ARUMUGAM "ONI"

6 April, 2009
Oni - "Shelter" in Sanskrit

I'm living my dad's dream, his 7 year dream to construct a big house at Mogappair for our little family and live in it. But fate had other plans. What was started by him, was completed by me. There were no dearth of challenges trying to complete this house. Infact, according to many, the design of the house ensured the "Vaasthu" was messed up in every possible way. During the course of renovation, I even considered changing the layout of the house, but with limited resources and time against me, I decided to go with my dad's layout.

When I took over the reigns of this house from my dad in 1997, it was nothing but merely four walls covered by a concrete ceiling. With no source of funding, I had to lock the house in this state for atleast 2 years. It was later that money started trickling in and thanks to suggestions of some "wise" relatives (read with sarcasm), I took up the daunting task of bringing this house to shape. The thought of regular rental income enticed me into it. Looking back, I'm still unsure if it was the best thing to do.

I knew that me with my 18 years of so-called life experience would be unfit to try to handle it all by myself, and I gladly obliged giving the house work to my maternal uncle. Little did I know until few months later, that my uncle during the course of this construction had eaten his pie too, by showing me inflated bills. Well, I didn't find it courteous to question him, atleast the money was within the family. But I made up my mind that the next time I take up any house work, it would be all by myself.

I still remember those days in 1999, it was about the same month 10 years back when we begun the work. I would travel from my college to Mogappair house every other day, look at the progress, nod my head to every word my uncle or workers say, and head back home. After 3 months of work, we managed to bring the house to shape. This included Plastering, Plumbing, Electrical connections, Flooring and a few lakhs of my dad's saving in expediture. We rented this house to a couple of tenants since then.

It's been 10 years since and last year, I felt the need to change from my 429 sq ft duplex house in MMDA Colony, Chennai to a better house in the city. There were valid reasons to it, no space to park my car, neighbours surrounding weren't very hospitable, the place was getting too noisy and of course, I wanted to break the shackles of the little house and start living in a larger space with all amenities.

26 January, 2009: This is when Part-2 begins.
This time I had to balance between my work and the construction. Like I vowed before, I took up the entire work by myself. This time I had to take care of Construction, Carpentry, Flooring, Electricals, Painting, Plumbing and Interiors. This time it was a labour contract, which meant I had to make sure all materials were in place everyday before the workers arrived. This arrangement took its toll on me. Looking back, I would be lying if I didn't appreciate myself for doing it all alone.

The next 2 months my day would begin at 7, get ready to office, visit Mogappair, instruct tasks for the day, start to office, take care of my office tasks, start back from office at 6, buy materials, travel back to Mogappair house to check the progress and then reach back home around 9. Weekends was no respite as I would travel with my sister, planning for interiors and checking the furnitures.

Steadily over the next 2 months amidst many challenges, I got them all done. Challenges included, laying road outside my house for the first time, when I had the bricks and sand parked outside! carrying crates of electrical items on my bike to the site balancing my bike and the Chennai traffic ! making countless calls to ensure material supply was never in short! the recession and lay-offs at Syntel! Job insecurity was something I did not plan for !

I would be dishonest if I do not thank the people around me without whom this journey would have been mighty tough. Firstly my sister Deepika who was my mental strength, and who took care of the aesthetics [certainly the tougher decision to make], my mason Ravi who made sure the right people were present at the right time and for giving me some valuable tips all along, Sharma who took care of all my electrical supplies and lastly my boy Pulsar which did not give up on me and made sure I was at the right places ontime always.

As I pen this down, I'm filled with a sense of fulfillment, the kind of fulfillment that belongs to my dad. It was today that I placed the name of the house imprinted on a red granite at the main entrance of the house. This house is named the ARUMUGAM "Oni", my little tribute to my dad.