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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Of Views and Villas

There is a fine art hidden in naming buildings in India.
with no street numbers or house numbers in most places, building names become critical as both landmarks as well as self identity. In fact, household help often refers to their employers as " Ashiana wale Mehta" or " Green View Madamji" !!!

So what is in a name? Lots apparently.

For instance, the rental leaps up if the building has a VIEW attached to it.
Views can be anything.
From truly great views like Lake View, Sea View, Bay View to more local views like Park View, Temple View to some really strange ones like Bird View.. so what if the only birds we can view are the crows on the phonelines, Sky View... excuse me, aren't we all supposed to get a view of the sky from some corner of our apartment anyways.....

Then there are the INTERNATIONAL sounding names.
Gurgaon has perfected this naming game.
Hamilton, Windsor, Regency, Belvedere, Garden Estate... you name it.
Lots of Villes and villas dot the roadscape as well.
Works for a millenium city where people come in with aspirations which are sky high, and cannot be watered down by living in say, Vipul Apartments.

Indian names are usually FEMININE
Seen a lot in the Mumbai burbs.

Lakshmi Palace, Sudha Apartments, Subhangi, Sridevi, Madhu, Rekha......
Some male names are breaking into this female bastion... Harshvardhan, Aditya Vardhan etc.

Not to forget the GOD names or mythology related ones.
Feel blessed in such buildings.

Sun Shristi, Sai Shristi, Sai Ram, Govinda, Govindam, Arjun, Shiv Shakti and more.

A lot does go into a name.

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