Last year my cousin was planning to purchase a house in Hyderabad. The house was being constructed in a very posh locality, near Hi tech city. Hi tech city boasts large number of IT firms, second only to Bangalore. As expected, people who where purchasing homes in that locality were highly educated elite class, holding excellent positions in the technology firms.
But a strange incident happened during the construction phase (which is why I am writing this blog). My cousin, being an architect, tried to tweak the design of the house, to improve the structure and convenience. But to his surprise, the labourers refused to follow his instructions! Shocked, he approached the building contractor, who advised not to go ahead with his changes as this will violate the ‘vastu’ of the building!
The ‘vastu’ specifies the distribution of rooms in building in accordance to directions (like bathroom should be in east), size alignment etc. For example, it specifies that if the room’s dimension is 15 feet, a death will occur in resident’s family! Later on enquiring he found that almost all the houses in Hyderabad: bungalow or hut is now made according to vastu, even at the cost of discomfort of the people living inside, for the rest of their lives, or at the cost of disfiguring the interiors. House, if any, which is not built according to vastu, is sold at a discount, to charge the penalty of non-conformance!
The interesting thing to note is that ‘vastu’ is a concept re-introduced in recent decades. It is marketed as a ‘restoration of tradition in modern society’. The vastu gurus were able to revive their fortunes with this gimmick. The VPs and the illiterates alike, religiously follow the herd because nobody wants to die early!!
No comments:
Post a Comment