Affordable Luxury – Real Estate’s greatest gift to Indians

The world thinks Indians can consume anything. Literally anything. After toxic waters, DDT-ised fruits, adulterated medicines, spurious alcohol and unbreathable airs, we have developed an unbelievable appetite for indigestible substances.

And now our dear brothers and sisters in the business of building homes have started testing our capabilities with the promise of ‘Affordable Luxury’.

A Clever Donkey seems to be more believable than affordable luxury. If we pick up an oxford dictionary, it says affordable is an adjective that means ‘Inexpensive; reasonably priced’ while luxury is a noun that means either ‘A state of great comfort or elegance, especially when involving great expense’ or ‘an inessential, desirable item which is expensive or difficult to obtain’. So putting 2 and 2 together, we will get only 0. You see, the words affordable and luxury are at the 2 opposite ends of the spectrum and stand for things which are exactly opposite.

In more lay(lied to)manly words, if X is affordable then it is within the reach of the masses as it is meant for mass consumption. Hence, it is neither expensive nor for a privileged few. On the other hand, Y, touted as a luxury item is supposed to be expensive and overpriced to exclude the masses and create exclusivity for the privileged few who would be capable of paying that price. Hence X and Y can never come together.

So, we can conclude that armed with this knowledge we have greater hope of being able to educate a donkey to qualify as ‘CLEVER’ than to ever be able to enjoy ‘AFFORDABLE LUXURY’.