Antillia.

The name of a legendary island in the west of Portugal and Spain, resting in the Atlantic Ocean, pictured in the map as almost a complete rectangle. At times it was also connected with Isle of Blessed and Fortunate Island: pious island according to Greek mythologies, considered as a paradise for the brave mortals. Nevertheless the origin of the name ‘Antillia’ is still not sure. We definitely don’t know from where this word is derived but this word is getting quite a spotlight in India and abroad now a days. You might have got the idea till now what I am about to talk here, if not then it’s also the name of a 27 story building, more like a royal one, located at Altamount road in south Mumbai, belongs to the richest Indian Mukesh Ambani. With all the world class amenities that can be thought of, having a base area of more than 4000 sq mt. with overall cost being more than 8000 crores,  it’s the most expensive house known to the modern humanity.

With the house got completed recently, it has caught everyone’s eye varying from people driving Swift to people in the backseat of Audi, from media to the corrupts everyone is talking about the opulence show from this Reliance chairman. People in India are divided with their thoughts on this mansion. I remember some of the excerpts from various print media and telemedia condemning Mr. Ambani for his newly built palace. There was a statement made by Mr MMS when this house started getting attention was related to the salaries of Indian CEOs, he believes that Indian CEOs are overwhelmingly paid and they should reckon about their salaries, as this is not morally correct to take the remuneration as high as 10000 times of per capita income of the country. The point made definitely has a meaning, as we live in a country where still more than half of the population lives in abject poverty with dejected dreams where lacuna between rich and poor has widened a lot and still widening. There is still a horde among the 1.20billion who struggle to earn their daily meal. If in such locale you show off your abundance, it’s not considered ethical being part of the same society. This point was discussed quite a time by our highly immature, publicity hungry, media too to go on few more days with a news for big-guns savvy public. After all the house also carries a reputation of a celebrity, and why not, it belongs to a celebrity too. But Mr MMS must have forgotten while making this statement that we are watching almost daily a new scam by his peers and which is making his peers to take much more than this without any hard work as done by Mukesh Ambani.

Being so much discussed everywhere; everyone wants to talk something about it now. We have a unique way of discussion anyways we can discuss on any damn topic without knowing much about it, provided that it is initiated by some one else. We improvise our speaking skills on the spot and can present our views on an alien subject too. Most of the times those are not our thoughts that we speak, rather we make our minds by listening to others and we force our minds to think in that direction in which others are thinking, without knowing the authenticity of the subject and assertions we make on it. Subjects that get attention are generally those which deal with life of others, like a tape alleged to have personal talks of Amar singh and Bipasha, breakups or starts of relations of celebrities, which we admire, Cricketers getting married or analogous to those. These are mainly the issues exaggerated by our value loosing media to gain public attention and to increase their brand. We being the busiest peoples on the earth know only what our media shows to us. We are very much untouched by other facts till those are exposed to us. For an instance: many of us didn’t know about Anna Hazare till we saw that austere personality on our television sets standing for a noble cause. We are just not bothered about existence of such persons in our country until they stand for us again and again. Now all this lack of awareness causes us to believe anything, right or wrong, bestowed upon us. We resist using our own wisdom to decide the credibility of any issue.

Not to forget that media can be biased too, no surprises if they adulterate the facts and present to us because they know very well that most of us don’t use our minds while asserting for a topic. If someone wants to correlate this, just think of the last time when you saw SRK exalted by media for his past movies or something else, was there any IPL publicity needed by him around or any of his new movie was about to release then. Even you can notice nowadays that suddenly Digvijay Singh is in the news most of the time, making ridiculous statement about anything even if he knows it or not. He was sad that no last rituals were performed for the world’s most wanted terrorist, I don’t know if Obama personally called this fellow and conveyed this thing. Think about it for a while that why he is so concerned about a man who is responsible for millions of lives for whom last rituals were not performed because of him. One of the facts is that there are upcoming elections in UP where a major vote bank is of Muslim community and anything done or any statement made which relates to a particular community, certainly last rituals carries ample emotions for any religion, will definitely help to gain popularity in that brigade. I might have taken more than needed examples here to put my point that before making any mind on certain thing one should use his mind too.

Recently there was a news flooded in the media about a statement made by Ratan Tata that Mukesh Ambani’s house shows lack of empathy to the poors. I can bet to the last penny that Ratan Tata can’t make such statement, these are just quotes taken out of context and published. Mr Tata knows what respect they have in the society and they know well how to maintain it. I have never seen this man making any such statement earlier about anyone, and to my belief he won’t do it either. These were just false alarms rang again by the media, which can’t even interpret correctly what someone intended to say. Even Tata’s representatives have said this publically that no such meaning should be drawn and they also threatened to sue the publication responsible for this. But the damage had been done and there was a new topic of interest with everyone.

We only know about the expenditure done on this villa but most of us don’t know that even today Mukesh Ambani works for more than 12hrs a day to earn the life style that he deserves. Owner of one of the biggest industrialist group worldwide, creator of millions of jobs, key player in supporting Indian GDP, one who has taken the name of India to the heights, an ideal for many entrepreneurs, because of him we have an Indian in worlds 10 richest person. This can be taken as an inspiration by anyone to get success in life and make such a reputation for himself or on the contrary this can be argued at just another tea time that why one should earn this much of money and make a show off with it. One can think of the house as a masterpiece of engineering or can think of it as a waste of land where many more could have been accommodated.

Antillia, a 27 story mammoth with a height of 173 meters, one of the masterpieces of Engineering, having a feather in its cap of being the world’s most expensive house having a worth of 8000 crore, which is in our own country, belongs to the richest Indian, must have expected eulogies from every art lover at least, instead of all the negative publicity that it has gained.

While gathering facts for this article I came to know that interior decoration of the house of Praful Patel, our aviation minister, is going on and the house has an enormous area of 1 lakh sq feets which is more than double of the Antillia, but we may not know about expenditure on this ever as he is not a industrialist who have to get his expenses audited and again media can be paid to not to make this news public.

What we know is only what we see, we still don’t know the names holding 100s of accounts in Swiss bank. We don’t know how the wealth of certain politicians grew from few thousands to million dollars in one or two years, we dont know how the budget of commonwealth got up by 1000 crores. For us Bill G is the richest man but what if some unnamed politician posses much more of it already which is not known to anybody. There are many more things to ponder than cursing a man for living in his deserved dream house. Think if only 100 out of 120 million of us got motivated by this man or his house may be and only one or two of them can turn up like him, wont there be ample number of jobs created inside the nation during their course of success.

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