Punjab prime choice for farmhouses
By Vasu

A STONE-WASHED facade, ivy creeping up the walls, a couple of jhoolas scattered between meandering rows of flowers ... all set amidst acres of landscape emerald green lawns. Add variables like a swimming pool, rockeries, fountains, pedigreed dogs and one would be able to define a typical farmhouse in the suburbs of Chandigarh. If the abode happened to be within the limits of the Union Territory, then all one needed was an additional fish pond, poultry shack or cattle shed to declare the ultimate luxury house as a farm and escape the by-laws. Also, one was required to give an undertaking that the owner would not object in case the administration one day decided to demolish the construction exceeding a mali house. All this was in the golden days of real estate boom. Land was available within the periphery limits of the city and restrictions were few. Also purchasing the mandatory 2.5 acres in Chandigarh was possible at around Rs 15 lakh.Taxation laws were favourable and the income tax people made few enquiries as to the source of funds, say dealers.

The peak time for farmhouse sales was in 1995-96 and sales have undergone a constant decline since then. In the last one year, hardly any sales have occurred, says Arvind Mehta, who deals in farmhouses and orchards. Besides the general recession in the property market, the fixing of a ceiling prices of Rs 6 lakh per acre by the Chandigarh Administration for registration charges has ensured that at least in the city, farmhouse prices cannot be fuelled by ‘number two’ money, says dealers. Earlier, cash transactions were always a prime component of these deals. Stricter enforcement and bylaws have pushed the action towards Punjab, says Mehta. There the 2.5 acre restriction does not exist and one can make a farmhouse with only one acre of land. Also, no permissions are required for construction, and with the added advantage of a stamp duty rate of only 6 per cent compared to 12.5 per cent in Haryana and Chandigarh,Punjab has become the obvious choice for the farmhouse hunter. The prime properties in Punjab are located on the Zirakpur-Patiala road where rates can vary between Rs 8 lakh to Rs 9 lakh per acre. Derabassi and Lalru areas are also sought after since power and water are in abundance. Good bargains are also to be found in the Morni hills of Haryana where an acre of land can be had for as low as Rs 50,000 up to Rs 1 lakh. This land, however, does not have good soil properties and water is also at a greater depth.

The other main area where farmhouses are cropping up today is the Naraingarh, Raipur Rani and the Barwala belt in Ambala district. Here the best land is available for Rs 4 lakh per acre and the range is from Rs 4 lakh per acre to Rs 25 lakh per acre for properties on the main road. With water at a depth of only 40 to 60 feet, the area has been snapped up rapidly. However, the farmhouses here, are not retained as such for long. Buyers soon carve them up into smaller plots and sell them off to gullible investors. This trend is more apparent in the immediate surrounding areas of the union territory. The most expensive, ‘plotting’ land is available on the Zirakpur road where the rate is around Rs 25 lakh per acre. After purchasing, private parties sell off plots at rates varying from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh per marla. This obviously gets them over double the amount of their initial investment at the cost of the subsequent purchaser. In spite of knowing that the area and plots are unregistered and unauthorised, a devil-may-care attitude prevails, says a dealer. Lack of awareness combined with an optimistic attitude that the colony will be regularised often lead to disastrous results, he says. The recent PUDA demolitions are an example of this as the land which was earlier brought for farmhouses was subsequently carved up and sold as small plots. The entire Naya Gaon, Ratwara Sahib and Mullanpur areas have developed like this. In Chandigarh ‘plotting’ has recently begun at places like Hallomajra and Darua where rates vary between Rs 50,000 and Rs 75,000 per marla with the link roads going for Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 per marla. The prime pick of the farm properties are of course Kot Kishangarh houses where the last deals were transacted in the range of Rs 20 and Rs 22 lakh per acre. However, in the past one year no transactions have taken place since the buyer has steadily stayed away from the market.

The Pinjore-Baddi road and the area around Himshikha is the new virgin territory for farmhouses. Though development here has been hampered due to the absence of a second link road and the annual flooding of the river, land here has suddenly become attractive for investors. Besides the picture book setting, the presence of a couple of boarding schools, old age homes and now a possible resort has resulted in some interest here. For an acre on a good location one can expect to pay around Rs 6 to Rs 7 lakh in this area. In other areas around Chandigarh prices, however, continue to stay down. The decline is most apparent in the kandi area where water is not available till 250 feet to 300 feet.

In the Perch, Soonk and Jayanti Majra areas even tubewells are not available and people are mostly dependent on gods and the channels fed by catchment areas for irrigation. What is perhaps more indicative of the growing requirement of housing rather than the real worth of land is the fact that even here agriland is being sold for Rs 3.5 lakh to Rs 6 lakh per acre — sold as farmhouses today, to be carved up into plots later, and, perhaps,demolished in the end.

Poet of ethereal shades
By Mohindar Pal Kohli

THE poetry of Madan Gopal Gandhi endorses the essential worth of the Indian literary genre with little evidence of alienation from the traditional Indian stock.

Born in 1940, the poet, painter and astrologer, Gandhi is a multifaceted personality, who joined the Vinoba cavalcade after getting his master’s degree in English literature. He won the prestigious Tagore Centenary Celebration Award in 1961, and acquired master’s degree in political science, winning the gold medal from Punjabi University. He got his doctorate for writing the dissertation on Political Ideas of Lala Lajpat Rai, collaborated in Bhoodan Movement with Lala Achint Ram and R.R. Diwakar in Gandhi Samarak Nidhi.

Gandhi was a visiting Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1981 and was nominated for Rajiv Gandhi Memorial National Award, 1994, for best academician. He also held the post of Director, Distance Education, Maharshi Dayanand University. At present, he is Professor-Chairman of the Department of Political Science and Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences there.

Besides numerous publications on political theories, political analysis, Gandhian aesthetics and contemporary socialism, Gandhi has to his credit 11 volumes of poems in English which he calls "the essence and manner of self-realisation... coming naturally and spontaneously in flashes between islands of silence... a consummate expression of the divine in the idiom of everyday life..."

Abrahm Maslow, the high priest of human psychology, has identified creativity with openness in expressing feelings, receptivity to ideas, concern for others, desire to grow as a person and activate one’s potential. During formative years, Gandhi cultivated eternal values from the Upanishads.

Gandhi appears to be a ‘migrant from the past’. The Hindu mythology and culture run in his blood. He maintains that the spirit never dies. It survives in various incarnations "drinking the bliss sip to sip/till we attain nirvana.... I know incarnation to be a fact/for sage Bhrigu unfolds the scroll/of my previous births/spanning many aeons." He continues "In one birth I was king Yayati,/the ancestor of the Yadhvas/I carry with me Bhrigu’s curse/for my infidelity/to Devayani/daughter of the mighty sage" (Sukra). It is not surprising that Gandhi prefixes his name with Yayati. In almost all of the 90 poems in the collection Freak Stair (1988), he brings the mysterious design down to the level of the mundane affairs of everyday life.

The poet occupies himself with the ‘Puzzle of existence’, with the question ‘Why is a man born? Why does he die?/Who ordains his hell or heaven.’ But all truth is a pathless land, hardly discernible. The creation and the dissolution and then the creation are the mani-festation of the cosmic being. The cycle goes on.

Professor Narinder Rattan in his perceptive study of Gandhi’s poetry addresses him as a new metaphysical voice (1996) and examines the poet’s vision of cosmos focusing on the EWAFE (Earth, water, air, fire, and ether) that is, matter, feeling, mind, psyche and spirit entering the unexplained realm of ideas and crossing the barriers of agnosticism.

Gandhi’s Haikus and Quatrains (1983) contain 812 snippets and slices, sweet and bitter, playing hide and seek with the ethereal unknown and unseen. Like the Chinese aphorisms, they trip and tease. There is dispassion amidst ‘scorpion kisses’, ‘corpses without crosses’, and the ‘bejwelled snakes’. Mystery lights every line but there is grace in the process of surrender of pride. Only the harmony of the cosmos is revealed.

Gandhi’s poems "are tinged with the native flavour, reflecting as they do, the author’s protean moods — plebeian, pagan, pungent, ethereal and defiant." At the same time he encounters the dilemma of human existence in addition to the problems of time and eternity. He does talk of an ordinary man, the scum of the earth with patience and genialty. "I am the poet of the street/I meet and greet with informality of friends/no one bows, no one bends."

The philosophical dimensions of Gandhi’s prolific lyrics can only be divined not fathomed. For it is intensely personal free from self love, hatred, doubt, fear of loss, privation and possessiveness, what J.G. Bennett calls essential sufferings of man. The grammar of life, he asserts, teaches self extinction. There lies his universality. There is stillness and compassion in his verses with a capacity to hold the tormented souls and unburden sorrows, urging man to see for himself the tremendous depth of what Kahlil Gibran said was the land of love!