number of excuses and promises, also how quickly they were created in that span of a week were by itself a sign of madness and greed.

One of the other absurd things I heard was her father involving his wife’s brother in this grand investment. X2’s uncle had taken a voluntary retirement from service, after his schizophrenia took a turn for the worse. He had a lump-some amount as part of this retirement, and X2’s fully-abled father tried to convince him to give it to him, so that he could double it in 3 years. X2’s uncle has 3 children, one of whom was ‘given away’ at a young age to his wife’s sister because they didn’t have children. I’d feel uncomfortable trying to take money from a person in this situation, but not X2’s father.

I tried calling X2’s mother trying to speak sense to her. I respect her and I think she respected me. She said she was very sad because her husband wouldn’t listen, and they aren’t telling me anything. X2 told me her 92-year-old grandfather asked her “Do you and your father really need such a flat? Where are you going to move to Pune? I want to see you married.”

Sadly, none of these things mattered to X2’s father. His stability and success were always at the hands of someone else’s expense. His wife had helped him, by building a house to live in, a shop next door he could sit in and watch his helpers work, and now it was his daughter’s turn to secure his future. This was clearly an instance of a greedy, insecure father trying to grab as much money as he could before his daughter married and ‘got away’. I was baffled by his decisions in the past, and now there was this. I had a huge loan on my mind to live with. Regardless, this wouldn’t be the only incident I would witness.